The Manchester United Club Thread
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Eric Cantona: Manchester United is being destroyed by Sir Jim Ratcliffe says club legend
Manchester United legend Eric Cantona says co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe is "destroying" the club.
www.bbc.co.uk
I find it funny when players are coming out to criticise Ratcliffe when the Glazers have been slowly but surely bankrupting and killing the club as, you know, a football club for 20 years. You can complain in good faith about the decisions they are making but you cannot suggest that the club is losing its identity under him when its been utterly destroyed by the previous owners. Your identity as a football club isn't the people you keep hanging around the club, its the things you do on the pitch.
Soldato
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As bad as owners the glazers are and they are bad. They at least attempted to keep it as family/community club and done right by staff and former players and keeping moral up at the club.
They could have done the same as what Ineos have done with the cuts and given themselves even more dividends! You can’t treat people the way the Ineos has an not expect any blacklash. It would work at a random petrol plant where the be all and end all is the spreadsheet.
They could have done the same as what Ineos have done with the cuts and given themselves even more dividends! You can’t treat people the way the Ineos has an not expect any blacklash. It would work at a random petrol plant where the be all and end all is the spreadsheet.
This is, in large part due to what a mess the on field stuff has been for 15+ years. The Glazers have always been fantastically wasteful with money as long as they can take their dividends. Its all come to a bit of a head now. We need a new/rejuvenated stadium. We need another rebuild. We need to focus on the football.
I've not had a chance to listen to it yet (I know the story though) but Jonathon Wilson and Rob Draper done a podcast/interview with David Walsh on Ferguson's fallout with John Magner over a racehorse and how that ultimately lead to the Glazers buying Utd.
podfollow.com
I know Utd supporters won't like admitting it but Ferguson was key to the Glazers buying Utd and also maintaining their ownership.
For anybody that doesn't know or hasn't got time to listen to the podcast. Utd's largest shareholders and likely would be owners were 2 Irish racehorse owners who Ferguson was very friendly with. Ferguson was also part owner of their most successful racehorse however there was a dispute over just how big a part - Ferguson believed he owned 50% of the stud rights (which were worth a fortune) however Magner said Ferguson was nothing more than a glorified mascot and owned little to nothing. Ferguson tried to sue Magner for this, despite being told by Utd's board that he had little hope of success (I believe Roy Keane warned him not to mess with Magner too) and Magner retaliated by sending (and leaking to the press) 99 questions to the Utd board regarding Utd's transfer dealings and why Ferguson's son was profiting from various deals he seemingly had nothing to do with (you might remember the BBC done something on this too). Things got messy for a period, Utd fans sided with Ferguson and began interrupting horse races and eventually Magner said **** it, abandoning his attempts of buying Utd and selling his stake to the Glazers.
It Was What It Was
Welcome to The Overlap's football history podcast, It Was What It Was.Each week Jonathan Wilson and Rob Draper will be talking about the key episodes in football history that have shaped the footballing world.The show will be discussing the best stories from football's past, giving insights to...
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I know Utd supporters won't like admitting it but Ferguson was key to the Glazers buying Utd and also maintaining their ownership.
For anybody that doesn't know or hasn't got time to listen to the podcast. Utd's largest shareholders and likely would be owners were 2 Irish racehorse owners who Ferguson was very friendly with. Ferguson was also part owner of their most successful racehorse however there was a dispute over just how big a part - Ferguson believed he owned 50% of the stud rights (which were worth a fortune) however Magner said Ferguson was nothing more than a glorified mascot and owned little to nothing. Ferguson tried to sue Magner for this, despite being told by Utd's board that he had little hope of success (I believe Roy Keane warned him not to mess with Magner too) and Magner retaliated by sending (and leaking to the press) 99 questions to the Utd board regarding Utd's transfer dealings and why Ferguson's son was profiting from various deals he seemingly had nothing to do with (you might remember the BBC done something on this too). Things got messy for a period, Utd fans sided with Ferguson and began interrupting horse races and eventually Magner said **** it, abandoning his attempts of buying Utd and selling his stake to the Glazers.
Profit and sustainability rules have (literally) changed the game though. You need to be efficient on the business side, particularly if you're trying to rebuild, so I understand why they're doing what they're doing.
I didn't expect anything different when Ratcliffe took over, was always going to be finances first. Messaging is typical billionaire businessman, hard decisions, yada yada.
And none of that was meant to.
While many Utd fans and some ex players (now they're no longer getting paid by them) criticise the Glazers, some either don't know or ignore the fact that Ferguson played a huge role in them buying the club. The Athletic done a piece on this story the other year where it's said that Ferguson's support of the Glazers takeover was key to the banks lending the Glazers the money they needed. Everybody knew that the Glazers loading hundreds of millions of debt onto Utd was bad for the club - David Gill even advised shareholders to reject the offer (although he changed his tune once the takeover was completed and he was given a pay rise) and yet Ferguson was fully supportive of the deal and continued to support them for years.
A fantastic manager but Ferguson often put his own interests before that of the club.
Fair points, hard to argue against
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Aren't we now smaller, in terms of employees, than the equivalent sized clubs? I'm sure @BaZ87 pointed this out recently
They also didn't need to impact the charity work. They could have communicated a lot better to people who are having to move seats after decades. Frankly, it's because they don't care.
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Once all the planned redundancies have been made then Utd will have around 35% fewer employees than Liverpool and 40-45% fewer than Real.
Soldato
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Can't get a break can we. Are we cursed or something?
We're cursed with a large lack of quality so any disruption to that small amount we do have is more keenly felt I sometimes think. Yes, all teams would suffer for losing their better players but because our better players have such a nosedive in their replacements its just worse.
Issue we currently have is that the club until recently has been run in a very very poor way. I am sure SJR did an interview recently where he mentioned that under the previous regime (Woodward, Arnold, Murtaugh) they had to achieve Champions league football every year. The more you look at it, the more you can see the problems. Lack of expertise and objectivity in recruitment which creates a vicious circle of short term panic buys that keep compounding the problem. e.g. Buy a Cassemiro, Cavani, Ronaldo etc. All great players in their prime but with hindsight, signing a lower profile and letting them learn would leave us in a much better position.
Because we haven't had consistent Champions League revenue and prize money you are then stuck paying stupid fees and poorly structured deals further compounded when you can't get them off the books. e.g. Onana, we still got to pay a final instalment of over €20m and would have to sell at closer to €25m to avoid a negative impact on PSR. While SJR isn't everyones cup of tea, my opinion is he is taking the flack for years of mismanagement that has finally caught up with us. Hopefully we are starting to see some common sense with recruitment and contracts. Still some pain ahead for the next 18 months though I think.
Because we haven't had consistent Champions League revenue and prize money you are then stuck paying stupid fees and poorly structured deals further compounded when you can't get them off the books. e.g. Onana, we still got to pay a final instalment of over €20m and would have to sell at closer to €25m to avoid a negative impact on PSR. While SJR isn't everyones cup of tea, my opinion is he is taking the flack for years of mismanagement that has finally caught up with us. Hopefully we are starting to see some common sense with recruitment and contracts. Still some pain ahead for the next 18 months though I think.
