It is so much bigger than just throwing a few bob at players. It has been well documented for years now that the Glazers do not put money in. The club has been servicing the debt they saddled it with when they ‘‘bought’’ the club and those debt repayments have been increasing in recent years. The club is seeing record revenue disappear into their growing debt blackhole. Debts are over 500 million pounds and unpaid transfer feeds add on another 300 million (recent spending sprees are catching up, they will run afoul of FFP if they are not careful). A big driver behind their spiraling debt is also their wage bill, which is going to have to be addressed at some point. This trend of offering 300 - 400k per week is increasingly unsustainable.
Both Carrington and Old Trafford are in desperate need of reinvestment as well, the Glazers having done nothing to enhance them during their tenure as owners. Ignoring Spurs’ new super stadium, contrast what FSG has done with Anfield and what City has done with their entire Etihad ‘‘campus’’ (two stadium expansions with an ambitious one planned to boost capacity to 70,000; a new training facility and they’re even going to tack on a leisure complex with a 23,000 seat arena to host other events). All of United’s stadium plans ground to a halt when the Glazers came in, and not only that, they have neglected it.
The club is falling behind City, Liverpool, Spurs and Arsenal in terms of infrastructure (one of the points Ronaldo criticised them on) and it does not have the financial means to improve.
I told him not to worry, ETH will solve all these problems…
It always boggles my mind when United fans say this. None of the club owners put their own money in, bar oil clubs, and United are not yet an oil club (though they seem to be desperately hoping to be). All owners end up taking more money out of the club than putting in. Thats how business works. You invest because you hope to make a profit. This romantic notion that owners should just spend billions on clubs without expecting any returns is something I’d expect from school kids, not working, thinking adults.
I have a close friend who is a die-hard Man United fan but pretty inconsistent when it comes to Glazers. He was defending them while Ferguson was winning everything and they were funding some huge transfers for him.
They’ve essentially turned Man United into highest spending club in PL since his departure but he casually supports the Norwich scarves movement and all that because they don’t consistently outspend the likes of Man City and Real Madrid, which is what a lot of their fans want them to be like.
I have no problem with their approach to transfer market, as long as there are more Pogbas and Freds than Fernadeses and Casemiros in their deals!
They’re a perfect example at the top of football (top club, but for a while now not a top side) how not everything is perfectly aligned in comparison to net spend. You can spend loads of money and make shitty moves, buy the wrong players, make the wrong combinations on the pitch.
Greenwood’s coming back for pre-season training (reportedly via Twitter land!) - United really should have fucked him off - but I guess its no surprise he’s being backed by United. They did the same for their other previous pervs.
If he proves to be good enough to stay and his behaviour is good, then I guess he will be part of 4-5 players to compete off the sides. Say, Rashford off the left (but able to do a job up top) with Sancho being backup, able to play on both sides. Antony and Greenwood off the right. Garnacho also in the mix.
United have made no official comment on the Greenwood situation for a long while - they didn’t terminate his contract etc when it first happened. Then all charges are dropped and they’ve started their own internal investigations, and in Feb Erik made comments along the lines of what he’s good at (scoring) etc, and that until the investigations are done nothing can be confirmed.
Whether or not it’s real (the twitter reporting), my gut feeling is he’ll be continuing his career in footy, likely at United. If they were worried about their reputation, I’m sure there would have been enough in his contract to terminat it - yet they didn’t. That to me is pretty telling.
Don’t agree here. The recordings and images are pretty fucking damning, whether he faced charges or not. What’s more likely happening is United looking for a way out of their contract with the little shitbag where they don’t have to pay him anything.
Might be more complicated now that CPS dropped the charges, but i can’t imagine their PR folks would allow them to just integrate him back into the team like nothing’s happened.
