Jim White: Manchester United's debt as red as their famous shirts

Posted Friday, January 15, 2010 by

Changing times: The Glazer family have taken Manchester United into the red

This season at Manchester United, the owners have watched their club tumble out of the FA Cup at the first attempt, lose more league games by January than in any previous Premier League term and sustain an injury crisis which has revealed worrying fault lines in the squad. But at least the Glazer family can pride themselves on one thing: figures released this week show they have presided over the most remarkable piece of reverse alchemy ever witnessed in football circles.

The annual accounts reveal that United are these days turning over more money than ever has been recorded in the English game, cash is spinning in through every turnstile, on match days the Warwick Road is knee deep in notes.

Yet somehow, despite all this income, the Glazers managed to steer the club into the position where only the sale of their best player last season prevented the bottom line looking redder than the team’s home shirt. Never mind Sir Alan Sugar’s metaphor of football finance resembling prune juice, when it comes to money, United have overdosed on Senna Pods.

They are by no means the only ones. Not a single club in the upper reaches of a league which routinely prides itself as being the richest in the world are remotely financially plausible.
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Chelsea and Manchester City are producing losses that would be utterly unsustainable were they not subsidised by the mineral wealth of other nations. Like United, Liverpool are as weighed down by imported borrowings as they are by imported substandard players.

Arsenal, the one club who actually have something to show for all that debt in the shape of a new stadium, are hamstrung by the downturn in the property market precluding them profiting as much as they anticipated from their Highbury development.

Burnley, seemingly the only Premier League operation to subscribe to Mr Micawber’s attitude to borrowing, have just lost their manager simply because he wearied of not being gifted sufficient quantities of someone else’s money to fling around.

Apologists for the Glazers would doubtless argue that four full seasons in control of United have produced an abundance of playing success. One European Cup, three titles, two League Cups and a World Cup Championship have been popped in the trophy room since they took control. But the Florida family have contributed nothing to this. They are often called investors, but not a penny has come from their pockets to bolster the team.

As the accounts make clear, family members extracted money from the club, borrowing £20million in loans and “consultancy fees”.

Just like the American owners of Liverpool, for them the financial flow is pretty much all one way. The consequences of such ownership have become almost comical. In a desperate bid to bring down costs, former players who host pricey hospitality packages at Old Trafford have been told to buy their own meals.

At the club’s soon to be for sale training complex, the ground staff have had their privilege of free toast with their morning coffee withdrawn. Almost every crumb, it seems, has to be shovelled int the gaping maw of debt. With the scramble to pay off loans nobody wanted and the club never needed, so the culture is changing at Old Trafford.

The surprisingly friendly, family atmosphere that has long held sway behind the scenes is in jeopardy. As for the fans, well the owners have indicated precisely how they feel about their loyal support.

In the prospectus for the bond issue designed to re-scale the debt mountain, there is much boasting about their ability to impose above-inflation ticket price rises, thus casually insulting the hand that feeds.

Whatever the shocking detail of the Glazers’ stewardship, United are not about to go under.

Indeed it is possible to envisage a conclusion to this period of corrosive debt in which the place is sold on to a new owner for more than the Americans paid for it.

What a bitter turnaround that would be: the Glazers walking away with a profit. Though as it happens, most United fans would swallow such an injustice to see the club rid at the earliest opportunity of their stewardship.

So long, that is, as the family were made to pay for their tickets in the unlikely event of them ever coming back to Old Trafford.