United Road Take Me Home

Iceberg ahead?

Over the last twelve months United's style and success on the pitch has served to provide a shimmering smokescreen concealing the ever more parlous state of the club's business affairs. Well, the smoke drifted last week and through the murk it was possible to see the catastrophic mess that the Glazer coup has left behind. The United money making machine was going full tilt last year with revenue flying in from all directions - the TV bonanza, European glory, increased ticket prices having no noticeable imact on demand - yet still the debt contines to swell with no signs of abating. As has been widely noted, if they can't trim any of the debt in a good year, what on earth will happen in a lean one?

Indeed anyone hoping that the prevailing economic climate would deter the club from hiking prices again this summer might want to rethink. Our loyalty hasn't snapped yet, so clearly they can yank the rope a little bit more, no doubt goes the reasoning from the boardroom. Naturally this bothers me somewhat. The knowledge that I'm little more than a customer whose blind loyatly can be relied upon to service a debt that should never have been allowed to arise in the first place should make me throbe with rage. But, note the should.

The threat of a price increase does scare me - there is a point when I will have to say enough is enough and walk away - but the rest of this financial talk is starting to leave my more numb than angry. Why? Perhaps it's credit-cruch fatigue. When every day delivers more talk of trillion pound injections to the economy you start to become a little inured to financial panic. Such figures spiral away from reality and into the realm of abstraction.

Then there's the PLC issue. Say that all this profit wasn't getting swallowed in the crater of debt, where would it go? Would season ticket prices suddenly tumble? Not likely when they're the source of the profit in the first place. Would Messi suddenly be wearing red? Again, not likely, and do we really want to be trading in a galacticos anyway? The profits would seep straight out of the door into the pockets of the investment funds that hold the shares. The idea that pre-Glazer United was a socialist Utopia is a spot of revisionism too far.

Arguably, give or take the recent stumble in form that is perfectly understandable given the expectations the team have to haul around with them, the squad is its finest shape in years. Can we really maintain the idea that this is in no way connected to the Glazer's? I think not. I said as much in a recent UWS piece and was soundly dressed down by a fellow writer for my trouble. I get where he's coming from. He thinks I'm being naive and I think the same of him. If one of us has to be right, I would very much prefer it not to be me. Off the peg historical analogies are easy to find. They said the Titanic was unsinkable. That huge iceberg of debt looming in the path of the club we both love could well destroy us. But I just can't see it. And you can read that line in as many ways as you want.

posted by Royton Red @ 8:24 PM