Back in 2005, the extremely unpopular Glazer family gained full control of Manchester United for around £800million. If I’m being honest, they’ve slowly eaten away at our club from the inside out, and their latest plans including selling 10% of the club on the New York Stock Exchange to raise extra funds.
Plans were announced to float on the Stock Exchange about a month ago. Their initial application was seemingly knocked back, however last night, details of the proposed plans were released. The main aim is to raise money by selling shares to pay off some of our huge debts. The family are selling 16,666,667 Class A Ordinary Shares for around $16-20 per share. This should raise around $330million, with the Glazers using less than half of the money to pay off some of the club’s debt, as they pocket the rest for themselves.
The club is valued at $2.24b by Forbes magazine, making us the most valuable football club. It’s an award we’ve won for the past eight years, yet somehow we still find ourselves debt ridden. It really is a bizarre situation. Many fan-based protests have taken place, all of which making a statement, yet remaining unsuccessful. From the iconic green and gold scarves, to the Red Knight’s consortium, the family seems unmoved by all this, remaining unwilling to sell up.
Amidst all this, Sir Alex has stuck by our money-leaching owners. He insisted that he’s comfortable with the current financial situation, and the Glazers are ‘great’. Fergie has to defend them for obvious reasons, so I don’t get why all these fans are now wanting Fergie out? Yes, our financial position isn’t great, but the boss has nothing to do with that, he’s worked wonders with the amount of funding our club has been given over the past seven years. Without him at the helm, City’s oil money and Chelsea’s Russian money would be miles ahead of us by now.
He said, “I’m absolutely comfortable with the Glazers situation. They’ve been great. So if you’re asking me for my views, I don’t have any complaints.” Sir Alex continued “When the Glazers took over, there was disaffection, so there have always been pockets of supporters who have their views – and there’s nothing wrong with that.
“But the majority of the real fans will look at it realistically and say it’s not affecting the team. We’ve won four championships since they’ve been here, one European Cup. The problem is they are not publicists. They don’t go out of their way to seek good publicity. They are quite happy to stay in the background. Roman Abramovich at Chelsea is the same.”
The only bit that gets under my skin is the ‘real fans’ comment. What determines a real fan? Someone who goes to games? Someone who buys the shirts? I just think that it’s an unnecessary term to label someone a ‘real fan’.
I also think it’s no surprise that we’ve been linked with big money moves for players such as Robin van Persie and Lucas Moura. The club selling shares, coupled with the big money deal with Chevrolet that we’ve recently signed, I think now we’ve got a bit of money injected into the club, we need to spend it while we can.
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