The Manchester United Club Thread **Sponsored by Comedy Central**
- Thread starter Robbo
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Caporegime
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Is that bad? I have sandwiches for lunch, didn't realise it was some peasant thing 
i feel your peasantry pain, i'm planning on a sandwich and a cup of potato and leak soup for lunch today - positively trampish on my part but i can't afford canapes or hors d'oeuvres this week.Is that bad? I have sandwiches for lunch, didn't realise it was some peasant thing
Is that bad? I have sandwiches for lunch, didn't realise it was some peasant thing
I'm inclined to agree. It makes sense for the first teamers to be fed specific nutritional food (although i'd expend this to any playing staff inc youth team) but there's no need for coaches/groundsmen etc to be on what i imagine are relatively high cost meals.
The main issue is that these changes make a decent amount of business sense, but then they do something like hire/fire Ashworth which just makes a mockery of trying to be sensible from a financial point of view and it just creates an awful culture for non footballing staff where they're just suffering day after day for the mistakes of people at the top.
Thats just how large companies work. Most companies don't give staff free meals and they still **** money up the walls on things at the very top of the business. Companies will fire thousands of workers and give the CEO a record bonus.
I don't disagree that some of the things they are doing are largely pointless but I think they are trying to change the culture around the club and trying to strip it back and rebuild it. We will find out how that goes in the next few years.
Oh yeah i agree and i think a lot of things that are cut make a lot of sense. There'd be some annoyance from the staff but they'd likely get on with it and shrug it off if they could see sensible decisions throughout the company as it'd create an "all in this together" kind of mentality and you'd hope things might then come back around in the future once everything was being ran well.
Going through all this to save a few hundred k only to see the management spend £15m on changing their mind on ETH a few months later just makes a bit of a mockery though and i think a lot of staff would rightly feel agrieved and create an "us and them" cultura and be looking elsewhere which is the opposite to what they need. You can't blame previous management as the cause of extreme cost cutting measures and then continue to make even bigger financial mistakes yourself.
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You're right similar things go on at other businesses but just like the nonsense managerial review in the summer, football clubs aren't seen or treated like another business. They attract far more publicity and scrutiny than businesses turning over 20x more so when these questionable business practises take place, barring the 12 year olds on twitter that only care about signing more and more players, Man Utd supporters will care about the actions of the clubs owners. They're the ones going to matches and or subscribing to Sky etc, pumping the money into the club and then have to watch the ownership make braindead decisions costing the club 10s of millions, only for them to then try to justify their massive ticket price hikes, cutting budgets for disabled fans, sacking hundreds of the lowest paid staff and all these other cuts because of financial issues. Customers of Nike, Coca Cola or whoever else won't care, football supporters on the other hand do and will want their club to do better.
Caporegime
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That is the thing a football team is not a business in the normal sense. It is more than that. It is a community to people.
I cannot understand why the government can make Roman sell Chelsea when the Glazers are just as bad. Both have financed it through exploitation.
The penny pinching and sacking payouts are much of nothing. Being in so much debt with nothing to show for it is just sad on so many levels.
Clubs like Spurs, Everton, Villa, Newcastle all have promising futures. Everything at United is just depressing as a fan. It wouldn't surprise me in 15-20 years the Glazers family will finally part ways when we are broke and going down to the Championship.
I cannot understand why the government can make Roman sell Chelsea when the Glazers are just as bad. Both have financed it through exploitation.
The penny pinching and sacking payouts are much of nothing. Being in so much debt with nothing to show for it is just sad on so many levels.
Clubs like Spurs, Everton, Villa, Newcastle all have promising futures. Everything at United is just depressing as a fan. It wouldn't surprise me in 15-20 years the Glazers family will finally part ways when we are broke and going down to the Championship.
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I don't honestly think that most fans care that deeply. They want their team to do well on the pitch and thats 95% of it. As Slogan said, a lot of this is just out of context clickbait as well. Anything United do is plastered over the internet. Anything ex-United players do is plastered all over the internet. 'm sure they are doing most of these things behind the scenes but its likely not just old Jim saying "we can save £50k if we don't do this".
As I have said, we will see in a few years how this all shakes out.
I guess it depends on which fans you're talking about. If you're talking about the ones that go to matches and or understand the history of the club then I don't agree. If you're talking about the helmets on twitter who spend 99% of their life dreaming about transfers then I'd agree.
As for the clickbait comment, I'm not sure I'd frame it quite like that. There is clearly a wider issue/story around Ratcliffe's ownership and his approach to cutting costs and increasing prices for fans so whenever news comes out that supports or plays into this story, no matter how small or justified, it gets reported.
As I said, it isn't without foundation as there's clearly a cost-cutting exercise going on at some level but I find it extreme the idea of ol' Jim cutting the lunch meals down to just soup and sandwiches. The removal of staff bonuses and things like that, which I have read, do seem to be worthy of reporting and based more in reality.
Even the more realistic things like the removal of staff bonuses and perks would be concerning from United fan point of view. As a Liverpool fan myself, the instillment of a culture and harmony at the club is something that is incredibly valuable but not easily definable on a spreadsheet.
On the flipside, it could and would be argued that the club has been run poorly for years and that tightening of the belt is required. The handling of the Dan Ashworth situation, as mentioned above, does sort of fly in the face of sensible spending and control though.
These same match going fans have put up with absolute dross on the pitch for the past 13 years along with the club being ground into the mud. I personally don't think they care that much about the lower level stuff. People always profess to have very strong morals/opinions on things but when it actually comes down to it, most people have precisely zero follow through. People claim they care about the environment and drive everywhere and order crap from China they don't need.
As a great man once said "People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis, you can’t trust people"
I agree that these minor stories feel extreme but they are stories and are being reported because these things play into the wider story of Ratcliffe being a Victorian factory owner, treating his staff like slaves.
I'm not sure if you remember but I can recall quite big criticism of Rick Parry for his decision to allow all club staff the day off after the 2005 CL win, closing club stores and cancelling stadium tours. Parry's justification was that the club is a big family and that everybody should be able to celebrate the win and attend the bus parade etc etc and in isolation that was fine however it played into a wider point regarding how the club was being run off the field, falling behind our rivals in terms of monetising our support.
To be clear I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with Parry's decision or Ratcliffe's, just making the point that these minor issues will continue to be reported while there are these bigger talking points going on.
if you can't see the obvious difference here then you've a huge problem.
I don't think we are that far apart on it really. I just think that the likes of these stories will be amplified by the continued negative performance of the team on the pitch. That's a fairly obvious statement but a lot of what is reported will be pure fabrication designed to engage and enrage. Ratcliffe has gone from a supposed saviour to villain rather quickly but if United were in and around the top 4, then I suspect the narrative surrounding him would be different.
The Parry mention is a good example of a negative story in a successful moment for the club. But there was still quite a few negative concerns regarding the club's domestic performance and Gerrard's (seemingly) impending departure. The club shop being closed after Istanbul was about as symbolic as it gets, for the grievances that people had about the club not being run well enough commercially.
The Parry mention is a good example of a negative story in a successful moment for the club. But there was still quite a few negative concerns regarding the club's domestic performance and Gerrard's (seemingly) impending departure. The club shop being closed after Istanbul was about as symbolic as it gets, for the grievances that people had about the club not being run well enough commercially.