Manchester United

[Kid Icarus]

3 hours ago, Froggy said:

 

I was never trying to suggest he invested and know he was tight-fisted. I'm meaning the act of actually removing money from the clubs cash reserves. I don't think any other club owners in England took dividends from their clubs.

 

More than one way to skin a cat basically. Ashley owned us outright and didn't have us on the stock market. He made money solely by not spending it - including money the club made - getting free advertising for 14 years, refusing to invest in anything that would expand our revenue and only speculating to accumulate on players - only to then never reinvest the money on new players.

 

He was a race to the bottom owner, as far as I can tell the Glazers are profit extractors. As bad as the Glazers are, the money available to Man United to spend as a club means that they could still easily be successful even if the Glazers are taking money out of it at the same time - Ashley's business model completely dictated our football model. The objective was to spend the smallest amount possible and finish 17th.

 

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Kid Icarus

[Froggy]

1 minute ago, Chris_R said:

 

Did you buy your house for cash, or was it, like me, borrowed at way more than 1.7x my salary, over a vast period, with the majority of everything I pay being interest?

 

Nice analogy to be fair, but flawed. The most important piece being that you are the one paying the interest. 

 

A better analogy would be your example, but that you're renting the house out. It stinks, the windows are broken, it needs new furniture, it needs painted etc. etc. You don't bother touching it. Your tenants are miserable, yet you still come to them every year and take money from them just for shits and giggles while increasing their payments.

[KingArthur]

1 hour ago, Froggy said:

 

Where do you draw the line for necessary cuts though? As I mentioned above, we're £1b in debt. The debt stands at 1.7x our annual revenue.

 

Maybe a poor comparison, but the average UK wage is £37,500. Imagine someone earning that being £60,000+ in debt. You would be licking the back of cling film to try and save money.

Dunno mate, I am €130 000 in debt, and earn maybe €38 000 € a year.     Well yea, it is a mortgage tbh.

[Froggy]

1 minute ago, KingArthur said:

Dunno mate, I am €130 000 in debt, and earn maybe €38 000 € a year.     Well yea, it is a mortgage tbh.

 

I never include mortgages as debt for some reason.

[bobbydazzla]

27 minutes ago, Chris_R said:

 

This isn't true. He paid close attention to what happened on the pitch.

 

Our stated aim, as said by the club in fans' forums and actually written down in the minutes, was to exit the cup competitions quickly because winning a cup might cause us to get relegated.

 

Meanwhile doing 'well' in the league (aka comfortably avoiding relegation) meant no investment was needed, or better still he could sell some players. 

 

He was very concerned with what happened on the pitch, just it was entirely to our detriment.

 

 

What I meant is that he didn't want us achieve any level of "success" on the pitch, the football team getting better and improving was of no consequence to him

Which is an absolute travesty as the mission statement for a football club or any other sporting institution

 

All he required was the absolute bare minimum to try and avoid relegation and that was the sum total of our existence

 

He was never looking at how we could improve, he was always looking at how little he could get away with investing to avoid us becoming any worse

 

 

 

Edited 6 hours ago by bobbydazzla