From Manchesteronline.co.uk
Saturday, 25th June 2005
Glazer: Is it Bust?
Stuart Brennan
MALCOLM Glazer has done just one thing for Manchester United - destroyed its dwindling soul and filled the gap with a shed-load of debt.
For the first time in the club's history, it is in the hands of a man whose sole interest is how much cash he can squeeze out of the name and reputation of Manchester United.
United were a club with a great tradition, a tragic and beautiful history, the club of Billy Meredith and Duncan Edwards, of Eric Cantona and George Best, the Stretford End and the Manchester Blitz.
What is it now? A means for a very rich man to make himself even richer, by driving up ticket prices, exploiting the "brand" and marketing United to people who think Munich is just another German town and that Nobby Stiles is a hairdresser's in Collyhurst.
My dad helped to rebuild Old Trafford after Adolf Hitler had done his worst in 1940 - he was born a bomb-burst away in Ordsall. Like hundreds of thousands of ordinary Mancunians, he could no longer afford to go to watch United, had he still the desire to do so.
And it will get worse.
Glazer will complete the United transformation from a club made by the people and for the people into a preserve of the middle classes, driving in from Cheshire and all points south on matchdays, consuming and spending, but knowing nothing of support.
A lot like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in fact.
United began life when a group of railway workers got together to form a club, and they soon became a central point in Manchester life.
Hijacked
In the 127 years since the club's formation, that noble ideal has been hijacked and turned into something callous and calculating, where balance sheets are the bottom line. It is a club that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. No one is claiming that this is all the fault of the Glazers. The process began years ago, when the Edwards family realised the potential and began buying up shares in the club.
The switch to a plc in 1992 freed up money to improve the ground and the team, but it also laid it wide open to predators like Rupert Murdoch and the Glazers. At least Louis Edwards had supported United - his first interest was in the football, not the dosh.
And the plc, for all its faults, had the nous to maintain some contact with supporters groups, and was accountable to the thousands of ordinary shareholders as well as the cash-hungry millionaires and City institutions who owned most of it.
Now United, bar the shouting, are solely in the hands of a man who sees them as just another business gamble, and it is the last straw for many loyal supporters.
Even for those who will continue to go to games, things will never be the same. The atmosphere, which had started to recover in recent years, will die. The sound of Old Trafford will be of polite applause from the puzzled know-nowts in the corporate areas.
Glazer is throwing the dice, and United's future depends on the outcome.
He may just throw a double six, and the club goes on to win trophy after trophy. But it will be a private party, with the traditional support bounced at the door because they cannot afford the admission price.
On the other hand, Glazer's business plan, described as "damaging" and "aggressive" by the man who is now trying to implement it, chief executive David Gill, could easily crash and burn.
Success
The image of the Glazers as street-smart American businessmen with a portfolio full of success does not quite hold true.
The last time they moved into a business they did not understand it was an unmitigated disaster, as they began a dotcom business which lost millions before it crashed under the leadership of Avi Glazer who one leading dotcom commentator said was surrounded by "almost surreal incompetence". Avi is now on the United board, and you can bet he knows less about football than he does about the internet.
The Glazers are taking a huge risk with United, and if the risk fails, they will shrug their shoulders and walk away, their personal fortunes intact, as big businessmen do, leaving their creditors to squabble over the pickings from the carcass.
Players will be sold, Old Trafford will be sold, and United will end up as another Leeds.
Overnight, the Glazers turned United from a profit-making business into the world's most debt-ridden club - and with more and more red ink on the way, if business analysts are to be believed.
Perhaps they have been taken in by the boasts of the plc, that they have 74million fans worldwide, and have not realised that the core of United support is, and always has been, in the north west of England, and in Manchester in particular.
Too many supporters have begun to be taken in by the spin. "You never know, they might prove to be a good thing, we'll just have to wait and see" is the phrase of the moment in Manchester's bars and barbershops.
Poverty
These kind of people would lie in bed as a burglar breaks in downstairs, and would say to their missus: "Let's just wait to see what he does - you never know he might leave us a few quid."
Because that is the one thing Glazer and his family are interested in - your cash.
Squalid claims that Joel Glazer is "an avid Manchester United fan" only serve to underline the poverty of the pro-Glazer argument. I have never seen Joel on the away terraces at Ayresome Park, or singing his heart out on the Stretty.
Those supporters are the ones United will try to fall back on once the Japanese and the Javans switch their allegiance to Chelsea or Barcelona. For the first time in the club's history, they will find that many of them are no longer there.
Many United supporters, probably the majority, are unhappy about Glazer but are lost in a feeling of helplessness. They feel there is nothing they can do to alter things.
They need to wake up to their own power. As far as Manchester United isconcerned, you are no longer supporters, you are customers.
If that is what they want, act like a customer - and if you cannot shake the United addiction and stop going to matches, at least refuse to give the Glazers any more of your cash.
Some fans are afraid of doing this, claiming it would just help United to crash and burn, to bring about financial meltdown even more quickly.
They are dead right. But United would come again. They did it after 1940 when Hitler's bombs seemed to have ended the dream, they did it in 1958 when so many aspirations lay shattered and torn on a Munich runway.
With Glazer removed, and even with the club shattered, United would rise again - and hopefully next time it will be the supporters who are the heart of the club, as they are at Barcelona, and not men for who money means everything.
