If the bankers and financial advisers had their way, the Glazer takeover of Manchester United in May 2005 would never have happened.
“There were so many bumps in the road and obstacles that had to be cleared,” one key player in the takeover process recalls now. “There was no recommendation from the United board that shareholders should support the bid and you just don’t do hostile, leveraged takeovers.
“There was also no certainty that the Irish [John Magnier and JP McManus] would sell their stake, so it was a hugely challenging process and the people who should have been calm and measured – the bankers – were worried.
United fans voiced their opposition to an American takeover
“But the calmest people in the whole process were the Glazers and they were the guys urging everyone else not to over-react and stay calm, even though Joel Glazer was suffering from appendicitis during the build-up to the takeover.”
Appendicitis was the least of Joel Glazer’s concerns, with the Florida‑based owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers facing almighty resistance from supporters and shareholders alike as the family attempted to complete a £790 million takeover of United.
Effigies of Malcolm Glazer, the head of the family, were burned outside Old Trafford, a reserve-team fixture was halted by supporters in balaclavas, who presented themselves as the ‘Manchester Education Committee’, holding aloft an anti-Glazer banner, and the club’s plc was board headed by the chief executive David Gill who, in August 2004, had warned that ‘debt is the road to ruin’ when a takeover began to appear inevitable.
Despite concerns, the Glazers ploughed ahead with the purchase of United
But despite the ‘bumps in the road’ between October 2004, when the Glazers approached the 30 per cent stake barrier that would have triggered a compulsory takeover bid, to the day in early May 2005 when Magnier and McManus agreed to sell their 28.7 per cent holding, the Americans resisted the concerns and fears of their advisers and ploughed on with the takeover, despite a rising share price that forced them to rely on hedge funds to seal the deal.
Sixteen years after Michael Knighton failed to complete a £20 million takeover of the club, and six years on from the Monopolies and Mergers Commission’s decision to block BSkyB’s £623 million takeover bid following another fiercely-fought supporter-led campaign against prospective new owners, English football’s biggest club was now in the hands of a reviled family from Florida and facing an uncertain future.
Many fans turned their back on the club, some choosing to form the breakaway team FC United of Manchester in protest, while others braced themselves for higher ticket prices and the sale of star players to help pay the debts imposed by the Glazers mortgaging the club to pay for the takeover.
Fears were also raised of Old Trafford being sold off the to the highest bidder in a naming rights auction, but while Cristiano Ronaldo was sold to Real Madrid for a world record £80 million in June 2009 – the proceeds of the sale were not reinvested in the team at a time when the Glazers’ financial empire began to run into difficulties in the United States – the stadium remains unbranded.
Cristiano Ronaldo was sold to Real Madrid for a world record £80 million
Having plunged the club into debt to the tune of almost £700 million with their leveraged takeover, hostility reached fever pitch when a vehicle carrying the Glazer brothers, Joel, Bryan and Avram, was attacked outside Old Trafford two months after the buy-out was completed.
It led to Joel appearing on the club’s in-house television channel, MUTV, to speak for the only time to the supporters in an attempt to allay their fears. “The only thing that is going to change views is things that happen over time, so I caution people that this is a marathon and not a sprint,” Glazer said in July 2005. “Judge us over the long haul, don’t judge us on a day or the last several months. We would have not got involved with Manchester United if we did not feel that the club, under our ownership, could continue to be the great club it has been.
“A lot of businesses have debt. Debt can mean different things to different people, but I can assure everybody that the structure that was put in place is a structure we’re extremely comfortable with. It is not a bottomless pit, but the way this club has been operating in the past is going to be the way it’s going to operate in the future. This should not scare you. It is business as usual, business as it’s always been. It is time to put all the distractions aside, compete on the pitch and win the trophies everyone wants.”
Sir Bobby Charlton, the United great and club director, also joined in the call for calm after speaking to the Glazers about his own concerns.
“I’m like any other football fan,” Charlton said. “I’ve been waking up in the night wondering what was going on. But they [Glazers] allayed a lot of my fears. I asked them questions about the future of the club and the future of people who were wrapped up in the club. They were receptive to everything and said they would do everything they could to make this a successful football club.”
Among the playing squad, there was silence. Equally, Sir Alex Ferguson, whose power could have mortally wounded the Glazers at any stage, also chose to work with, rather than against, the owners.
Roy Keane, the club captain at the time of the takeover, offered a phlegmatic view of the change of ownership when addressing the issue in his recent autobiography, The Second Half. “From the players’ point of view, it didn’t bother us too much,” Keane wrote. “I had a few shares in the club as part of my contract. So the Glazers coming in was worth a few bob to me.”
On the field, United have won 15 trophies under the Glazers, two more than Chelsea have won over the same period, but the present and the future appears to be a different landscape, one which many believe has been shaped by decisions made between the sale of Ronaldo and Ferguson’s retirement in May 2013.
It was a stormy four-year period, marked by under-investment in the playing squad and refinancing.
“What I’d like to know was if Sir Alex was truly – truly – comfortable, let alone happy, with having to work in the ‘value’ era,” said Barney Chilton, editor of fanzine Red News. “Money that could have been spent on players went on debts, banks and loans and it took us failing to live up to standards for the Glazers to finally find that Ronaldo money. The Glazers must be forever grateful they had Fergie there.”
During the ‘value years’, the Glazers’ decision to float a £500 million bond issue in 2010 sparked the birth of the green-and-gold campaign, with supporters brandishing scarves in the colours of Newton Heath, the club which became Manchester United, in protest against the owners.
A £500 million bond issue in 2010 sparked the birth of the green-and-gold campaign
Blue State Digital, the internet strategy company which played a key role in Barack Obama’s successful 2008 Presidential campaign, were enlisted by supporters’ groups to help promote their campaign, while a group of wealthy individuals, the Red Knights, attempted to raise funds to mount a takeover bid.
When David Beckham, returning to Old Trafford in a Champions League fixture with AC Milan, placed a green-and-gold scarf around his neck at the end of the game in March 2010, it seemed as though a tipping point had been reached, with the Glazers now facing a decisive moment. But it proved to be the movement’s zenith, with the campaign losing momentum from that point onwards, even though senior figures within Old Trafford acknowledged the power of the green-and-gold image. “It was a visual, non-aggressive means of protest,” one senior figure at United claimed. “It was Gandhiesque in many respects, with the supporters linking it to the club’s old colours, but there was never any sense that it would lead to a change of ownership.”
David Beckham wore a green and gold scarf
The positive spin on the Glazers, 10 years on, is that they have become a model for American owners having avoided the controversies and failures of the Hicks and Gillett regime at Liverpool and laid the blueprint for commercial growth which all rivals now aim to emulate.
The debt has been reduced by half, with interest payments now a drop in the ocean for a club of United’s financial might. But many would argue that allowing more than £700 million of club money to be drained away on interest repayments and refinancing costs has left United in the position it now occupies, with huge sums being invested in the playing squad in order to make up for the lack of spending between 2009 and 2013.
It seems that, for all their mistakes and successes, the ten year anniversary of the takeover is only the start of the Glazer story. There is no sign of the club being sold anytime soon, with a £1.5 billion offer from Middle East being rejected in 2009. But with Ferguson gone and United’s era of dominance over, the next 10 years promise to be as challenging as the first 10.
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