28 Dec 2024 21:39:40
So Ratcliffe the answer to United fans prayers, well for some people at least. Mr Manchester, local lad made good, all will be well in his hands. Or is it?
My late sibling was going to OT in the fifties, before Munich, was at the Sheffield Wednesday game after. We were never rich, we were local people, he scraped a living, job to job, earning those weekly wages and spending a small amount as a working man, going to OT. That was what the club stood for.
I watched recently when the local man, the one to save the club, who must know the roots of the club, its connection to working people, removed the concession for kids and pensioners hiking the prices to what is it £66 a ticket? Then there are the redundancies, the cutting of the donation to the charity supporting ex players, stewards bonuses being removed and numbers cut.
I appreciate the need to control costs, but what Ratcliffe is doing sticks in the craw, why, because he continues to allow the Glazers to live off the millions and billions they extracted from the club without putting in a cent. The working man the club was built on no longer matters. How many now wish it had been the Sheikh?
28 Dec 2024 22:28:53
"Beyond a certain level of wealth, you only get rich by climbing over the bodies of the poor. "
28 Dec 2024 23:21:54
My issue is that every cut he made is minuscule compared to the money spent paying off ETH, RVN, and the rest of the new coaching staff’s contracts, and the money spent hiring and firing Ashworth.
He’s penny pinching from supporters, low wage staff, and charities, while wasting millions on mistakes. If you can pay upwards of £5million for a few months of Dan Ashworth, you can afford to give kids and pensioners a ticket discount.
28 Dec 2024 23:50:09
Redman, you keep banging on about the Sheikh but anything Radcliffe does is nothing compared to slavery, genocide in Yeman and oppression of human rights.
Or are these things OK with you if he's a bit more generous with supporters and employees of the football club?
{Ed001's Note - sorry but you are incorrect, what Ineos has done is in a similar vein.}
29 Dec 2024 00:03:27
Are season tickets at the Etihad substantially less? How much are they at Arsenal? How many clubs employed more people directly than Man Utd? In what way could Ratcliffe stop "allowing" the Glazers to live off the millions and billions they have already extracted from the club? Are they even taking dividends at the moment?
My absolute distaste for the Glazers, the LBO, their incompetence in hiring the right people, and their complete negation of everything our club stood for, is on record over the many years I've been on this site. The situation we are in now is entirely down to them. Ratcliffe has to get both the financial situation and the team right. It would be little different if the Sheik had bought it, assuming the offer was genuine. It might have got rid of the Glazers entirely but who's to say what he would have done, or been able to achieve.
We better hope that Ratcliffe's team can get it right. I'd suggest that our feelings are also influenced by the recent streak of results and the galling amounts of money wasted on bang average players. The club is in dire straits. There is not much Ratcliffe can do about the Glazers and their continuing ownership rights.
29 Dec 2024 03:31:30
redman
Football has changed and cost of running a team has significantly changed. We make no profit and actually been losing money. How do you remedy that if you are running a business. Try buying a ticket to a pro hockey, basketball, baseball game or a decent concert or event.
They changed the cost of 3% of the tickets which is unallocated. So for people like me who have to travel and buy a ticket for a game here and there it cost more but that would be the least of my concern.
Before the summer plenty of stuff out there and even on this site how we could only spend 30 to 50 mill. well we spend a lot more than that on yoro, mazroui, zirksee, de ligt and Ugarte.
If the place was running with overinflated number of people than required then the job cuts are what they are.
When football results are not going your way its easy to look to blame someone or something. its part of change and the pain that comes with it.
29 Dec 2024 07:31:51
The game has changed. Our club used to be different. Home grown players, attacking football, some of the lowest prices, a key part of the local community, an understanding of the working class roots of local people. We have had a home grown player in every squad for over 80 years, no other English club can match that, and I fear that record will fall this year. I mourn for the passing of those things, and that they are seen as unimportant nowadays. Slowly but surely our identity is being eroded and we are becoming another soulless corporate organisation.
Now it's win at all costs, maximise revenue, fly supporters in on corporate packages, players just wanting the highest salary they can get. We have seen the removal of the charitable donation that supports ex players, removal of concessions for kids and pensioners, staff cuts, penny pinching off the lowest paid staff.
As th3 suppirters group has said, Jim’s strategy to cut costs is nothing other than an affront on the working-class foundations our club was built on. It’s a penny wise and pound-foolish approach. Hitting those most in need and can least afford it who have no voice is an act of cowardice and shows a total lack of understanding.
SJR said he wanted to put the Manchester back into Manchester United but it is clear he has absolutely no idea. I get it, the game is global now, many on here will have never been to Manchester, but if you were born and grew up in Manchester, you will feel all these changes very acutely, particularly if you are of a certain age.
I weep for what we are becoming.
{Ed025's Note - great post that AJH..
29 Dec 2024 08:56:23
Ajh ? spot on. I'm no ashamed of man utd after what Radcliffe has done. It's shameful and I hope it backfires in his face.
29 Dec 2024 08:58:48
The charitable donation to ex-players was £40k a year, it is being discussed again in January with Berrada.
As AJH said the club is looking to trim unnecessary costs, we have made a loss of £370mi over the last 3 years, and I assume Omar is making these decisions rather than SJR. They say we will save £35m over the next 2 years but when you waste enormous amounts on players, then you can see why people get upset. I think the restrictions on PSR mean we are in a position where if we don’t make savings wherever we can then we might be in some trouble.
Personally I think it is a damming indictment of the Glazers time in charge, from a club with no debt, to still having the £500m of loans to pay from the sale 20years ago, we have made a loss each year since 2019 and spent £50m on the campaign to sell the club, something had to give. Yes these savings might be hard to swallow at the moment, but something needed to change. Rather than direct anger at SJR let’s direct it at the real villains in the piece, the Glazers.
29 Dec 2024 09:57:33
Grim
I posted about the Glazers and have done consistently in my circa 14 plus years writing on here. They utterly disgust me. How can SJR do what he is doing whilst they continue to sit and wait for the next load of money. If SJR is worth what they say, if he understood what the club is about he would buy the club 100%, pay the debt, build the stadium, as that is what was needed.
AJH
Yes, I am a Mancunian from relatively close to the ground, generations of my family from round there, so as I posted i understand what the club is about in terms of the fans. I grew up where the players lived before they had loads of money, few are still around from the sixties, but players who were poorly paid, relative to now, surely would benefit from the charity SJR just cut from. If the club couldn’t pay the £40k to such a worthy cause then why did SJR, being Mr Manchester, not just cough the money up from his £24Bn?
Shawthing
1) Are season tickets at the Etihad substantially less? How much are they at Arsenal? Who knows, but it’s not the prices overall but the concessions for children and OAPs I mentioned. Taking children to games is vital for the future of the club unless SJR is to rely upon tourists. It’s petty and shortsighted
2) How many clubs employed more people directly than Man Utd? Who knows but making loyal staff redundant is unpleasant, non more so when being done by Britains richest man. Have you ever been made redundant? I have and it’s unpleasant and I wasn’t working for an institution I loved.
3) In what way could Ratcliffe stop "allowing" the Glazers to live off the millions and billions they have already extracted from the club? Buy 100% give them their 30 pieces of silver, do what the Sheikh wanted to do and get those leaching bar stewards out of our club forever. SJR danced with the devil to get in and to even allow they to continue to own the majority of the club is a negative for me.
4) Are they even taking dividends at the moment? No, accounting rules on making losses in two periods I believe excludes them from taking dividends. But you can bet the first chance they get they will do.
The Glazers have put us in this mess, but SJR has not been the hero he should have been, nor as some described on here.
29 Dec 2024 10:16:25
Right there with you AJH. As a fan since 62 and a paying fan since the early 70’s the place has definitely lost its soul based on my last few visits last year.
As you rightly say many have never been to Manchester, let alone Old Trafford and will never really understand.
Yeah yeah the world moves on and I am an old fart, but I will wallow in my memories of the better times when we were once before bang average!
29 Dec 2024 10:28:42
Certainly bad P. R and the 40 k charity payment he stoped is terrible. Despite how sad it is for people to lose jobs wasnt it reported that we had around 90 more staff and managers than Chelsea and Arsenal (the 2 examples given ) have in their I. T. / communications department - so you can imagine that would raise the eyebrows of a new management team coming in.
29 Dec 2024 10:51:31
Some fantastic posts from Red Man and AJH.
29 Dec 2024 11:52:24
The club has changed. Utterly. I was brought up in Old Trafford. Went to school on Ayres road and then Stretford Grammer school. But it never leaves you. Despite the greed. The memories remain. And forever sustain.
29 Dec 2024 13:31:25
Loved reading some of these posts recently. Danny, Tony, Angel, take your respective bows, fellas ?.
29 Dec 2024 17:46:41
Cheers Nou, I'm dismayed at the way he is behaving. So much for putting the Manchester back into Manchester United.
But he is a billionaire for a reason and the majority of them are heartless.
29 Dec 2024 17:55:31
Red Man, I agree with much of what you say, but you are assuming that the Glazers wanted to sell the whole club. It's clear to me they didn't. As they said at the beginning: they were looking for investors, and not necessarily a 100% sale. And maybe Ratcliffe didn't want to or could not cough up £4bn to do the full deal.
I have been fired but not made redundant. My step father did it! Since then I've always worked for myself. But, yes, I drove off from my job at James H Dennis on Trafford Park Road leaving behind the foundry and the engineering business, and ultimately Manchester and the UK, for good back in 1982. Everyone ultimately lost their jobs their in that post-Thatcher collapse of primary industries, including my step father. That part of Trafford Park Rd doesn't exist any more. Since then I've had to make people redundant in my on business in 2008. None of it is easy, but we would not have survived otherwise.
It does seem like some of the penny pinching is extreme and, in the light of someone like Rashford raking in £300k a week to do diddly squat, it's all the more infuriating. I think we all agree that this is not the Man Utd we grew up with, but the blame for that rests almost entirely with the Glazers. They were the ones who used an LBO to acquire it and the first to exploit the club not so much as a football institution but a marketing device, and to strip its cash flows, arriving at the place we now are. A hollow soulless place.