Some idiots said 'well if it happens you can support another team' .... no you can't .... you can watch another team but you will never truly support them.

I'll second that. When I was in my early years of secondary school a guy in my class went to every Partick Thistle match, home and away. Yet he would never refer to himself as a Thistle fan. He was a Third Lanark fan and they had gone out of business a couple of years previously so he had to find someone else to watch. But NOT to support..

Well said, that man. Big difference.

Mick

Calum (my son) and I sometimes have a conversation where we discuss who we'd support if there was no United - Can never agree on who we'd watch (not support) but know it would never be the same - Like you Mick I don't know what I'd do

My whole life is football based - I coach football, I watch Calum play for STFC CoE and watch STFC home games and telly Clap United - But the only time football deeply hurts me is when United lose ! But them not being in existence too scary to contemplate

by now, i'm immune to the hurt this season

The issue has now deepened for both clubs now though - Rtaher than make "Marquee" signings IF your lot dont finish in the top 4 and we win nothing - it will be "Marquee" sales

Selling naming rights of the ground and ridiculous bond offers are a stop gap to delay the inevitable - hence why I wantt it sorted and will only be telly clapping from now on

F.C.United of Manchester was formed by supporters who foresaw the current circumstances at Old Trafford.
I think with the time and money they have invested into their new club they will consider themselves supporters of a new club.


Even little,friendly Norwich City F.C. are 22 million pounds in debt.
More cookery books rather then cooking the books required

and harry rednapp thinks he has problems.

[quote="Thunderclap"]F.C.United of Manchester was formed by supporters who foresaw the current circumstances at Old Trafford.
I think with the time and money they have invested into their new club they will consider themselves supporters of a new club.

They do and they dont - they call them "Little Utd" and still support "Big Utd" and watch them on telly when possible - It caused huge divisions and spilt friendships etc but thousands thought they had to make a stand

Any clued up fan foresaw it happening but I , like several thousand more, couldn't give up the drug of supporting the shirts - Now it needs those several thousands to do it and force them to sell and take whatever the circumstances it brings throws at us

Forcing them to sell is, sadly, impossible unless they want to and they will only want to if they can make a substantial profit. In the meantime they will bleed the club dry.

Perhaps it needs this for clubs to realize they're subject to the same economic realities as the rest of the world.If you get into massive debt it might come back and bite you........HARD!

Good article by Jim White

Figures released this week show Manchester United's owners the Glazer family have presided over the most remarkable piece of reverse alchemy ever witnessed in football circles.
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.
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.

As the British tax-payer has a stake in all the banks who borrowed from the Government surely they also have a stake in the football clubs who are in massive debt to said banks,so shouldn't they be able to get in free and sit in the Dire-ctors box?

http://www.imusa.org/newsarticle.php?id=232

If you have a lot of time to spare, here over 222 pages is exactly how the Glazers will milk MU dry. It beggars belief that they could have passed the FA's 'fit & proper person' test. Actually it doesn't. Hitler, Idi Amin, Emperor Bokassa and every other despot would pass. The only people who fail are people like the bloke at Rotherham who, despite great effort, was unable to stop the club slipping into administration twice.

In football admin terms only the SFA can match the FA for spectacular ineptitude.

This morning's Guardian suggests Dalglish will be parachuted in to save Liverpool's season.

according to andy mitten (editor of United we stand) that article was very emasculated as the lawyers had to omit some stuff

Met some of them on trains over the years, to-ing and fro-ing from various games. They may be "Little Utd" but they don't seem to know any songs that aren't about "Big Utd".

Mick