The 93:20 Newsletter:- Issue 27

Hello, and welcome to a “special” one-off Newsletter, in addition to your weekly one. I think you’ll understand what it is about rather quickly. Hope you enjoy it as much as i did writing it.

Naturally, I am cautious about writing about Manchester United, because the last thing I would want accused of me is that I am obsessed about them. Perish the thought. Always in their shadow, I just can’t get them off my mind, due to a scarred childhood. But as this is a newsletter where I like to talk about all sorts, and not much actual football, it is a topic that has been on my mind for a while, and I guess there is no better time to dive right in, as this week the anniversary of Brexit Jim Ratcliffe’s minority control comes to pass. After all, if this is what he can do in under a year, imagine what he is capable of over a decade – I am tingling with excitement at the prospect. For clarity, this is a newsletter solely for Manchester City fans and anyone else who has it in for United, for whatever reason. A trip down memory lane, to remind us all of how we got to this point. Not gloating (hmm), just a handy recap of where United are at, and what they have been up to. I come in peace.

It is deeply ironic that during Pep’s worst ever season at City, United somehow decide to hand over their beer and be 15 points worse, as it stands, on course for their first finish in the bottom half of the table since 1989/90. They should be thankful City handed them three of their 29 points. Ratcliffe’s power move was the death row pardon that was two minutes too late. United fans are reduced to pining for Alex Ferguson, who Jim Ratcliffe has naturally binned off, and claiming how much better he was than Pep, whilst struggling with the dawning realisation that young players joining City really did watch the blues, not the reds, winning stuff when they were kids. Because, after 12 years of City finishing amount United in the Premier League table, it really is all they know. By default it is therefore all some young City fans know, the lucky sods.

You want the best for your loved ones, you want them to succeed in life, have good health, and above all, be happy. But football is the exception – it is perfectly acceptable to wish endless misery on a loved one if they support a football team you do not like. That is just how it is, and no guilt should be attached to this view. My dad is a United fan, along with at least one other person I would take a bullet for. United fans would do the same to City fans (the mocking, not the bullet), and once did of course, and that was the correct course of action. Admit it, THAT banner counting our trophyless seasons was rather funny. But deep down, we all share a passion for the beautiful game, and I appreciate the joy in your team making you happy, and would not wish to deprive any fan, whoever they support, of that feeling for ever.

But enough sentimentality for one day.

Sometimes you have to take a step back, and reassess just how much United have messed up over a decade and more. I mean, this is Manchester United we’re talking about here. Man U.
As most will know, and there is no easy way to say this, but this all started over some horse spunk and the arrival of the Glazers, and Alex Ferguson therefore must take blame for all of this, later hanging around the club like a bad smell, casting a shadow over everything that followed, though we must talk about such matters in hushed terms - no tainting that legacy, please. The mismanagement continued due to the arrogance of thinking employing another Scottish manager who grew up in the same city and also had a face like granite was enough to maintain the dominance. Unfortunately, said manager acted like a competition winner, honoured to have the chance to manage Manchester United, rather than considering it his right to do so. Nevertheless, he was jettisoned too quickly, as United thought a new manager would quickly fix things, which it did not, as those in charge failed to grasp that football changes, and so they needed to also. The next step was assuming that spending vast amounts of money on big-name players with little consideration as to how they would gel together would also fix things.

And that is where we must start. Billions spent, and with the full support of the media naturally, who grew up with United as the most successful team, whose organic growth allowed them to act this way. They could buy back a former youth player for £90m, and even Carlo Ancelotti didn’t raise an eyebrow. Add to that buying every player City were linked with, and they were merely unwittingly digging a bigger hole.
It is weird that Harry Maguire at £80m is looking like one of their more sensible signings, and yet he remains the most expensive defender of all time. That’s Harry Maguire. Anderson and Mkhitaryan at £26m each. Hargreaves at £17m. Schneiderlin at £30m. Bebe at £7m. Depay was £31m. Van De Beek, an £80m player for £40m. Pogba for £89m, a then world-record. Lukaku for £75m. Sancho at £72m. Di Maria and Casemiro at £60m. £30m for Sanchez, £10m per goal. Antony at £86m. Veron at £28m.  And let us not forget a host of other signings they ruined, from Falcao to Valdes to Kleberson to Zaha to Djemba-Djemba to Forlan to Varane to Ralph Milne. A theatre of nightmares, where players go to give up, and retire.

United still have a pull of course, and are a sporting black hole for those in the game, lured in by the past and DNA. The endless line of managers lining up to have their reputations trashed deserve zero sympathy. They can't claim they didn't see it coming, enticed by a past form of the club that no longer exists and dollar signs. United are the head boy who got all the girls, that you bump into twenty years later clasping a Lidl carrier bag, and looking like crap, but with a faint twinkle still in those bloodshot eyes. 

As a result, the money has finally run out. The income will continue to flow in, but it will continue to flow out also, and on-pitch performances have hit hard, with £300m+ still owed on past transfers. No longer can they attempt to buy themselves out of the position they find themselves in or use Covid exceptional costs to make the numbers add up. Existing players are hardly a cash cow for a rebuild. Who is matching Rashford’s wages? A loan deal was inevitable, as it will be for many other low-performing, high-earning duds. United’s best player is in his 30s. There is not one United player I would have at City, and no one characterises the mediocrity of their squad better than Rasmus Højlund, whose Premier League goal tally for the season was exceeded by Omar Marmoush in 14 minutes at the weekend. He may cost up to £72m, though United players rarely meet the add-on criteria nowadays, so I will be kind and state he cost a mere £64m instead. On top of that, PSR constraints have led to United, as has been seen elsewhere, looking to sell some of their better players as they are home-grown and so look better on the books. Even Gary Neville can’t be arsed anymore to claim that players would choose United over City, instead resigned to claiming Spurs were historically bigger than City. And then there is the crumbling stadium, as City’s new North Stand tier nears completion, along with a bespoke hotel, naturally.

Ratcliffe will have to find £2bn from somewhere for the shiny Wembley of the North, and a big part of that somewhere will be the fans. A similar amount that they have spent on players to make themselves worse. It's not as if Ratcliffe has even hidden such intentions, removing concessions and looking to raise prices even before a decision has been made on a stadium, with the begging bowl out for the government. This will drive more long-term fans away from the sport they love, to be replaced by tourists, many of those walking away no doubt happy to make Emptyhad jibes in the past. I donate blood at Old Trafford's Legends Lounge, and it resembles a run-down local social club, the sort that sells warm John Smiths and has plaster flaking off the walls. Trapped in a bygone age, with raw chicken sold to patrons and a swarm of mice having taken over, as the rats have departed. A new stadium is the only suitable solution, but that can only be achieved with more borrowing. In the meanwhile, fans will have to do with a lick of paint, Rentokil and perhaps some new windows here and there. Love United, hate glaziers.

Sadly for some, the saviours, the red knights in shining armour, never arrived. INEOS are a mess, blaming the deindustrialization of Europe. Those pesky Greens, not wanting climate change or seas filled with plastic. Do they not know United need a new stadium and a new squad? The INEOS debt pile is forecast to reach almost £10bn this year. Two leading credit ratings agencies have raised red flags over the Ineos Group and Ratcliffe has cut sponsorship payments to the All Blacks rugby team, who have responded with legal action. The relationship with Sir Ben Ainslie after Ratcliffe’s Ineos Britannia team parted ways with the Olympic champion for this year’s America’s Cup has gone the same way. Ainslie has threatened to launch a “significant” legal fight. The cycling isn’t going too well either. No wonder he is searching for pennies down the back of the couch.

There are two ways to look at the pointless and cruel cutbacks he has made at United. Firstly, that he is just very bad at running the club, and seems to think he can take similar decisions to running a petrochemical company. Secondly, whilst his suggestion that without savings the club may go bust should be treated with the contempt it deserves, and instead be seen as little more than a desperate and futile attempt to get fans onside for his incessantly bad decisions, there may be a small clue within as to just how much trouble United may actually be in. That the cuts are being made out of sheer desperation, and with no prospect of Champions League football again next season, though they will probably fluke their way to a Europa League trophy. I've waited my whole life for this moment, but it seems that United may actually be skint. 

And it's hard not to roll around on the floor guffawing at how their saviour and his team of world-class executives have somehow managed to make a really bad situation immeasurably worse. Having previously abandoned all ideas of forward planning in favour of chasing immediate success, they fuelled this approach due to an ever-present panic at what the noisy neighbours across town were doing, every decision merely serving to widen the gap between the two sides, the appointment of Jose Mourinho a case in point, brought in to tactically best Pep, before fleeing with his tail between his legs, and happy to do so, with his bank account once more enriched.

But as alluded to, somehow those in power at United have somehow managed to make things much, much worse. They held on to another average manager for too long, but not before they let him spunk another £150m on bang-average players, had to pay him off, then hired a manager whose style of play is utterly ill-suited to the existing squad, whilst having to pay for his services mid-season, disrupting any chances of progress, giving him a “now or never” ultimatum to join, a man who is pretty much unsackable, as there are only so many managers one club can sack, whilst head hunting a Sporting Director for many months, paying millions for his services and then paying millions more to get rid of him, because the guy they had hunted didn't hold similar ideas on how to run the club, the sort of thing you'd have expected them to have checked before hiring him. Their executive recruitment policy has mirrored their doomed player recruitment policy of the last decade. Get all the big names in, as a show of strength and intent, a “best in class” approach, without considering whether they are actually the best option for the club in its current guise. I’m not bitter, but either way, I hope Omar Berrada is hating every single minute. As Raheem Sterling has learned, the grass is not always greener on the other side, and right now, United’s executives are not serious people.

Add to that Jim Ratcliffe, in under a year, destroying the morale of the entire club staff one bonus at a time, the people who actually keep the club running, and you have to wonder if he is secretly a big blue. The latest breaking news? Manchester United staff have been warned that leaks over Ineos’s drastic cuts are “damaging to colleagues and the wider club” in an email to announce a restructuring meeting this month...according to a leak to the Telegraph. Another 200 redundancies are planned.

As a blue, there was one prospect in recent times that filled me with dread. A Qatari takeover. Now don't get me wrong, any United fan who had moral concerns about Qatari money buying United was perfectly entitled to that opinion. I have them over City’s owner, and whilst very thankful for my lot, I would never blow smoke up the arse of a man I share no comradeship or common ideals with. What was more telling was how Jim Ratcliffe escaped such judgments on his character, morals, or source of his wealth, as INEOS make plans to further pollute the planet. The local lad done good was untouchable, until he was in place, and everyone realised his true character, by pissing off pretty much everyone at the club. Offshore Jim, as The Price of Football's Kieran Maguire likes to refer to him, really has had an easy ride, until he actually had responsibilities at the club. A man who dismissed the women's team as an inconvenience to his plans. No money in them, after all. 

As I walked back to town after the match on Saturday, a mate argued that a United run as well as City, with the same backing, would blow City out the water, presumably as that pull remains, as does the global fanbase numbers, for now. I don't totally agree with him, but I don't totally disagree either. Thankfully, we will never know. The Qatari option, if their intentions were genuine, would have seen debt wiped, a new stadium built without begging letters to the government, and the clear possibility of the old powerhouse returning. But no, oil money is bad, remember. And now they have gone with the majority fans’ choice, who they now realise was all smoke and mirrors. I guarantee you now - if the Qatari option of Sheikh Jassim becomes an option once more, many a red will quickly abandon any moral concerns they once had.

For any non-United fan, the heroes of this saga are clear and obvious, with no VAR intervention required. The greatest trick the Glazers ever pulled was convincing the world they didn't exist, and they have played an absolute blinder. Somehow, after almost twenty years of leeching dividends off the club, they have allowed Ratcliffe to ride into town, with a minority control, and be the figurehead for every single misstep and fuck up thereafter. Absolute genius, whilst maintaining majority shares and continuing to leech off the club, feet up, smoking a Cuban cigar or two.

Now, whilst this piece will naturally come across as a gloating piece from an arrogant blue, because much of it is, which may be seen as hypocritical considering the screen shot I share you with all at the end of this article, it should be said that any fan deserves better from their football team and its owners than what United have received for over a decade. It is hard to cope with such inept mismanagement for such a long time, especially off the back of unparalleled success. Much as we may all jest about green and gold scarves every now and then, the fans have been entirely justified in campaigning against their leeching owners, other mismanagement, and of course ticket prices, a campaign that can only succeed if fans come together, as history has ably demonstrated. But having once more considered the sneering, condescending arrogance of the piece that ends this newsletter (no peeking, now), then consider it payback that we blues may occasionally act in kind. And by stating facts, rather than the tired stereotypes and cliches that you will be rewarded with shortly. Blues of a certain age won’t forget the patronising relationship that existed for decades, and welcome the return of a true rivalry once more, like the one that existed from 2010-13. No, scrap that, relegation is the only favourable outcome now.

But perhaps I can offer a crumb of comfort during these trying times. I hear some guy called Antony is ripping it up for Real Betis, along with some bloke called McTominay at Napoli. One for United’s scouts to look at perhaps?

There is one final reason to write all this now. I do not wish, as a superstitious man (for football alone), to tempt fate.

But are United done?

Is there a way back, in the foreseeable future? I think not, and that is what many United fans may have to accept. Over a decade of incompetence has finally and definitively come home to roost, and the worst may be yet to come. A fish rots from the head down, and the head is Jim Ratcliffe and the Glazers. City are having a bad season, but I am confident they will be back, soon. United, not so. I have accepted for many years that the time would come that United would be back winning the big trophies, because they are too big and too wealthy not to, and one day would start making sensible decisions again, so as blues we must enjoy their failure whilst we could. Now they have no advantage except their past history. And now the money has dried up. The squad is woefully inadequate, and it would take years and years of the shrewdest stewardship just to get them competing again. A new stadium, should it happen, is many years away. I say without mocking – in almost every metric, they are inferior to the teams at the top. The future is bleak. All because of a lack of planning and an arrogance that must be wiped out should they want the glory years to return, and a level of mismanagement so vast i could not edit this article to under 3000 words.

Shame, innit?

Finally, that piece I was alluding to earlier. This was the Guardian’s United fan (Daniel Harris) view ahead of the 2011 FA Cup semi-final. The blue view was provided by none other than Dave Wallace, and was a fair, reflective piece that not once had a dig at United.

And then there was this….drink it in…

The young me never thought he would get to say it, but here goes. Everything they do, we do better. Wouldn’t you agree, Daniel?

#uptheblues