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the Glazers have been incredibly lucky with the way things have worked out, but there is a long way to go, the period in our history when ferguson retires and someone like @#%&!arse takes over has yet to be written and i suspect things could spiral down fairly quickly during that era.
We'll see how well the glazers cope then, it's easy when you have a manager like ferguson, the mans a one off, this type of manager comes around only once in a lifetime. Lets see how they handle things when a new manager comes in and starts making changes. Lets see how they handle a prolonged period of no trophies, and lets see how they handle the fact that many of the modern day fans they are catering to today will not stick around for an expensive form of entertainment that doesnt include winning. They said judge them over the long term. I'll be doing just that. |
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If you are referring
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However, it should not be discounted as a very real possibility. It's perfectly feasible that it could happen. Of course, even financial meltdown would not be end of United. The club will go on. But it could take a very long time to recover. Well, Quote:
I'd say that the cost-benefit ratio doesn't really look that great. In fact, it stinks. It stinks so badly that it amounts to no kind of argument at all - impossible new overheads set against a few quid of savings. And what's more, these efficiencies could have been brought in without any need for the debt. If Fergie was pissing about (and you probably know my views on that subject) the board should have called him to order. £#%&!, if the Glazers can do it, why couldn't they? As for the Glazers, they can run the tightest ship on the seven seas, and the numbers still won't add up. They and their debt are a £#%&!ing disaster, and if we somehow weather it, it will be despite them, not because of them. |
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One I particularly wish I'd kept was one fairly high-up US businesswoman who said that one of the sons (and I can't even remember which one, which only makes me look a @#%&!) was the most inept man she'd ever encountered in her life, business or no. Come to think of it, that one may well have come from Private Eye, but then again, it might not. We'll not know whether they have been good or bad for the club for another 5-10 years anyway. Sadly, I know where my money is. |
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Unfortunately, if you're treatise on this matter is correct, it requires not only that David Gill is merrily leading the club to Golgoroth with his 20 pieces of silver clutched to his breast but that the rest of the Old Trafford hierarchy, men like Ferguson and Charlton are all either hopelessly deluded/credulous/corrupt. That does not strike me as the most parsimonious conclusion. Unlike you, us wishy washy "wait and seers" have looked at the available facts (this does not include spurious references to RI Issue ### incidentally), taken a deep breath at the scale of the debt and the interest repayments and are hoping that what has happened is that there is not some grand conspiracy but that Gill, Ferguson et al have been convinced of the feasibility of the Glazers long term plans for the club. The likely concurrence amongst these parties that fleecing the fans is completely acceptable notwithstanding. See, my reaction to Ferguson's little rant at the fan who challenged him last year was one of someone who's living in a country at the vanguard of the sporting "daytripper" culture. A country where the various authorities don't give a flying £#%&! about the average Joe struggling to find the money to pay to follow his team because they can always find a more monied type to take his place. I think Ferguson was genuinely telling the guy to £#%&! off and find another club to follow, there's plenty "loyal" wealthy fans willing to take his place. So long as it doesn't clash with Jeremy's recital. I put it to you that another logical conclusion (or should that be vaguely-informed speculation?), is that the Glazers will succeed at Old Trafford, the club will go on, the club will continue to be successful because they have millions of fans worldwide, a vast captive audience, that they can charge 10, 20, 30% extra to watch the games in one way or another and they'll still stump up the cash. In doing so, they're going to price a big chunk of the traditional support out of it. I doubt they'll give a £#%&!. More so, I doubt our smoked salmon socialist manager gives a £#%&!. This is all part of taking football more and more middle class. Families attending games as long as they're the "right sort" of families. Fact is, they've lost thousands of hard core fans through the takeover. Old Trafford is still full. Do I like what this will mean for the club? No. But it's one eminently feasible way in which the Glazers will find the cash to keep their little "investment" ticking over nicely. |
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*Now*
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You may well be aware, and I cannot name my source for this (and there's no way I'd ever do so), but had Alex Ferguson publicly, or even privately, made an objection to the takeover, a hefty slice of the money (comfortably enough to have ensured the takeover didn't go ahead) would not have been lent to the Glazers. And that is one thing I simply cannot get my head around; why*? * If I could ask him one question, that would be it. |
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Yep,
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Personally, I have little doubt that a statement from Fergie would have prevented the Glazers getting their money, and that by that stage he was the only person who could have stopped the takeoever. Crucially, the Glazers themselves reportedly believed this, and were deeply apprehensive about it. Which is far more telling than anything you or I may happen to think Why he didn't, only he knows. |
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You've shown nothing in the above that can add a factual edge to your interpretation of the actions of Ferguson and Gill in the Glazer takeover. I mean, you've made snide remarks about Ferguson feathering his own nest there (won't be denied by me, difference is, Ferguson can do what he £#%&!ing likes as far as I'm concerned, if ever one man was bigger than the club) and wondered aloud why he didn't just come out publicly against the Glazer takeover and yet you then go on to suggest it was just a series of #@&%!ups. Stop wriggling around and just come out and say what you want to say, who can someone so learned (reputedly) be so obtuse and self-contradictory. Incidentally, madam, I know what parsimonious means, I don't need to use random big words to prove something to a bunch of strangers on the INTERNET like some people. Let's try and spell this out clearly now, some (I suggest yourself included) are implying that Gill, Ferguson et al have sold Manchester United down the river and are continuing to prop up a regime that endangers the future of the club. I think that's an utterly nonsensical conclusion to draw from Ferguson's statements on his happiness with the Glazer takeover. Ferguson is or can be a tosser at times but the man has built the modern Manchester United, had dedicated a huge chunk of his adult life to the club and to cast these sort of aspersions on the man after all he's done for the club is frankly pretty odious. Thankfully, outside the ranks of the "uber red" the other 10 million odd of us are quite happy to judge Ferguson and his commitment to Manchester United based on what we see with our own two eyes rather than twittering on an INTERNET forum from the "in the know" [taps nose]. I see an old man who could be forgiven for walking away from the whole thing long ago bouncing about on the sideline, kicking and heading balls and going spare when we score a late winner. I'm the last £#%&!ing person to give blind loyalty to just about anyone. I can think of a handful of people I either know personally or public figures who I genuinely respect and admire. Alex Ferguson is one of them and you'll not shake that. |
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That said, who are we to judge? If I were in a position where a personal income of several million pounds per annum were at stake, I may myself find such issues, and personal decisions surrounding them, a good deal more difficult. |
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The thrust of any notion that Ferguson had the possibility to stop the takeover with a carefully chosen word or two is a nasty twist to all this if you ask me.
I'm a traditionalist at heart, and so still think politics has no place in football. Even so, Ferguson spoke out during the wranglings of the Murdoch takeover and he got a seriously bad press with friends of Edwards allowing space for strips to be torn off his financial acumen (sp). The more militant elements of United's support (of whom I was an active sympathiser at the time) were more than happy to spin this against Edwards, after all, he wanted to sell the club to the very people whose money was destroying the working class traditions of the game ffs Ferguson, from what I've read, has some pretty impressive contacts (friends) in the business world. He probably can get good advice from people who can do things that the vast majority of even the most clued up people only ever hear about on the grapevine. Of course, he did himself no favours with the whole Coolmore saga, and it's not surprising his chief detractors have spun all manner of stories to take advantage of this clear chink in his public profile. However, suggestions that just 7 years down the line from Murdoch that Ferguson basically had the casting vote on the Glazer takeover seem ridiculous, on the face of it. |
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And there
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I could never even begin consider the idea of one man, no matter who, being bigger than the club. Your affronted indignation is unnecessary - you need merely note that we have a fundamental disagreement on the way we see the club in the first place. Quote:
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*shakes fist at sky* |
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i) The 43 M is due/to from parent account. This is a standard set up for holding companies, as tracks what is given to and taken from a subsidiary. The subsidiary will only keep enough cash on hand as it needs to operate (pay wages, etc.) Excess cash is used by the parent for investment, pay taxes, and repay debt. You'd see cash coming the other way when United had an extraordinary expense such as purchasing Hargreaves/Torres/Defoe/£#%&! all (delete according to your doomlord/gaylord status). The problem is we can't see what the parent has actually paid back nor can we see what the debt currently is. (Nor will we, I suspect.) ii.) See above, it a reduction of excess cash. iii.) Who knows? |
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"Grand conspiracy? Quite the opposite. One of the more credible alternatives to the conspiracy theory worldview is that of the "#@&%! up theory", and I would suggest that this entire business has been one long and entirely avoidable series of #@&%!-ups, one that could have been halted at several different stages. If it hadn't been for Fergie's half-a-horse, if it hadn't been for Coolmore's (in several cases quite justifiable) discontent with the way the claub was being run, if, if, if... to say there was a conspiracy here is to give far too much credit to the protagonists."
I agree with you to a point, there were a series of #@&%! ups that led to the takeover. The main one was Gill, announcing to the world that United had loads of cash and was debt free. That is tantamount to begging for a takeover. United should have always had a sustainable level of debt to as a takeover defense. They lucked out with Murdoch on a legal technicality, and never formulated an takeover defense in the 5-6 years after. I disagree with your assesment of Fergie and Coolmore's role, however. Remeber, Coolmore bought up shares because they were undervalued, and rip e for a takeover. They didn't buy shares because they were mates with Fergie, or wanted to teach him a lesson over that horse. They simply noticed the same thing that Glazer did. If anything, Coolmore delayed the takeover, as their shares were Glazer's last stumbling block. As to whether a negative word from SAF could have derailed the financing, I have have my doubts. The reasoning from that line of thinking is that negative supporter reaction would have made the banks back out. I'd hardly say that Glazer's were warmly welcomed, would you? Perhaps it would have pushed some of the "less involved" supporters to act, but the limited sucess of SU in the years after the Murdoch takeover in getting people involved leads me to doubt it. |
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Well, we've been over this a few times...
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The Glazers were greeted with protests from a vocal minority, and complete indifference from the majority, which is much as it remains. They evidently worked out - rightly - that this need not impede them. If Ferguson had come out against them, that would undoubtedly have changed many, many people's thinking. You only have to look at the esteem in which he was still held by most United fans last summer after three God-awful seasons to see the sway the man has. You only have to look at Celtbion admitting that, to his mind, "if ever one man was bigger than the club" to see it. That is not an uncommon sentiment. But beyond that, it was always all about the money. Ferguson was the channel of the money - the manager who made the money flow for United. If you think the banks would have lent to the Glazers in the face of opposition from Fergie, I can only disagree. And almost all of those hereabouts involved in that line of work would very likely disagree with you too. Fergie was the lynchpin. Fergie represented results, trophies, profits, the backing (or at least the absence of opposition) of the fans. "Who's the guy who makes the money?" is what the lenders would want to know, "and is he on side?" That's why the Glazers themselves were shitting it at the thought he might come out against them. There aren't many things I'd believe them on, but there's no reason to doubt this one. |
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but then I love you and I believe every word you say, so I would say that, wouldn't I? |
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While I think of it,
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http://www.fredtissue.co.uk/news/loa...TMNW&id=332198 It may not be the case. Bose is far from infallible. But then again, it may be. And Fergie's role in introducing the Irish investors to the club is well documented. As his his part in subsequently alienating them at a time when keeping them on side - or at least attempting to do so - might have been a very useful thing. |
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