Imo the chart just shows the amount of ingratitude there is out there. Even the villa numbers. What on earth have any of them to mean about?
The delusion is strong. They were all for top 4 this season etc etc. Third richest club in england and all that. You'd think 100mil in the bank for a 40mil player would have them doing cartwheels. It's the equivalent of us selling say firmino for 100mil. At best he is ow worth say 30? the other fun one I see is leeds. What more do they want? I can understand Southampton and arsenal and newcastle I suppose but it all seems very much based on wanting it all rather than being grateful its not far worse. When I think fsg I have decided to think that it could be g&h or even worse. The sole difference between us and arsenal is competent people started to be appointed 6 and 7 years ago. As long as fsg keep competent people running the show it's alright.
Why does the debt bother you? It hasn’t had any impact on how the club is doing. If they put a load of debt on and suddenly stopped your investing in the squad I’d get it. But given they’ve apparently put you in loads of debt, they’ve still invested more than any club bar city since Ferguson left. So what real impact has that had on you able to watch and enjoy your team play football?
My recollection of that dim and distant past is the elements of manc lands instantly hated on the glaziers. They started buying up shares and before they even took control there were protests. At that point utd were a publicly floated company with major shareholders. I don't know what the fans wanted cos their club was floated on the market and were subject to the ups and downs of the market. Maybe the other shareholders were more desired, I don't know. In the end the glazers paid for it all by doing what they did and before they even started a hard core of manc were being violent and causing trouble, bobby charlton had to apologise to the glazers for example. Given the track record of not being able to pay their own end and then self promoting ex players talking about not even painting the steel and of course the rise of the noisy neighbours there must be a large amount of reasons behind various parts of the discontent. be it debt, be it instant didn't want them, be it incompetance, be it not painting the steel, be it jealousy about the noisy neighbours man utd were valued at 750mil at the time of take over. 75k fans in the stadium. if they didn't like it they could have ponied up 10 grand a piece and rivalled the bids It is a first world problem just like FSG are. It is not about survival nor about even being also rans. it is about wanting to sit on the very top of the pile and lord it. all big club fans are the same really. a majority of plastics didn't even see anything wrong about the superleague until the realisation of the flood of hate hit them and they shut up.
anyway: the reality of the prem is this: in the past 10 years: (2011-2021) Chelsea: Premier league: 2 FA cup: 2 League cup: 1 Champions league 2 Europa league: 2 9 major trophies, won 1 last season) City: Premier league: 5 FA cup: 2 League cup: 6 Champions league 0 Europa league: 0 14 major trophies, won 2 last season Man Utd: Premier league: 1 FA cup: 1 League cup: 1 Champions league 0 Europa league: 1 4 major trophies, won the last 3 season ago. Liverpool Premier league: 1 FA cup: 0 League cup: 1 Champions league 1 Europa league: 0 3 major trophies, won the last the season before last. Arsenal Premier league: 0 FA cup: 4 League cup: 0 Champions league 0 Europa league: 0 4 major trophies, won the last the season before last. Leicester Premier league: 1 FA cup: 1 League cup: 0 Champions league 0 Europa league: 0 2 major trophies, won 1 last season Swansea won a league cup and Wigan won a FA cup in this time. Now this all plays into the big club narrative IMO. Chelsea not happy about city and spending basically money from nowhere and cheekily claiming its all good, why? cos they win less than city City not happy their European record is ****e. Spending 100s of millions chasing it. (same as PSG) Utd fans looking at past glories slipping further away and falling down this list so add that to the bubbling undercurrent against the owners. Massive transfers as a result. LFC fans somehow think their owners should compete with the above. By contrast most Leicester fans on cloud 9. .......................... We won 3 trophies in a decade. its not 14. Could it be more if we "tried harder" perhaps. but we prioritised 4th and that got us the big one as we attracted good enough players. I don't like it but it is what it is. could klopp have won more. yes he lost a final or two along the way. Over the now nearly 11 years since FSG took over we've done a lot of things good and bad but one of them is not to chase pipe dreams. The cash cow stadium was binned and at least some fans are happy enough with anfield finally. The structural nightmare of split training camps and lack of facilities was reduced (i don't think they are truly world class but its good) Hard fought ticket price wars have held the prices at a high level but not unpayable. In general we have appointed competent people to run the club.
it would piss me off that a chunk of it is borrowed money the Glazers "spent" buying the club which they then passwd onto the club . In other words they got the club for nowt .
I would have thought it would be lower. Remember the protest banners after the ESL debacle? It was the last straw for a lot of fans. Personally, I'm happy with the way they are running the club but I lost the complete trust and respect I had for them with the, not one but two, breakaway attempts. If I was giving them a score out of 100, I don't know how that would come out given that I don't fully trust them now but wouldn't want a dodgy owner like city's or Chelsea's either.
the......... (its hard to put an exact word on what they did with the Prem on covid)..... "opportunistic" way they approached the prem money and football pyramid was quite something. the ESL is more understandable as you can't miss the boat but the core of that onion is unclear. The PSGs and City/cheslea are desperate to be right out at the outer layer or claim they were never in. Spurs are sort of outer layer along for the right but right at the core theres juve, real and barca and its a suspicion that LFC owners were right in there. the other straws are equally engrained. £77 for ticket in main stand, came after long discussions where they were told repeatedly, decisions on replacement of suarez and handing rodgers a E'tto or balotelli decision. Constant delays to stadium expansion, no actual funding for anything just the club scraping up and paying back etc. You are right. Happy the club is well run and financially sound, unhappy with their constant self interest antics behind the scenes that tear down any reputation. 50/50 For me we could be a lot worse off. yes we could have unlimited oil money but after awhile thats empty stuff.
it’s such a double edged sword though mate. I didn’t want it but I don’t care who you are, you want your team to be in the mix at the highest level. If LFC had not been involved and everyone else had broken away, leaving us behind, there would be an equally large group of fans furious with FSG for doing that. Purely from a business perspective, FSG had to be in those discussions or they would not be representing the best interests of the club….at least from a financial perspective. Damned if they did, damned if they didn’t imo.
I agree with this, apart from the highlighted line. I'm sure this isn't how you meant it, but it's one of those statements that doesn't allow for a different opinion. If playing "at the highest level" meant being in the ESL, then I for one wanted no part of it. I want us to play in an English league, with European competitions the icing on the cake - not the main course. I've always said I'd probably follow my team no matter what (including a sugar-daddy takeover - which I would hate), but the idea of a closed-shop elite league seriously made me question that commitment. It's just a terrible idea.
The thing with the super league idea was the exclusivity, closed shop aspect of it which was never going to be accepted by the fans. In essence though, breaking away from a UEFA stranglehold was a good idea, it just lacked a final thorough think-through and a system for making it more inclusive.
Or alternatively uefa has been pandering to smaller teams to scrape up power to take on the elite clubs and has pushed the balance so far it threatened to kill the golden goose. Rather than fix the obvious issues (rampant corruption and chronic nepotism leading to financial imbalances) they have sought to try get the other birds on the poultry farm police the unruly turkeys. It is patently obvious when psg stands up and pretends to be a paragon of virtue with uefa something is very wrong. Since that they have broken any semblance of ffp every way possible while laughing at their deadly political rivals club getting itself in hot water
Barca are in debt because they’ve been spending silly money and their wages were 110% of their income. Totally different to the situation at United.
Has that had an impact on the club spending? No.. Have the managers been backed in the market? Yes. Has the debt had any impact on fan experience? Not really. don’t imagine they’ve raised ticket prices to obscene levels compared to any other clubs. From what I can see the debt they’ve put on the club has had zero impact on anything. I don’t understand why fans get so concerned about owners. Unless your owners are selling your star players and not allowing managers to replace them so you are fighting relegation or getting relegated (Newcastle?) or they put ticket prices up stupid amount so you can’t go to games then why worry about them.
