United Thread - 2023/24

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1961_vintage said:
Perfect. Their bought-and-paid-for client media (BBC, Sky, Winter etc etc) will fall in line, their global fuckwit followers will believe it to be true, nothing will change as they wallow in their rag bubble of delusion, and they will continue to sink into irrelevance and obscurity as the football world moves on beyond them.
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"rag bubble of delusion"

Nice one mate :)
 
Bluearmy said:
It must be worrying for them. He was detached from reality during that sky interview. Lost all sense of logic and reason. I know they’ve had a bad result but you need more resolve than that at the top level. They have employed an unhinged individual, gone by March/April imo!!
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He’s a desperate man who today turned into a mard arse, I thought he might be better than that but no he’s just another in the long line of “pep wannabes” who is completely devoid of his own original ideas - we are so lucky to have the authentic original absolute fucking genius that is Pep
 
Fred_Quimby said:
You are absolutely correct in blaming senior management BUT who employed them? An unpopular statement I know but the Glazers put this senior management in place and if they are sh1t, which they are, then they are to blame. The buck stops at the top.
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If you’ve ever worked for vulture capitalists this is how it normally goes. They arrogantly mis-understand the business, load it with debt, stop spending on value add & infrastructure & eventually sell for a profit which has had nothing to do with their senior management initiatives.

So if the Glazers eventually get $10b for the club it’s got nothing to do with how the club & execs have run it.

It’s like buying the best house on the best street, spending on shite modernisations making it the worst house but one day selling for more due to inflation & external property boom.
 
SebastianBlue said:
Unfortunately, I still disagree.

Could the Glazers have affected some change? Sure. And they have by all accounts attempted to do so. Do they share some of the blame? Of course. Making the club a publicly traded interest alone was a major mistake that they are still struggling to manage now, beyond their extractive practices.

As I said in my OP, they are bad owners, both for the Rags and for the league.

But the main drivers of the truly breathtaking level of shiteness United now embody are beyond them.

There has been politics being played throughout their tenure, including at the executive level within the club, with dealing and rivalries, many of which they have not been able stop.

And the structure of the club itself is dysfunctional and, in some areas, outright toxic. That was the case before they arrived, and to fix that requires a complete restructuring (and rebuilding). Much of the persistence of those situations has been down the supporter pressures not allowing them to actually take steps toward that.

All of that in mind, I have to reiterate my overarching point: new owners are not going to get United back to anywhere near their level when Ferguson was in charge, not in the near term, anyway.

The club needs to be razed to the foundations and rebuilt. And the fans will never allow that.

And Ferguson should carry much of the blame for all of this, as well, as his caring more about his legacy than succession planning planted the seed for the immense dysfunction to come (and his management style had already created a morass in his final years).

To your point of them being clueless, I also disagree. I think they have always known exactly what they were doing. They saw this dysfunction in pre-acquisition discovery. But they also saw the massive opportunity for value extraction. And they executed on a plan for maximum extraction via leveraged buyout and continual debt financing. Eventually, they’ll sell the club once the well runs dry for tidy profit and move on to their next entertainment venture, bank-rolled largely by another bank.

They aren’t clueless, they are just bad football owners based on what football fans want for their clubs.

TL;DR

New owners will not save United.
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Our new owners didn’t just come in & spend money, they chose the best executive team, created a culture, set the vision & have delivered. We started n a far lower base than what they did, a base so low that noone believed it was possible achieve.
 
cheekybids said:
Our new owners didn’t just come in & spend money, they chose the best executive team, created a culture, set the vision & have delivered. We started n a far lower base than what they did, a base so low that noone believed it was possible achieve.
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Completely agree.

And much of that was not possible at United when the Glazers took over, even if United were technically in a better overall position at the time, as I have explained in a few posts. And that wasn’t their aim, anyway.

As I have said, our owners had very different aims to the ones the Glazers had when they took over United.

The seeds of United’s decline predate them buying the club and the outward appearance was quite misleading.

Our owners identified an arguably unique opportunity to buy a club in the best league in the world crying out for complete overhaul, from top to bottom, supported by almost every stakeholder. It was a massive undertaking, but the path was there for astute and intelligent management, which they thankfully have been since day one. They have done a truly astounding job.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t rightly point out that they did not face the same restraints that the Glazers did, especially when it comes to a far too powerful manager wielding outsized control over the club.

Or that they weren’t even trying to extract value from the club, as the Glazers were from the start.
 
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SebastianBlue said:
Completely agree.

And much of that was not possible at United when the Glazers took over, as I have explained in a few posts. And that wasn’t their aim, anyway.

As I have said, our owners had very different aims to the ones the Glazers had when they took over United.
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It was possible but how they viewed future success was different. The Glazers saw the best club in the world & nothing could challenge them & if they do they’ll lobby behind the scenes & weaken them.

Khaldoon et al viewed that football hasn’t explored a fraction of its opportunities & compared to business is run like an amateur organisation.
 
cheekybids said:
It was possible but how they viewed future success was different. The Glazers saw the best club in the world & nothing could challenge them & if they do they’ll lobby behind the scenes & weaken them.

Khaldoon et al viewed that football hasn’t explored a fraction of its opportunities & compared to business is run like an amateur organisation.
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Yep. I edited my post to expand my original response. Though, not fast enough to beat your reply!

I reckon we generally agree.

I just think people attribute far more power (and intent) to the Glazers to change things then was actually the case when they took over. They saw the club as a cash cow—everything else was run to maintain comercial revenue. They only wanted United to be as successful as necessary to maintain the value extraction, which included appreciation in overall valuation. That was the plan from beginning.

And many let Ferguson off the hook for absolutely fucking the club with his hubris, selfishness, and ineptitude away from the pitch (literally: apart from short term player management and tactics, he was actually very problematic, even when it came to normal duties of a football manager, much less his extra role in influencing management of the club itself). He only ever cared about his control and his legacy, and he made decision after decision to protect that, rather than the club.

And we are seeing the fruits of that labour now.
 
SebastianBlue said:
Yep. I edited my post to expand my original response. Though, not fast enough to beat your reply!

I reckon we generally agree.

I just think people attribute far more power (and intent) to the Glazers to change things then was actually the case when they took over. They saw the club as a cash cow—everything else was run to maintain comercial revenue. They only wanted United to be as successful as necessary to maintain the value extraction, which included appreciation in overall valuation. That was the plan from beginning.

And many let Ferguson off the hook for absolutely fucking the club with his hubris, selfishness, and ineptitude away from the pitch (literally: apart from short term player management and tactics, he was actually very problematic, even when it came to normal duties of a football manager, much less his extra role in influencing management of the club itself). He only ever cared about his control and his legacy, and he made decision after decision to protect that, rather than the club.

And we are seeing the fruits of that labour now.
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They’d have probably been in a better position for a new owner if owned by Mike Ashley as they wouldn’t have wasted £1b….
 
cheekybids said:
Our new owners didn’t just come in & spend money, they chose the best executive team, created a culture, set the vision & have delivered. We started n a far lower base than what they did, a base so low that noone believed it was possible achieve.
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Plus they had a clean sheet with no baggage. There was no "the City Way" there is no "istory" no knights of the realm stinking the place out. The owners could, and did, start from afresh and create what there is today, and will continue to evolve. This is due to having a management team that has vision and are not hamstrung by "istory". Long may it last.
 
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