European Super league

They should play the game now and not tell anybody. Then put it on Sky on Tuesday as 'Live'.

 

What is it with Manchester United fans and flares?

 

What you actually mean 'Good on em, making a stand for what MUST believe in'. As a supporters trust they have fallen into that same trap Trade Unions end up doing and that's, in theory, they are great ideas but then those operating it get a taste of power and it becomes about them protecting that power and trying to grab more.

Since day 1 they have been misrepresenting things to stoke up hatred, they weaponised the average fans emotions and the fact that most people have no understanding of business finances which are most of the time vastly different to personal finances for their own goals. The whole Red Knights thing highlighted that as they threw their support behind a group who if you looked at their proposal said

• Would keep the current Debt
• Were looking to raise £800mill with the rest coming from more debt loaded onto the club (They were talking the club being worth £1bn so that would be £200mill more, but experts and even some of those involved were saying it would probably take £1.5bn so that £700mill more debt)
• Were looking to make dividend payments from Year 1 (The Glazers at that point weren't, they didn't start paying dividends until the interest payments fell to around £12mill)
• Were boasting that they were turning down anyone worth over £100mill because they "do not want to have a new Glazer"
• Were requiring a stake of £20mill. With the previous point that means they were having to invest at best 20% of their net worth and for many way more than that. Those kinds of figures are ones where even if their intentions were aimed to be good it can't stay like that, they need a return and a good one or they find themselves getting in a financial hole so they would have no choice but to put business first
• That they were using Randy Lerner as an example of how to run a football club (Hey any Villa fans out there, Lerner was a great owner wasn't he? Wait whats that, he starved the club of transfer funds, sacked managers left right and centre, had them battling for relegation most seasons and eventually did, all while recording some of the biggest losses year after year in the PL)

So why were MUST backing it and telling everyone it was a great thing for the club. That would be the Golden Share MUST were offered to back the move. This wasn't a full on Golden Share where MUST could have a say on anything related to the club. For example, they couldn't have a say on things like

• Joining an ESL
• Moving away from OT
• Moving the club to another region of the country or even another country

It was the EFL kind of golden share that would allow them to block any sale


Now I'm not saying the Glazers are perfect owners, there are issues for sure and it needs a proper discussion BUT MUST have muddied the waters so much that you can't have that. Again look at the 'Cost of the Glazers' figure that is always bandied about and which MUST tell fans 'This could have been used on buying players'. So much of what they put into this figure is non-cash costs, being non-cash that costs the club nothing in reality, its accountancy techniques are legal and actually REDUCE tax liability so save money. And they totally ignore the fact that money was going out of the club as a PLC in the form of dividends

• There were 260,000,000 shared on the market
• In 2003 they paid out a total of 13.57million in dividends (That more than the Glazers have been paying out and also more than the current interest payments)
• They were pretty consistent in paying out Dividends in the region of 8% of turnover in the years previous and the years up to the Glazer takeover
• In 2019 Turnover was £711.5million, at 8% that would have seen Dividends north of £57million.
• In total over the time of the time of the Glazers you would have been looking at Dividends of around £500mill in total being paid
• Dividends get paid After-tax so provide no Tax Shield. Interest is paid pretax that's saved between 19% and 21% of the interest payment each year in tax
• That's before the non-cash deductions that related to the takeover and hence the PLC couldn't have used that to provide further tax savings.
• And yes Dividends don't have to be paid but they hadn't not paid dividends once since floating and even when large expenses such as a number of big transfer fee's were paid and the stadium and training ground were redeveloped they still paid them. The only year that wasn't paid was the final year of the PLC and that's because the Glazers having now taken over declined to take them

The reality is the cost of the Glazers is within the same ballpark as the cost the PLC would have incurred across the same period. It was higher in the early years before the first few refinances but by about 2010 it had swung the other way with the further refinancing of the debt. Even with Dividends being paid now they are being paid out at a much lower rate currently than the PLC paid them out so Intrest and Dividends are over £30mill less than the PLC level of Dividends would have been (And the other benefit is way too many people as the PLC had to be informed beforehand of transfers, we got gazumped way too many times because of that as it leaked exactly what we were offering, Chelsea nipped in and offered clubs more for players United were just finalising player terms when they got their money because of this. I believe right now even though the clubs floated again the structure of the shares means only the Glazers have to be informed of large outlays so it's easier to do deals without one of the oil clubs gazumping us at the last minute)

And that really is what annoys me, the masses have made up their mind based on propaganda from MUST. You can't have a serious discussion on the Glazers and who could be better owners. Most United fans would be happy letting the Saudi Royal Family buy the club and use it to sportswash themselves when we should all be getting behind the idea of lining them all up against a wall and stoning them and then chopping them up into little pieces and disposing of them in bags like they do to their own citizens but no most would welcome their disgusting human right abusing arses into the club even if it means going from being a team who this season has SEVEN academy players who have played more than 10 games to most likely being like City who despite all the money thrown at their youth sides have had TWO academy graduates you could label a success since the Sheiks came in (Foden and Iheanacho, and Iheanacho was hardly the worlds biggest success at City and they disposed of him pretty quickly). And that leads to Anger which is what see's people acting like complete thugs like a number of those yesterday were

 

See this highlights my problem with the crap MUST have managed to spout.

• Somehow they have come to the figure £118million in 2009 in interests when the highest was sin the first year at £60mill (with tax shield in real term £47mill) By 2009 they had already refinanced multiple times. In 2009it was £33mill (or £26m in real terms). They are clearly throwing in non-cash elements into the debt servicing costs and calling it interests
• They have pushed this idea that somehow the company is due share money, not the shareholders. They also ignore that from the initial float the Glazer gave the club £100mill of it when they didn't have to.
• They include director and consulting fee's as an unusual cost when every club has those as they are standard business costs for the directors of the service render
• They bring up the Ronaldo fee being used to pay down the debt but they didn't pay any of the debt down for FOUR SEASONS after the sale and the Cash in the bank just kept rising when interests rates were basically zero so it was actually losing value (was £150mill in the bank when some of the debt was paid down in 12/13). United tried buying players but they largely choose other countries, mainly the Spanish clubs. Fergie seemed to be the one who preferred to not go for a big name if they weren't his first choice. The season they did pay some of it down was the season we signed RvP (And the season before they spent a lot of DDG) and even then the cash in bank was MORE than the Ronaldo money. I'll give them Obertan was rubbish but Valencia was an immense player for us who went on to win United Player of the year, the players player twice and included in the PFA Team of the year. If he had gone to Real who where supposedly his other option everyone would have been complaining we didn't get him.
• They have confused people about Director Loans. When a business has cash in bank they will sometimes give out loans at a rate lower than what the people getting the loan could get on the open market but higher than the bank interest rate which is then paid back by the directors. It's win/win for both parties, the club make money just sitting there work and the director gets to use the loan to make more money at a lower interest rate. Special dividends are different to that and are not linked to the loan, sure you could make the argument it was used to give them the money to repay it but seeing as special dividends go to all shareholders and the director loan was given to Darcie not the Glazers as a whole that hardly makes sense. Also, special dividends are actually paid most years and many companies pay them (United as a PLC did too) and just means its a dividend paid off-cycle, usually halfway through the financial year. Without it most likely the EOY dividend would be higher
• Also implying that somehow United are the only club to pay a dividend seems disingenuous. They may not call it a dividend mainly because most of them aren't publically listed but they are getting payments still on top of director fees and consultancy fees. I believe Kronke at Arsenal gets a bonus linked to the financial success of Arsenal