LATEST POSTS 
You would have to live somewhere very remote to be unaware that Manchester United’s owners, the Glazers, are unpopular with the majority of the fanbase.
One of the main accusations levelled at the American dynasty is a lack of investment in the club.
Yet, as The Mail points out this week, over the course of the last ten years, United have spent more on players than any other club in the world.
So how can both be true?
Of course, it is important to note that net spend is a very different figure than transfer outlay. Net spend is the cost of transfers in minus the cost of transfers out.
If we look at how much has been spent on transfers in 10 years, United are not top of the list. Chelsea have spent €2.63bn. Even so, United come in second on €1.959bn, just slightly ahead of Man City on €1.953bn. This is ahead of the likes of Barcelona (€1.779bn), PSG (€1.761bn), Juventus (€1.583bn), Real Madrid (€1.279bn), Arsenal (€1.380bn) and Liverpool (€1.355bn) (source: Cies observatory).
So, the Glazers have spent, and spent big. Admittedly, not on the stadium or training facilities, but on players. Why would they do that if they don’t want success?
I shot the sheriff, but I didn’t shoot no deputy
The Glazers may not be guilty of underinvestment in new players, but that does not make them innocent of all charges. Their initial big crime – of using loans to buy United, using the club as collateral, and plunging it into instant debt, is well-known.
And they have compounded that consistently, by re-financing and taking out further loans, by continuing to take dividends, even during Covid, and by never once putting a penny of their own money into the club.
But perhaps the biggest crime of all that the Glazers have committed, and the least cited, has been to run a football club when they have no experience or understanding of football.
It has been well-documented that Joel Glazer, sitting in his office in America, micro-manages the club and virtually every decision has to go through him. Yet he has no football background at all. It is tantamount to the head of Apple or Microsoft insisting on making every decision himself despite having never so much as used a computer, let alone being able to understand the business of making them.
What’s more, these decisions are presented to him by a CEO, Richard Arnold, and before him an executive vice chairman, Ed Woodward, neither of whom have any shred of football knowledge, experience or training either.
And when you consider that United’s director of football, John Murtough, also has no training or experience in football, it becomes easy to see what United’s biggest problem is.
The simple fact is that you, the reader, or I, the writer, are more qualified to run Manchester United than Richard Arnold, we are more qualified to be director of football than John Murtough, because we are fans, we understand football, we know the game. We know our way around a computer. We are, of course, a thousand miles away from being qualified for the job, but Arnold and Murtough are a million miles away.
Why have such people been appointed? And why have genuine world class experts in football administration been shunned by the Glazers? “Because they don’t care about football, they only care about money” is often argued, but it does not make sense.
Many accuse the Glazers of putting commercial success before football, but this is giving them too much credit. If you do not ensure the football is successful, then the commercial appeal of the club will dwindle.
It’s very simple. If United were in Division One, they would not get a multimillion pound Adidas contract. Any fool can see that the only way a football club can have commercial success is for it to first be successful on the pitch.
Gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to love
No, these appointments can only have been made out of a desire on Glazer’s part to not be challenged. And perhaps there is a simple explanation for everything; Joel Glazer is a young kid trapped in a grown billionaire businessman’s body. He is a grown man wanting to play Football Manager, but he has a real club to play with. He does not want to delegate to football men. He’s the man. So he appoints people below him who won’t take the fun away from him of making the football decisions.
Reports have often claimed that successive managers have wanted to sell Anthony Martial, but they cannot because he’s Joel’s favourite. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had no say in the acquisition of Cristiano Ronaldo. José Mourinho had no say in the acquisition of Fred, and so on. There have been many more cited examples.
We are witnessing a similar situation at Chelsea, now, where new owner Todd Boehly is buying players that manager Mauricio Pochettino, on his own admission, has no say over. When Thomas Tuchel refused to sign Ronaldo, Thomas Tuchel was sacked.
The simple truth is that United and Chelsea are both a rich man’s plaything and perhaps that is the real reason why the club has still not been sold.
Manchester United Football Club has been so incompetently run that its credit lines have been exhausted and new players cannot be signed because of the losses it has run up. The river has run dry. It is time to sell, because the only other option is to see it degenerate, like Leeds United did when their owners overstretched themselves in the noughties, and like FC Barcelona are going to do, barring a miracle, in the very near future.
We have heard rumours that the Glazers are divided, like the Roy family in the TV Series Succession, with some wanting to sell and some, Joel and Avram in particular, keen to hang on.
This has led to months of silence. In essence, you get the impression that this is because Joel is desperately trying to find a cheat code, so he can reset the bank balance and carry on playing his addictive game. And if you look at this situation as one man’s addiction, it all starts to make sense.
We were told in a recent report that the Glazers have decided not to sell because the extension of the World Club Cup to 32 teams and America’s hosting of the 2026 World Cup will increase its value.
This sounds like the justifications of a gambling addict being sure he will win his money back because he has a “sure thing” running in the next race. It is nonsense and we all know where that story ends.
The trouble is, for United, it won’t end with Joel being a beggar on the streets of Las Vegas. It will end with the ruin of Manchester United.
This, perhaps, is a better way of understanding who the Glazer family really are and why the club is in its current situation. This is not the story of heartless, Logan Roy-type individuals brutally exploiting a football club for profit. This is the story of little Joel Glazer, sitting at his computer, addicted to playing a game he is losing and yet being allowed to carry on playing, even though it is well past his bedtime.
The post Video game addiction in real life: why Joel Glazer really can’t sell Man United appeared first on Man United News And Transfer News | The Peoples Person.
Whatsapp: 08130162561
Email: Teeloadedblog@gmail.com
| Article Name | Logan Roy or Football Manager?: Why the Glazers will bankrupt Man United - opinion |
| Description |
|
| Author Name | Candyboy |
| Published On | September 07, 2023 |
| Post Category |
Man Utd
|
About Telenovela BlastersTelenovela Blasters Is A Top Telenovela blog that provides you with latest Updates from Zee World and Lots more.
No comments:
Post a Comment