You ( United Fans ) must be chuffed that YOU are buying the club for THEM ( The Glazers ), United fans are making the Glazers Billionaires and Fergie is too spineless to do anything about it
Dont really get the financial complexities of it but if the owners of the debt(the glazers)are the owners of the club how can the club be buying back a chunk of the bonds each year?,surely its the Glazers buying them back and juggling the debt elsewhere in other ways.
Not fair DDDDDD! There's nothing that Ferguson can do or say about the Glazer situation. Whiteside of Red. Debt is volatile. As you rightly point out the $ exchange rate is one of the volatile factors. The other major factor is the market attitude towards debt levels. Most highly leveraged organisations around the world are struggling with their short/midterm financial positions whilst still being profitable. Plus times change and football clubs are no longer cash rich.
I'm not chuffed about the Glazers sucking money out of the club at all but the reality of it isn't the doomsday scenario some people seem to think it is. The Glazers originated the debt but it's the club that has to pay it off. Similar to buying a house and renting it out to pay the mortgage. Bonds, like shares and other capital instruments are tradable commodities - in the last several sets of accounts published, the club (not the the parent company) has been buying significant amounts of the bonds. Under the terms of the bond, the club ends up paying annual dividends to itself, and when the time comes to pay them off in 2017, the club will have to pay itself. My expectation is that there will be another bond offering in 2017, to pay off any outstanding bonds that the club doesn't own and to generate additional capital for the club (and the Glazers - grr!!).
Agreed, but that market attitude only comes into play if you are seeking to buy further debt. Man Utd is not dependent on short-term lending to finance its operations - the cash position isn't what it was but that is partly due to buying a chunk of bonds. There is also a potential advantage - if the market were to view Utd bonds as risky, their value would decrease, allowing the club to buy more of them for less. This would only happen if the club was unable to pay the annual dividend which is unlikely or if the market felt that the club would be unable to pay them off in 2017. The last factor is potentially problematic because the likely payment method is to obtain new replacement debt to pay for the old one but we'll worry about that in 3 or 4 years.
This is not a dig. It is far better to be debt free than it is to have that burden. FSG did not land any of that burden upon LFC when the bought them (albeit at far below 'market value) and then invested firther money into the club.
Agreed, but it is what it is and there's feck all I can do about it. Buying a Norwich scarf isn't going to make the Glazers sell their cash cow and there's no guarantee that a new owner would give the manager the freedom SAF has.
There is no moral high ground here. If a Club seeks new Owners, requires them to be of £Billionaire status, and is prepared to search the planet to find them, bemoaning the benevolence (or not) of their competitor's Owners, and declaring their success as being unworthy/less worthy, is frankly churlish.
That's where LFC have been very lucky (and I'm not ashamed to say that). FSG have a history of Sports management and have saved our club from complete financial ruin. It's still early days but they appear to be taking a very professional approach to the development of the club - and yes it will take more development until we are really competing on all fronts. But because of that recent experience we are, as fans, acutely aware of where debt can lead you. Some Redmen may try and use that as a dig but I'm not trying to do that. I merely call it as I see it -as a word of warning.
I have no concerns about the financial stability of United. The Glazers have been in charge for 7 years and the doom sayers are still waiting for everything to implode. If they get to a point where they have to sell then someone will buy the club as it's one of the biggest "brands" in global sport. We are already at where the likes of Chelsea, Liverpool and Citeh aspire to be.
FSG do seem like proper sports club owners but I think you have to be realistic and accept that they will only invest so much and that the overall investment is going to be closely tied to results on the pitch. A club without CL football can't make CL levels of investment for long. Being a football supporter gives you little choice - we're all in it for the long haul so we can only hope that our respective owners don't sacrifice the long term health of our clubs for short term profit. The FFP rules come into this in that investment in infrastructure and youth development don't count in the income-expenditure equation. Owners with the spare cash need to direct it into those areas which provide long term returns - that's where FSG can make a difference. Under the Glazers that kind of expense will have to come from club income.
Unfortunately I can just see United winning the title, although it'll come down to the last game of the season. They have some top top players that make up the core of the team, but it's the mental approach that gives them that edge - they can play terrible and still win comfortably, it's what you need to do to win the league and it's not something Man City have grasped yet. They play the better football, no doubt about it and when they do they can destroy teams but it's all too easy to fall on expectations and not get the result you're meant to. I'm still not convinced Mancini is the one to take City forward, his mental approach to games isn't one of past league winners like Mourinho or SAF and is more like Wenger who hasn't won it in a while.
If City do not win the league this season, it is going to be more difficult to win in the future.The finacial fair play is coming in. They can no longer continue to spend spend and spend.Other clubs are getting to know how to play them too.
Not to mention having to have 8 home grown players in a 25 man squad. Citys squad is already wafer thin, maybe liverpool can sell them some of that fantastic English talent you've been buying.
In theory, now they have the impressive squad they wont have to pay so much in wages etc to entice a player to join. they can already start to cut down their costs whilst sustaining the level they have reached.
It's laughable that you scum fans are hoping for the FFP to help keep you on top, you were happy spending over inflated fees, that no other club could match, on the likes of the granny shagger and camel gob, was that FFP?
In short yes it was fair. United spent money that they had earned how could that not be financial fair play ?
