The Glazer thread

[JSNFRMN_MUFC]

Probably that they will continue to plan a bid and encourage fans to not feel letdown and not to back down next season with the protests. Fans could backlash against them if they call for a boycott. I think that's the wrong route to go down.

[H Stand]

Hmm intersting!
2005 : £42 mill clear profit with millions in cash set aside for the building of the quadrants to extend the stadium.
2010: Reliant on the sale of our best player at a world record fee to ensure we make the same profit

2005: (Pallister,Keane,Bloomquist,Cole.Yorke,Johnson,Par ker,Van Nistlerooy,Stam) to name a few players (international) bought up till then off the top of my head. As well as dealing with Abramovich who had come on the scene.
2010: Free transfers, hasbeens, cheap prospects.

BTW Berbatov was bought with moneys brought in for the sale of Richardson,Shawcross, David Jones and to some degree Saha. Have we had the promised Glazer 30 million a year transfer fund, don't think so!

2005: My season ticket was £550, cup games optional
2010: My season ticket £930 plus aprrox 10X £49 cup games as part of the automatic cup scheme.
OT full ? You couldn't have been there for the Leagure Cup and eaaly Cl games where there were 20,000 empty seats, more to come next year methinks.

2000-2005 2 Premierships, 1 FA Cup, 1 World Club Championship
2005-2010 3 Premierships, 1 CL, 3 League Cups, 1 Club Championship
Not bad when Fergie had taken his eye off the ball when dealing with the Irish horse race breeders.

[Inventive]

A sorry state of affairs

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/10237268.stm


Manchester United's owners are £1.1bn in debt - £400m more than previously known - after borrowing extensively against their shopping mall business.


BBC Panorama has found evidence that the Glazer family's debt levels may threaten their hold on the club.


A spokesman for the American family has said it holds more than £2bn in assets.


But the extent of the debt owed by the Glazers is likely to fuel a continuing revolt by some supporters, who oppose their ownership of the club.

Green and gold
Details of the financial arrangements of the owners also come at a time when the sport's governing bodies are facing questions about Premier League debts that have reached a combined total of £3.4bn and the growing popularity of leveraged buyouts in English clubs.


Mortgage documents seen by the BBC show that the Glazers have borrowed £388m ($570m) against shopping malls and £66m ($95m) against their American National Football League team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

In addition to their mortgages in the US, a portion of the Glazer family's £700m Manchester United debt will soon see them charged interest at a rate of 16.25%.

Fans fear that, despite the club's record of success on the pitch, the Glazers' leveraged buy-out of United has saddled the club with debt and that may mean that there is no spare money in the future to buy a new generation of star players.


Disappointed fans have launched the "green and gold" campaign that resurrects the original team colours in protest over the Glazers' ownership.


Their numbers have reached 158,000 and former United star David Beckham has signalled his support.


They point to the £80m sale of star striker Cristiano Ronaldo last year and note that he has not been replaced by a player of similar quality. Yet ticket prices have gone up by more than a third.

The club's management denies any lack of commitment to buying new talent and says that cash is available for Sir Alex Ferguson to buy players.
A spokesman for the Glazers confirmed that the family does have debts of at least a £1bn, but added they have assets worth more than double that.

Negative equity
City analyst Andy Green, 37, is the disgruntled Manchester United supporter who first uncovered the extent of the Glazers' debts.
Mr Green said: "They borrowed more money at inflated valuations right at the top of the cycle.

"These are people who tell us not to worry about Manchester United debt because they are great businessmen. In their core business in the US they got it absolutely wrong."
The debt levels at the club are also drawing the attention of other prominent football figures.

Dave Whelan, Chairman of Wigan Athletic, told Panorama: "I don't think anybody can be satisfied with how Manchester United are being run... they have got somewhere in the order of three-quarters of a billion pounds worth of debt. That has got to be eliminated and eliminated quickly."

The Glazer family's main assets are the shopping centre business in America, First Allied Corporation, along with Manchester United and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

First Allied is a private business and its accounts are not publicly available. But Mr Green discovered that the Glazers' shopping mall mortgages had been bundled with other loans as Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities.

Those bundles are publicly traded and therefore require the Glazers to provide detailed information on all the mortgages, which are then publicly available in the US.
Mr Green found mortgages - confirmed by the BBC - on 63 of 64 First Allied shopping centres, totalling £388m ($570m).

Most of those were taken out with Lehman Brothers before the US investment banking giant went bankrupt, triggering the global banking crisis in 2008.
'Watch list'

While Lehmans collapsed, the Glazers' mortgage debt lived on and many of those shopping centres are not generating enough income to keep up with interest payments.
With falling commercial property values, many are also now in negative equity.

Banks have put 28 of the shopping centres on a watch list, meaning they are worried about the loans.

Four shopping centres - one each in Ohio, New Mexico, Texas and Georgia - have already gone bankrupt.

When they bought Manchester United in 2005, the Glazer family borrowed £500m and paid the remaining £272 million in cash.

Mr Green found that the Glazers had remortgaged 25 of their shopping centres in the six months before the takeover.

He believes the family borrowed against their US properties to pay for United: "At the time when they had to present a huge amount of cash over here in the UK they borrowed a huge amount of extra money in the US and publicly they didn't buy anything else that year."

A spokesman for the family did not respond to questions about the mortgages taken out by First Allied.

But with properties now worth £378m ($555m) but mortgages valued at £388m ($570m), the shopping mall company now appears to be worth next to nothing.

'Commercial expertise'

That financial picture has analyst Mr Green questioning how the Glazers will service their £1.1bn debt.

Fans are wearing green and gold in protest over the Glazers' ownership

United chief executive, David Gill, has said: "We're very confident the business model we have in place will ensure the club can continue to compete at the top of football for many years to come.
"The owners have been true to their word since they took over the club in 2005. They've brought commercial expertise and commercial benefit to us in a numbers of areas, and we've seen our revenues grow significantly."

The Glazers' most troublesome debts are held by Red Football, the parent company that owns Manchester United.

They are payment in kind loans, or PIKs, worth £200m and the interest owing on them will soon rise to 16.25%.

Mr Gill told the BBC in January: "We don't worry about the PIK repayment. That's nothing to with the club."

A spokesman for Manchester United told the BBC last week that the club stands behind Mr Gill's assertion that the debts will be repaid without involving the club.

But sources close to the Glazers have confirmed that Red Football will use cash from Manchester United to pay off the PIKs in the future. The Glazers are said to be "comfortable" with the PIKs.
The situation at Manchester United reflects the wider issue within the Premier League, where clubs like Liverpool and West Ham are struggling with huge debts and FA Cup finalists Portsmouth barely staved off bankruptcy.

Both the Premier League and the FA declined requests for interviews on the subject of debt in football.
Panorama: Man United - Into the Red, BBC One, Tuesday, 8 June at 2235BST and then available on the BBC iPlayer .

[g@mb!t]

Cant they just sell up and get lost , getting irritating tbh

and Media is jus dying to prove that we have no cash!!

[dalegute]

Glazers as well as the rest of the world has experienced the full effect of a global economic crisis.
- Impossible to know the truth and see the full size (big or small) of the problem. Would other owners
not feel the crisis. If we had filthy rich owners like CIty and Chelsea probably not, but do we want to
be like them?

Media will always spin it "their" way.
- Stupid to believe even half of what they put out there.

Green and Gold campaign hates glazers.
- Stupid to put the blame on the glazers with out knowing the full story.
G&G believe everything they write that reflects negatively on Glazers.
Do we believe everything they write about the transfer market and possible summer signings?

David Gill's job is to sell the "United" brand and captain the ship to Utd's benefit, not ours. He has said a
couple of strange things lately. The same can be said about SAF.
- We should keep in mind what would happen to Man Utd's value if both Gill and SAF poured
gazoline on the fire. Don't rant them for making the best of a bad situation.

I'm not saying I support the Glazers I'm just saying that the only hard evidence, and what is making
fans cry out for a change, is Utd recently not signing "big names".

We lost the PL crown to bad luck, bad play, shit loads of injuries and a bad (read: corrupt) ref. Would we be this angered by the situation if
Robben's shot hit the outside of the post and both controversial chelsea goals last seasons were disallowed? Or if 90% our defense was made
of cold hard metal and not porcelain? I think not.

I prefer to use my energy to support the players and help their game and let the financial side of things sort them self out. The fact is that the value of United by far exceeds the amount of debt, even if you include the Shopping Mall Business debt. And if things were as bad as they seem Glazers would sell in a heartbeat and still make money of it. They will not willingly go bankrupt...

[H Stand]

In the words of dear old David Gill, "debt is the road to ruin" and boy are we a long way down that road !!

If we have spent even a quater of the 80 million we got for Ronaldo we would probably have won the Premiership last year

[JSNFRMN_MUFC]

The problem here is there's 2 sides to the story, we've only got 1. But this is worrying. Should be interesting to hear what the Glazers and Gill have to say about this. Unfortunately i'm going to miss the programme tonight as i'm off to the cinema.

Luckily, there's a BBC iPlayer

[g@mb!t]

we also lacked the goals in the important games tbh, the Blackburn game springs to mind...we did good even when we were missing defenders tbh!

[JSNFRMN_MUFC]

BBC1 8:30-9:00. I won tickets to see a documentary on my dad's favourite band, they're called Rush. It's his very late birthday present.

[worriedturkey]

going off the thread for a sec.....the reason we lost the title was the second match....losing to burnley away....that was a disgrace!

[JSNFRMN_MUFC]

I said even before the fixtures were announced that we'd lose to Burnley and then it was announced it was the 2nd game and then I really started thinking we'd lose it. Always struggle at the start of the season and Burnley looked a really hard side to play in the Carling Cup the season before. If we'd played Burnley a few games later we would have won but that's the way it goes. Lets not dwell on single games anyway. You could say this about games drawn too. "If only we hadn't drawn there and there and lost there", it goes on and on until you've got no more games left and you think we should have won every single game. Onwards and upwards. We weren't good enough overall, and still managed to pick up 2nd and surely that's a worry for other title contenders.

[worriedturkey]

fair point...but what annoyed me and my daughter that night was not getting beat...as she said as we came out of the ground its a)the way we got beat...and b)how we readily accepted it..it then didn't bode well for the rest of the season..but then again we lost the premiership by one point....I'm sure none of the other 90 clubs would like to be in that position would they...........especially city

[g@mb!t]

Owen was not exactly injury prone actually, Newcastle so desperately neede him that they let him recover fully from his injuries so he kept picking up knocks and minor injuries again and again, hence the label injury prone, and if it wasnt for the crappy pitch at Wembley he'd have been around till the end of the season 'm sure...

[H Stand]

Should have made OT the National Stadium, that's would have helped with the debt

Maybe it's perception rather than reality but every time Owen did something he got injured again. Remember him hobbling off at OT a few times

[JSNFRMN_MUFC]

Back to the Panorama show, it's now on tonight at 10:35. Last night's Panorama they showed a special on the Cumbria shootings last week. If you've joined MUST you've probably just got an email about tonight's programme.

[S.E.Arising]

Will you able to watch tonight, Jason? Could be grim watching tonight.

[JSNFRMN_MUFC]

Yes i'll be watching. Shame it wasn't on earlier to give it more publicity. I'm back on the anti glazer trail by the way. I've come off that fence and jumped back in and will probably now stay there. Not a fan of the Red Knights though, they're just as bad as the Glazers.

[S.E.Arising]

what has tipped you off the fence?

[JSNFRMN_MUFC]

I've just been reading a few things, trying to understand what's going on a bit more. I think before I was "sitting on the fence" because I wasn't too keen on the Red Knights, but they seem to be disintegrating anyway. I'm not bothered about the Glazers staying there if they control their debts a better and start investing more in the club than taking money out. I'm not so Anti that I want them dead, it's not a hate thing, or a personal thing, it's anti how they run the club. And if protesting helps change their stance on a few things then all's good.

[JSNFRMN_MUFC]

Panorama was terrible. Big disappointment. I feel less against the Red Knights now though. Surprised they showed and said where Glazer lives. Not a very sensible move really. Anyone fancy a trip to Palm Beach?

[JSNFRMN_MUFC]

Very interesting article in my opinion.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/markets/a ... enefits.do

[JSNFRMN_MUFC]

Did someone say Boycott? If this is true then this should really worry them.

Read the full article here: http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news...medium=twitter

Fan power could force Manchester United’s owners to the negotiating table over the sale of the club after it was revealed that the Reds have only sold 18,000 season tickets for next season.

The Red Knight consortium hoping to buy the club from the Glazer family that have saddled United with debts of more than £700million during five years of ownership have been frustrated by the Americans’ refusal to talk.

That has prompted some more militant supporters to call for a boycott of the club – and thousands of rank-and-file fans seem to have joined the crusade with just four days left to renew season tickets.

Sources close to fan groups have been told that less than less than a third of last season’s 56,000 season ticket holders have bought seats for the new campaign.

[JSNFRMN_MUFC]

If it is just 18,000 and they expect fans to buy them before Friday, they are clearly delusional. Don't agree with boycotting games but boycotting other things such as merch and food and drink is definitely something that needs to be done, we need to continue to support the team. While also making our feeling known.

[g@mb!t]

If it is just 18,000 and they expect fans to buy them before Friday, they are clearly delusional. Don't agree with boycotting games but boycotting other things such as merch and food and drink is definitely something that needs to be done, we need to continue to support the team. While also making our feeling known.

why Friday?? and i agree not turning up at the stadium can affect the players

[JSNFRMN_MUFC]

Friday is the deadline to buy season tickets...read the article.