Richard Arnold secretly filmed whilst speaking to protesters

Sideshow Bob

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Disgusting act by the fans.

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A real scummy move by the fans recording him. But pretty naive from Arnold to speak so candidly about club matters - this could genuinely get him sacked. Although I haven’t read/watched all videos with everything he said.

Fair play to him speaking to fans but this wasn’t the best forum to do it.
 
It does seem naive but then also I think that it is actually good PR for the club. I mean he's been pretty honest and he's taken the time to speak to the "ordinary" man. I think that's a good thing for United because I do think there has been a real disconnect with the fans.
 
Nothing wrong in what he said. If he gets sacked for that then gawd help us. At last we hear a bit of truth
 
It does seem naive but then also I think that it is actually good PR for the club. I mean he's been pretty honest and he's taken the time to speak to the "ordinary" man. I think that's a good thing for United because I do think there has been a real disconnect with the fans.
Yeah fair play to him getting out there and speaking frankly. Like I said I haven’t seen exactly what he said but if he was discussing the ins and outs of our transfer budget, then might not look good on him.

Absolute oxygen thieves recording him after he came out and chatted to them though.
 
I think he knew he was likely to be filmed/recorded he isn’t that stupid.

Fair play to him for going down to meet them and answer their questions it’s a much better approach then the previous regime has which was to hide away from the fans. .
 
Fair play to him. Spoke really well came across as a fan and doesn't want to play IRL football manager like Woodward.

Also confirmed that the players causing issues in the dressing room have left. So we can drop the idea it was Maguire, Ronaldo of Bruno.
 
Entitled pricks the lot of them, and no doubt got a small army of likeminded morons championing them on Twitter and Facebook.
 
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Also confirmed that the players causing issues in the dressing room have left. So we can drop the idea it was Maguire, Ronaldo of Bruno.

Personally, I would take any quotes that were not recorded with a pinch of salt. A member of Red Issue, who was in attendance claims the leak quotes are fake. I highly doubt Arnold’s alleged response is genuine:

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Grumpy, Dopey, Doc, Happy, Bashful, Sneezy and Sleepy looking dead pleased with themselves ....


FVj-B5-E-WIAEFspj.jpg
 
I think this is tremendous I really do. Arnold has taken the time to go and meet some fans who were going to show up at his home. He's bought them a drink and he's sat with them and talked to them about where he wants to take the club etc. He's been honest (or as honest as he really can be) and he's tried to give the fans there a different side of things. To try and get the fans to see things a little from internally within the club.
 
It's the most positive thing that's happened in years. To know there is someone like us there.
 
It comes across so well that the cynic in me wonders if it was a planned PR move by the club/Arnold.
 
I don’t think he named the people who were leaking according to others he just said the people responsible are no longer at the club.

I don’t think going to his house is on as it has nothing to do with his family but with our owners being 1,000s of miles away and not being willing to engage at all he is left as the only realistic target.
 
It comes across so well that the cynic in me wonders if it was a planned PR move by the club/Arnold.
Oh for sure yeah. I mean there has to be a level of control to this? The club trying to repair their reputation with the fans and I mean that's a risky situation for Arnold really. Those fans could have done anything to him.
 
Don't know which makes you dumber, thinking it's okay to mob up, go to somebodies house and demand answers, or that it was staged.
 
It wasn’t staged but you wonder who let the cat out of the bag was there a word to say either come meet us at the pub or we will stage a protest outside your house leaving him with little choice.

These are the same people who staged a protest at the training ground towards the end of last season it was pretty calm I don’t think these guys are the sort who would go there and start threatening his family or causing damage had they gone to his house. Still if you have your kids there you would rather keep them away from the hassle that comes with your job.

Arnold came across well having open lines of communication between the club and the fans group will help a lot.
 
RA missed a trick there, if I knew I was gonna be filmed i'd have put a couple of rolled up socks down my briefs to give them something to talk about, maybe he didn't need to, haven't given it much thought ....
 
Sounds like he wasn’t told that they were recording him but he assumed he was being recorded.
 
Not sure, though he seemed happy enough to have his photo taken with the main group in what I presume was the smoking area.
 
Fans have been complaining about the lack of board engagement for a long time now and rightly so. Yet the first time some fans get the chance they record the CEO on the sly and that'll be that.
 
It was one fan who recorded and released video's according to twitter he's been told he's no longer part of the fan group who organised this protest and the recent ones at the ground/training ground.

Hopefully this doesn't result in the club pulling up the barriers to the fans again they must realise they have got a lot of work to do to get the fans back onside.

Would be nice if the media used the correct language when they talk about our owners and the spending. For example this morning I've heard 3 different pundits/presenters say our owners have "invested" £1bn into the club. They haven't invested 1p the club has spent it's own money and spent it terribly it has not come from the Glazers pockets in the way of investment in fact quite the opposite has happened with money being taken out of the club to pay dividends/loans as a cost of their ownership.

There is also this idea that these fans are protesting because they want the club to spend money which isn't the case they are protesting because they want these owners out of the club because they are parasites.
 
I get your semantics, but I slightly disagree, they have invested that, if they had taken the 1b out in dividends and put it back in they would be investing their money.

The problem with the Glazers is not a simple one, it's the loan not paid back, it's the not understanding football and fans. It's investing the money in the squad badly, settling for top four, lack of ambition. No investment in facilities.

Lets not forget, unitd have hated pretty much all chairmen and owners. Edwards got a lot of grief, and looking back, thank got he didn't listen and stuck by Ferguson.

If the Glazers/Arnold get this right, get the club winning, find the investment for the ground and training, all will soon be forgotten. It's last chance saloon for them, and in appointing Arnold, and now hearing him, I'm positive about their ambition.
 
I think when fans talk about investment they really mean when owners put money into the club or people buy into the club to generate additional money that the club can use to fund projects be that stadium, training ground or players. Our owners didn't even invest their own money to buy the club apart from their initial share purchases.

The loans will always be a problem to me we've paid for the privilege of their ownership yes under the plc we paid out dividends to shareholders but the difference was the money raised from selling those shares helped rebuild the stadium into the biggest club stadium in England. These people also put their own wealth at risk to get a reward which is how it's meant to work and as investors they were entitled to take a return when things were good. With this lot even when times are bad they still take their cut they took dividends through Covid that is cash leaving the business at a time when it was losing money and cash is critical. The family are already incredibly rich there is absolutely no need for the family to be taking dividends at the moment those who own the publicly traded shares probably do.

The only thing I'd say about Arnold is he isn't some new face from the outside he's an internal hire he's been at the club for a long time in senior positions so he's really the next cab off the rank and he's in the owners pocket.

He deserves a chance to show that he can run it much better but I think he'll still be guided by the same principles Woodward was which is money first success later. I hope he does start turning the ship around and sort out what I'd call the easy wins which is spending the money we do have more wisely rather than just p*ssing it away.

He admitted the club will need investors to rebuild the ground or training ground that will likely be done by taking loans to pay for the development which is standard. Problem is the assets we can put up as collateral already have £500m of debt attached to them thanks to the owners which means our ability to borrow another £1bn for a stadium is limited as the people loaning that money will want a higher interest rate due to the risk.

One way to help would be for the Glazers to sell a stake in the club 10-20% and use the money from the sale towards the sale or to pay off the existing debt. Problem is they aren't going to give away 10-20% of something they own without keeping that money for themselves.
 
You need to realise Man Utd is a business, and always will be. Like every football club. There are few that are owned by oil rich states, but they are still a business. Those ones can afford to lose money and cover up their losses.

Even if we got bought out, and the loan was paid off, the new owners will take money aout the club, that is the business, that is why Man Utd are valued so highly, because it's a business that you can get rich off.

The best thing th eGlazers can do, to win some fans, is pay that debt off, so we aren't shedding money in interest payments. But they won't.

The club is never going to match City/PSG while we have the Glazers. If we get some sucess we can again match Liverpool, Barca, Madrid etc. he problem is, with no football men at the top of the club, the whole football side of things has slipped. In a way it's no wonder the current squad don't give a damn, the owners don't either.

We are stuck with the Glazers, and it does look like they want to change things. They could generate money for a stadium by selling the naming rights, but again the fans wouldn't allow it. I don't really understand why not. It's just name. I mean I couldn't even tell you what white hart lane is now called.
 
I fully understand that it is a business but it needs to start behaving like one as well which means it's owners/directors should be looking at it's performance and driving innovation and improvements to make the business sustainable and profitable in the long term. Dividends in a business are not guaranteed they are based on performance in good times you take a bit of the cream off the top in bad times you don't.

It also isn't really a business because it's customers are not like normal customers they don't behave in the way a normal customer does if your local supermarket suddenly stopped performing to the levels you became used to you can try out the competition a football fan is not like your average consumer. Man Utd have a monopoly on Man Utd fans. These businesses play on their links to the local community so they really should be considering the local community when they make decisions.

The issue is fundamentally I don't think the leveraged buyout of a football club should be allowed to happen as these are more than just businesses but without some proper governance in the sport every club is still vulnerable to this happening to them.

The issue they have created for themselves is their customers are not happy right now and unlike others businesses where we would just take our business elsewhere to someone who provides an alternative product we will simply gather than direct our anger at the current producer until they fix the problem. Customer loyalty is great when things go well as sponsors will want to be all over it and chuck money at you to get access to that army of yours but when it's going badly the army can make things very unpleasant for sponsors.

While I don't know much about the 1958 group their online attacks on sponsors do seem to be hitting the right notes if sponsors start backing out that does put big pressure on the owners to sell up.
 

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