Just regarding Knighton bid.Thick as pig shit mate. It’s one of the biggest myths in football that United’s success under Ferguson came about because they “lived within their means”. They finished mid-table in 1988/89 then in the summer of 1989 spent almost as much as their entire turnover the previous season on new players in what was, at the time, the most unprecedented spending spree in British football history. They managed to do this despite winning fuck-all the previous season, having an average attendance that was way down on the season before (back in the days when gate money accounted for a far bigger percentage of a club’s revenue), and at the time were millions in debt and losing money every week. Yet some fuckwits who support them say they’ve only ever achieved success by spending self-generated cash. If United was such a cash cow back then, it begs the question as to why Edwards was so desperate to offload the club onto Michael Knighton for a modest fee.
That unprecedented spending spree was the springboard for United’s subsequent success but even with that they needed boyhood City fan Mark Robins to save Ferguson’s bacon (pardon the pun) before he’d even won a single trophy for them. Without his intervention, the next 25 years for United may well have looked a lot different.
Let’s also not forget that without the investment of John Henry Davies and James Gibson, along with City coming to their rescue in getting Manchester Central booted out of the league and ultimately out of business, United may well have gone bust long before Busby rocked up there as manager, let alone Ferguson. The cunts who bang on about City’s spending while at the same time airbrushing these significant moments from United’s history deserve to have “We’ll buy your club and we’ll burn it down” sang to them every day for the rest of their sad, pathetic lives.
I can’t remember the value of the offer off the top of my head, but the offer was for not just the players, but the rest of the staff, the ground, any other buildings, and the foreseeable value looking a few years ahead.
The value of their outlay on players, just over a year later came reasonably close to the Knighton offer value.
So , United spent , just a year after the valuation of the entire enterprise for sale, almost the same amount on (iirc) about 7-8 new players. (Not forgetting the wages of existing players , staff, buildings costs etc).
It was an unprecedented ratio of spend vs enterprise value. Organic my arse.
Edit: as per another post, Knighton bid was for just over 50%, so they spent on new players next year about 40% of the club entire valuation
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