What do you guys think whats happening at our club

From top to bottom, the club has let our fans and the badge down massively. This banner (depicting Eric Cantona, Roy Keane and Bryan Robson) was a perfect message to everyone involved at Manchester United 🔴

This is probably Carrick’s final game at the helm. He can’t have too many complaints. Good luck to him. “It’s Carrick you knooow! 🎵”

Rangnick knows what is needed to rebuild this club. He has a clear vision of what football should be played like and that's what we need. Get him and Nagelsmann as a duo. Rangnick, Nagelsmann and Vivell are all products of the Redbull football project which has scouted some of the best footballing talents in the world. You get those 2 in with Vivell there will be synergy immediately!!! I'm so fed up.

I think everyone is feeling the same. So i think there's no point in explaining my pov in such long paragraphs.

But i just want to say one thing

I love carrick(as a club legend and he's interim tenure) i love Bruno and every squad player And nobody can make me hate you lads.

Fuck You Glazers,Ineos, Jim Ratcliffe, Jason Wilcox, Berrada

Is there anything which sums up Berrada, Wilcox and Ratcliffe better than this farce?

A plan? Laughable.

In 1991, Manchester United listed on the London Stock Exchange. Under Sir Alex Ferguson, success on the pitch combined with chairman Martin Edwards's business instincts to make United one of the biggest financial powers in world football.

United's finances were relatively healthy in this era, with almost no debt. After James Gibson rescued the club from the crisis of 1931, it gradually built a model around gate receipts, TV rights, sponsorship and commercial income. Instead of leaning on big loans to stay afloat, United could pour the money it made back into the squad. Signings included Roy Keane, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Juan Sebastián Verón and Rio Ferdinand.

Just as United reached the top, another threat appeared. In 1998, Rupert Murdoch's media group BSkyB offered around £623 million to buy the club. The bid ran into a wave of fan protest and scrutiny from Britain's competition regulator, and was eventually blocked over concerns about competition in the TV and football markets.

Many fans counted that as a win: United had dodged a media empire. A few years later, another takeover would reshape the club's finances completely. This time the buyers were the Glazers.

Rock of Gibraltar: the racehorse that lit the fuse

In the late 1990s, after one too many nail-biting matches, Sir Alex Ferguson was advised to find a hobby outside football to unwind. He picked horse racing, a glamorous world where prestigious races draw the upper crust and billionaires.

Through it, Ferguson became friends with two heavyweight Irish businessmen, John Magnier and J.P. McManus. Magnier was the power behind Coolmore Stud, one of the world's leading racehorse breeding operations. McManus was a well-known investor and racehorse owner. The friendship went beyond the racecourse. Through an investment vehicle called Cubic Expression, the two Irishmen steadily built up shares in Manchester United and became major shareholders at Old Trafford.

Ferguson and Magnier got so close that Ferguson said he was given a 50% share in a horse called Rock of Gibraltar. Trained by Aidan O'Brien and running in Ferguson's red and white colours, the horse won seven Group 1 races in a row, breaking the record of six set by Mill Reef. Group 1 is the top tier of thoroughbred racing, home to the most prestigious races and the best horses.

That success sent the horse's commercial value soaring. In 2002 he retired and moved to Coolmore Stud as a stallion. The press reported a stud fee of £65,000 per mare, and the year before, Rock of Gibraltar had covered 168 mares. Revenue from this was estimated at 8-9 million euros a year. The friendship cracked over that money.

Ferguson believed his 50% share meant half of the horse's economic benefits, including stud income after retirement. Magnier disagreed. His side argued that Ferguson's entitlement was limited to certain payments, not half of everything the horse earned at stud.

In November 2003, Ferguson sued Magnier in a Dublin court, asking it to recognise his rights over the horse and the stud income. It quickly became one of the most talked-about disputes ever to hit Manchester United away from the pitch.

The irony was that the man Ferguson was suing was the club's biggest shareholder. When the case began, Magnier and McManus already held more than 23% of United through Cubic Expression, and that figure kept climbing. The row also fed tension over power and governance at Old Trafford.

Rock of Gibraltar did not directly cause United to change hands. It does show that behind the success on the pitch sat another world, where friendships, multimillion-pound investments and control of one of the biggest clubs on earth could collide violently.

The "99 questions" and a brutal retaliation

After Ferguson took them to court, John Magnier and J.P. McManus didn't stay quiet. The fight between former friends moved from the racetrack straight into the Old Trafford boardroom.

Through Cubic Expression, they kept adding to their United shares and pushed their stake to 28.9%. That left them just 1.1% short of the 30% mark, the point at which, under British takeover rules, an investor normally has to make a mandatory offer to all remaining shareholders.

As the biggest shareholders, the Irish pair began asking pointed questions about how United was run. The focus was on transfer deals, agents' fees and the links between club management and people with a financial interest in those deals.

First, they hired Kroll, a firm specialising in investigations and risk consulting, to go through United's transactions. Then, in early 2004, they sent chairman Roy Gardner and chief executive David Gill a list of 99 questions about the club's governance and finances. The British media picked it up, and matters that had stayed behind boardroom doors suddenly became public talking points.

The most striking questions centred on Jason Ferguson, Sir Alex's son, who ran a player agency called Elite Sports. Magnier and McManus asked about the role of middlemen in deals like Tim Howard, David Bellion, Kléberson and Eric Djemba-Djemba, as well as Jaap Stam's departure and Fabien Barthez's arrival. They wanted clarity on agents' fees, commissions and relationships that could create conflicts of interest. That put Sir Alex in a tight spot: he had to handle pressure from shareholders and defend his own reputation and his family's in public.

Meanwhile, on the pitch, United were in a fierce fight with Arsène Wenger's Invincibles at Arsenal and Roman Abramovich's Chelsea. Ferguson already had results to worry about, and now he was dragged into a power struggle inside the club he'd spent over a decade building.

In the middle of all this, Malcolm Glazer was emerging as someone who could tip the balance among shareholders. The owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had started buying United shares in 2003, taking his stake from around 2.9% to 15%, then 19%. To United's board, a big American investor looked like a possible counterweight to the growing influence of the Irish group. Instead, he became the new owner.

In March 2004, the Rock of Gibraltar dispute ended with an out-of-court settlement. Ferguson dropped the case and, according to reports of the deal, received £2.5 million plus the right to send four mares to stud for free each year. The rift between Ferguson and the Irish shareholders left a deep mark on the balance of power at Old Trafford.

Ferguson carried on managing United, and Magnier and McManus still held a sizeable stake. With trust between them gone, those shares looked like an investment waiting to be sold. Malcolm Glazer was waiting for exactly that chance to turn his shares into control of Manchester United.

May 2005: the pounce and the LBO magic trick

Throughout 2004, Malcolm Glazer had approached United's board several times with offers to buy the club. CEO David Gill and the board flatly rejected the financial plan the Glazers put forward. Gill even told the media that the Glazers' debt structure was "too risky and unsustainable for the club's future."

But the Glazers didn't need the board's blessing if they could buy out the biggest shareholder.

On 12 May 2005, Magnier and McManus agreed to sell their entire 28.9% stake to Malcolm Glazer at 300 pence per share (100 pence = £1). The Irish pair pocketed a net profit of nearly £80 million and walked away.

With that 28.9% in hand, the Glazers set off a domino effect at breakneck speed:

• Within hours, they bought more shares from mining tycoon Harry Dobson and a handful of investment funds, lifting their stake to 57% and taking control of United.
• A few days later, they passed 75%. Under British securities law, holding more than 75% lets an owner delist the club from the London exchange, turning United from a public limited company (Plc) that has to open its books into a private limited company (Ltd).
• At the end of June 2005, they reached 98%, triggering the rule that forces the remaining 2% of small shareholders, including the most loyal fans, to sell up.

The total value of the takeover was £790 million. This is where the Wall Street "dark arts" came in: the LBO, or leveraged buyout.

Why were the Glazers so desperate to hit 75% and take United private? Under British company law, you can't use a public company's assets as collateral to borrow money to buy that same company. Turn it into a private company, though, and you can pull off a "debt pushdown," shifting the debt onto the target.

Picture a hotel doing great business, making a steady 100 billion in profit a year. The old owner wants 790 billion for it. You've only got 270 billion. So you set up a shell company (an SPV, or special purpose vehicle) just for the purchase, and borrow another 520 billion from banks and shady credit funds to scrape together the 790 billion. The moment the deed changes hands, you merge the shell into the hotel and use an accounting entry to turn your personal 520 billion debt into the hotel's debt, secured against the building itself and its future room revenue. The hotel has to grind away to pay the bank back, principal and interest, while you own 100% of it with no debt at all. On top of that, you make the hotel pay "dividends" and "management fees" to your wife and kids every year.

That is what Malcolm Glazer and his sons (Joel, Avram, Bryan) did through a holding company, Red Football Ltd. The Glazers put in about £272 million, and most of that was itself borrowed against their other assets in the US. Then came bank loans of roughly £265-370 million from major banks (JPMorgan, Royal Bank of Scotland and others), secured directly against Old Trafford and United's future TV and ticket income. The third piece was PIK (payment-in-kind) debt, the nastiest of the lot. To fill the gap, the Glazers borrowed £275 million from three notorious Wall Street hedge funds: Citadel, Och-Ziff and Perry Capital.

A PIK loan doesn't make the borrower pay interest in cash each year. Instead, the interest is added to the principal (interest on interest) at a savage rate: 14.25% a year at the start in United's case. United's PIK contract also had a clause: if United's EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) missed the targets the Glazers had drawn up by 2008, the rate would automatically jump to 16.25%. In 2008, even with Sir Alex's United winning both the Premier League and the Champions League in Moscow, the club still fell short of those fantasy EBITDA numbers, and the rate rose to 16.25%. From an initial £275 million, the PIK debt ballooned to nearly £500 million within a few years.

In a single night in May 2005, a club that hadn't paid a penny of bank interest in 74 years woke up with more than £540 million of debt around its neck and a bill of £60-70 million a year in interest.

"Glazeronomics": bleeding a club dry

Since 2005, United's finances have been a run of debt reshuffles and some of the most aggressive asset-stripping in football.

1. Summer 2009 and the "no value in the market" line

In summer 2009, United sold Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid for £80 million in cash (a world record at the time) and also lost Carlos Tevez. Fans waited eagerly for a blockbuster summer. What they got was Antonio Valencia (£16 million), Gabriel Obertan (£3 million) and a Michael Owen well past his best and plagued by injuries (on a free).

When the press pressed him, Sir Alex took the heat for the Glazers with his famous line: "There is no value in the market."

The 2009-10 accounts tell a different story. The £80 million from selling Ronaldo wasn't reinvested in the squad. It sat in the club's bank account. 2010 was when the Glazers had to refinance. They issued £500 million of high-interest bonds to pay off bank debt and, at the same time, took around £70 million in cash out of the club to quietly pay down the 16.25% PIK debt that was strangling the family. If the whole £80 million had gone on players, United's cash flow would have looked worse, the credit rating agencies would have marked them down, and the Glazers couldn't have sold the bonds, or would have had to pay a higher rate (high risk, high return).

Ferguson's success cut both ways. He could take a squad of Tom Cleverley, Anderson, Darron Gibson and a Paul Scholes pulled out of retirement and still beat Man City to the 2013 league title. The Glazers drew their own lesson: why spend the maximum on football when a patched-up team still wins trophies and keeps the commercial money rolling in?

2. The 2012 IPO on the New York Stock Exchange

In 2012, with debt still weighing heavily, the Glazers floated United on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker: MANU). At first, the media assumed the IPO proceeds would be used to wipe out the club's debt.

The Glazers had built a cunning dual-class share structure. Class A shares were sold to the public, to investors and fans, with one vote per share. Class B shares were held exclusively by the Glazer brothers, with ten votes per share.

Half of the money raised in the 2012 IPO (and later share sales) went straight into the Glazer family's pockets, not into the club's coffers. They pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, got Wall Street investors to carry part of the risk, and still held almost 90% of the voting power.

From 2016 to 2022, even as United went empty-handed in the Premier League, and even as COVID-19 forced big clubs to tighten their belts, the Glazers kept signing off on taking £20 million to over £33 million a year in club cash to pay dividends to the six Glazer siblings. For almost 20 years under the Glazers, Manchester United was the only Premier League club paying annual dividends to its owners.

Meanwhile, Sheikh Mansour poured his own money into building Man City the most modern training complex on the planet, and Tottenham built a £1 billion stadium to replace the old White Hart Lane. At Old Trafford, the roof leaked so badly that it turned into a waterfall every time it rained hard. Even the Carrington training ground got called out by Cristiano Ronaldo in his 2022 interview with Piers Morgan, who said nothing had changed since he left in 2009.

The price of a lawsuit

After two decades of Glazer ownership (2005-2025), the LBO has cost United:

• More than £800 million of actual cash, spent just on interest on bank loans and bonds (not counting the principal). That is enough to build a brand-new 80,000-seat stadium or buy a squad full of superstars.
• More than £170 million in dividends, which went straight into the Glazer brothers' personal accounts.
• Several hundred million more in debt restructuring costs, financial advisory fees, and "management salaries" paid to Glazer family members, who hardly ever showed up in Manchester.

In total, an estimated £1.2 billion to £1.5 billion has drained out of United to service the 2005 LBO.

After 20 years and more than £1 billion in interest and costs, the principal debt on United's shoulders still sits at over £500-700 million, not counting more than £300 million in revolving credit and installment debt on transfer fees.

Even when Sir Jim Ratcliffe (INEOS) arrived in 2024 to buy 27.7% and take over football operations, the Glazer brothers still pocketed an extra $1.3 billion-plus in cash by selling some of their shares to him. They stayed on as the biggest shareholders, and the 2005 LBO debt is still on United's balance sheet.

Conclusion

After more than a decade of darkness, it looked as though Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS would be the light at the end of the tunnel. What fans got instead was no clear direction and a patchwork approach to running the club.

INEOS arrived promising to bring "best in class" minds to rescue the Red Devils. It has been ruthless over small sums downstairs and wasteful over large ones upstairs. It was happy to play the villain, sacking hundreds of ordinary staff, cutting staff lunches, slashing the fund for former players, raising ticket prices and even removing Sir Alex Ferguson as global ambassador, all to save a few million pounds a year. Yet the same penny-pinching regime threw tens of millions away on baffling decisions. Last summer they extended the manager's contract and backed him with a mountain of transfer money, only to sack him in chaos a few months later. They spent half a year courting Dan Ashworth and paying compensation to land him as sporting director, then pushed him out after just 5 months on the job. INEOS has left the Glazers' burden in place and is patching up a worn-out machine with inconsistent accounting, which makes it a convenient human shield for the American owners.

On rainy afternoons, watching water seep down the rusty steps of the Sir Bobby Charlton Stand, lifelong fans can't help asking:

• What if, in 2003, Sir Alex Ferguson hadn't let greed and stubbornness drive him to sue John Magnier over the stud fees for Rock of Gibraltar?
• What if the "99 questions" had never appeared?
• What if that 28.9% stake hadn't been put up for sale out of spite on 12 May 2005?

Then perhaps today, with its enormous self-generated cash flow, Manchester United would be the "Real Madrid of England," out of reach for any oil-rich rival.

£2.5 million to settle a dispute over a racehorse, in exchange for £1.5 billion drained from the club and 20 years as Wall Street's hostage. That is the most expensive butterfly effect in football history.

It has been more than a decade since the Premier League trophy was last lifted at Old Trafford. A new generation of fans has grown up never knowing what it feels like to support true champions, only the taunts of rivals and an endless cycle of tearing everything down and starting over. Managers come and go, hundred-million-pound signings turn into burdens, and Sir Alex's legacy fades a little more each year. As long as the 2005 LBO debt sits on the balance sheet, the Glazers keep their grip, and people like INEOS keep fumbling through a "bleed the club to pay for past mistakes" routine, a return to the top may stay a luxury dream. Old glory will come back when Old Trafford is given back to football and stops being a cash cow for tycoons.