Will the Glazers sell?

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Fuck the Glazers
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JoelfuckingGlazer wrote: 1 year ago

We ain't getting top 4. The only real driver for sale is a reduction in revenue; they don't give a fuck about what the fans think.
Seems like they're trying to save 22m via wages and lack of spending so they don't feel the hit
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bman2
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Paywalled

Fuck the Glazers
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We've been here before mind in 2010 when the Glazers simply refused the bid. Let's see what happens.
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JoelfuckingGlazer
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I'm guarded, but there seems to be more and more noise building. That protest on Monday could be huge.
Fuck the Glazers
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It seems everyone is getting behind the Jim Ratcliffe bid as the saviour. That's alarming cos the Glazers can and probably will just say no. I don't think they want a lump sum, not yet, I think they want to continue milking it for many years to come - especially if they can enact the european super league cos that will increase the value of the club by billions.

What I think is a better hope is continued disruption of games, sponsors, boycotts, direct action etc to make it as difficult as possible for them to run the club.
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JoelfuckingGlazer
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The wording used by his spokesperson specifically cites an interest in acquiring a share if its with a view to a longer term takeover. I don't see him coming on board unless there are commitments to that end. And I mean proper commitments, not just words.
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OliverB
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The protests...
Are never going to force the Glazers into deciding to sell.
Why would you sell a business that you can still use to benefit you.
Foreign owners don't care if they are liked by the fans or not, being liked by the fans can be a hindrance to foreign owners.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe...
We have seen Elon Musk put certain Tweets out to influence the shares markets and Elon has started a trend with the Twitter deal, in my opinion Elon was never going to buy Twitter in the first place, the way he was speaking of unbanning the controversial Donald Trump and other plans before the deal had been done didn't seem very serious to me.
I don't think Radders will buy into MUFC, it will be him thinking of how much publicity he can get out of potentially investing into MUFC, He will be getting his name on people's lips and there will be millions of football fans around the world now typing Jim Ratcliffe into Google, looking at his businesses etc etc.
;)
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swampash
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Sorry, but can anyone make sense of the original suggestion behind the bids - specifically the reference suggesting that they are predicated on the belief the 'Glazers would sell for 6 Billion'. Where does that valuation for the Glazers shares come from? Is it really the multiple of the number of their shares times the share price or is it simply wrong?
It just sounds like a ridiculous figure to me for what is a pretty distressed asset.
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JoelfuckingGlazer
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swampash wrote: 1 year ago Sorry, but can anyone make sense of the original suggestion behind the bids - specifically the reference suggesting that they are predicated on the belief the 'Glazers would sell for 6 Billion'. Where does that valuation for the Glazers shares come from? Is it really the multiple of the number of their shares times the share price or is it simply wrong?
It just sounds like a ridiculous figure to me for what is a pretty distressed asset.
How are these things ever valued? Chelsea went for £4.2b and their debt at the time was double ours. Yes, we need lots of investment, but surely the prestige and commercial potential of United makes it a higher value asset than Chelsea?

The thing that's been lacking during previous protests, has been the absence of a publicly willing and credible buyer. We now have that. Protests need to be loud and disruptive, but they need to be commercially focused as well. Zero business through merchandise, boycott all matchday sales, publicly boycott all club sponsors. It needs proper coordination and focus.
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bman2
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In light of recent developments, I think this thread should get the subtitle “The Hope That Kills You”.

Ratcliffe’s public position and his past actions are probably the best prospect out there for United supporters. I will say that hoping on a billionaire saviour grinds my gears philosophically, and it’s a sad reflection of the times we’re in. But given the landscape, someone like Ratcliffe (Radcliffe?) definitely is the best prospect. He has a history of supporting United. He has a history of getting involved in the sports business in a serious way, a bit like the people who own Liverpool. He already owns Nice (I wonder if he’d have to sell it if he bought United?), so he’s got some sense of the sport and will already have people working for him who know a thing or two about running a football club.

United would be a business still, obviously, but that doesn’t bother me. I’d rather that than the club being a PR exercise for a horrible government. Like most fans, I just want United to be a *competent* business instead of an incompetent one. When you look at the club that the Glazers bought, under Ferguson it had become the colossus of English football, and should have been safely a successful giant like Bayern or Real Madrid for the indefinite future. One of the cornerstones of world club football. It’s taken less than a decade since Ferguson left for United to stop even being a CL team.

But the Glazers are not going to want to sell a minority share to a competent guy with opinions, like Ratcliffe. They’ll want to flog it to some private equity firm. They’ll retain full control. They’ll get a cash injection to try to repair some of the damage they’ve done: spend it the stadium, buy some players. But their incompetence is never going to change, so the money will be wasted. At the same time, the club will gauged even more for cash and dividends for the private equity firm.

I really think the protests should focus on forcing the Glazers to deal with Ratcliffe. The combination of grass roots pressure from below, with Ratcliffe’s high-level political and business maneuvering, might just work. I think it’s the best chance.

Otherwise we’ll just hear that some shit unaccountable American private equity firm has bought out some of the Glazer siblings, and nothing will change.

Addendum: the recent precedent of the government setting some of the terms of the Chelsea sale is helpful. Obviously there’s none of the war sanctions legal pretext, so seems totally different. But it does make it a bit easier for the government and/or FA to nudge the Glazers in the right direction.
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