Their chief weapons may be surprise, surprise and fear, but Manchester United’s Red Knights are facing a tough challenge in ousting the Glazer family from their Old Trafford hot seats. Similarly at Liverpool, where Tom Hicks and George Gillett have frequently subjected manager Rafael Benitez to a Spanish Inquisition, a takeover by supporters remains a distant possibility. These two great rivals might not like to admit it, but they have a lot in common at the moment.
A massive amount of debt totalling almost £1billion between them, disaffected supporters who now view home matches as the perfect chance to protest, hated American owners who are seen as damaging to their clubs’ proud history and traditions, important players sold off and not adequately replaced, and a desire to once again return to their local, supporter-owned roots. There’s a lot going on in Manchester and Merseyside.
There will be widespread sniggering when it is discovered that the “Red Knights” – a group of business-minded Manchester United supporters intent on raising the capital to buy the club from the Glazers – are based in the City, the city of London that is. A “United supporting heartland” they’ll laugh, but at least their hearts are in the right place, firmly in Manchester.
Similarly the “Share Liverpool FC” group, which was launched over two years ago, are seeking to put the club back in the hands of supporters. When the plan was launched, Rogan Taylor, a football business lecturer and the group’s driving force, hoped that as many as 100,000 fans could own a piece of the club and have a say in the running of it, such as at FC Barcelona. Two years on it looks like a pipedream.
Estimates place the sum that the Red Knights would need to purchase United as close to £1billion. The Glazers paid an initial £272million when they bought United in 2005, borrowing the rest of the overall £810million cost from banks. With that debt now risen to £716million, and the Glazers unlikely, and unwilling, to sell without a profit, the size of the task becomes clearer, while Share Liverpool FC’s initial estimate of needing £500million to buy the club now looks outdated. The Reds are £237million in debt.
The prospect of English football’s two most successful clubs operating in the hands of the people who know and love them is a welcome one. Success both at home and abroad would mean even more if it was achieved with the backing of the right people, and who’s to say that it wouldn’t happen? The clubs are big enough and popular enough to have millions of fans worldwide. Billions watch on television around the world when they face each other in the Premier League, which they’ll do later this month. A “joint protest” has been tentatively motioned.
While the actions and hopes of both supporters’ groups are commendable, they look doomed to failure.
Both appear to lack the amount of multi-billions that now appear to be conducive to success at the top level of the game, and would Liverpool supporters really complain if their club was bought by rumoured interested party Mukesh Ambani, India’s wealthiest man and the world’s seventh-richest? As long as he wasn’t called Tom or George, paid for the best players and got rid of the debt he’d be welcomed with open arms.
For it is that level of wealth that both clubs need to attract. Today’s latest “world football rich list” from Deloitte places United third and Liverpool seventh in terms of income, but they continue to haemorrhage money due to debts.
The arrival of some Red Knights to save the day looks sadly like the stuff of fairytale. Heroes will have to be found elsewhere.
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