Manchester
United fans not wholly convinced by their team's
performances, balance and strength in depth so far this season can
take comfort from the explanations provided throughout the summer,
that Sir Alex
Ferguson's decision to spend little of the £80m received
for Cristiano
Ronaldo has nothing to do with the massive debts loaded
on the club.
As the transfer window closed, Sir Alex Ferguson stayed true to
his resolution, that he is happy with his squad, the market is
overpriced and, perhaps most oddly, that in the whole of world
football, the players are simply not there with the skill and
psychological equipment worthy of a Manchester United squad number.
In a summer of perpetual rumour, the only player United confirmed
Ferguson genuinely did want was Karim Benzema, and after the French
striker was swept up in Real Madrid's trolley dash round the
Pannini sticker album, Ferguson did not look for another.
So United head for the heart of the season having replaced
Ronaldo, who scored 25 goals last year in all competitions, and
Carlos Tevez, who scored 15 while regularly being held in reserve,
with Michael Owen, signed on a free after stumbling through 10
goals in a wretched flail against Newcastle's impending relegation.
Ferguson is clearly confident that £17m spent on Luis Antonio
Valencia (three goals for Wigan last year) will prove a prudent
investment while Gabriel Obertan, the 20 year old French striker
who played just eight league matches for champions Bordeaux and
went on loan to mid-table Lorient, has been tracked as one for the
future.
Throughout the summer, while Ferguson was emphasising his
disdain for a market in which Real, with borrowed euros, and
Manchester City, with Abu Dhabi oil riches, were the most
substantial spenders, United's owners wanted it to be known that
they had not banked the Ronaldo money to help deal with the
debt.
The accounts for the thicket of Manchester United companies,
which begin with a football club based in Stretford and ultimately
lodge the Glazer family's ownership in the low tax, Las Vegas,
roulette wheel US State of Nevada, were most recently filed for the
year to June 2008. They showed the club £699m in debt to banks and
hedge funds, three years after the Glazers borrowed £525m to
finance their 2005 takeover. The interest payable in just three
years after that, by a club always previously debt-free, has been a
barely believable £263m.
That is money from fans, TV and other commercial income which
could have been put to all manner of better uses. Yet even with the
massive interest paid out, the debt the Glazers originally loaded
on to United has continued to climb, because the most expensive
borrowing, from hedge funds at 14.25% interest a year, has not
actually been paid, but "rolls up" and is added to the total amount
owed.
In Seoul on the United's pre-season tour, the Glazer family's
spokesman stressed to the accompanying media that United, Ferguson
included, did, despite all that, have £60m to spend. Even though
United lost £44.8m last year, because of the £69m interest payable,
the spokesman pointed to the club's booming turnover, and operating
profit, to say the money was there if Ferguson chose to spend
it.
"The manager has a significant amount of money to invest if he
wants to," the spokesman, Tehsin Nayani, said. "The delay [in
signing anybody] is because the manager has not been able to locate
the players that he believes fit the Manchester United mindset.
"We are talking about a net amount of about £60m, and that is
cash that can be reinvested in the squad, doing up the toilets or
new carpets."
The transfer market may, as Ferguson complains, be inflated,
although City have seen it as a buyer's summer, with some players
available at fair enough prices because many clubs are in a
financial squeeze. At Old Trafford, though, the argument has held:
Ferguson has simply not wanted any more players for his squad even
though all that money was available to him, and the Glazers have
not insisted on banking it to fend off the vast debts with which
they loaded the club.
Protesting United fans have been told from the beginning that
they are being financially naïve and illiterate to think that
hundreds of millions of pounds of debt, to pay for a takeover none
of them wanted, will have any actual effect on their club. The
Glazers have been able to point to three Premier League titles won
since they arrived, and the 2008 European Champions League trophy,
as strong evidence for the argument that nobody should worry about
the debt.
Now, with Ronaldo and Tevez departed, and the blessed Paul
Scholes and Ryan Giggs scampering towards their sunsets, we can
only keep taking the owners at their word, because there is no way
of seeing where the £80m Ronaldo money has actually gone. As the
transfer window has closed without much of the spare £60m
reinvested in the squad, United fans know what to look excitedly
out for: a wondrous new experience in the Old Trafford toilets, or
some of the plushest carpets in world football.