European Football

No way you will stay out of cl, far to rich.

I'm pretty confident we will get back in to the CL this year, if not certainly next year. But we don't have to worry until 2016-17 anyways

In light of Red Russian's articles yesterday, part of me hoped it did include this seasons omission from the CL ergo, forcing Ed and co. to pay whatever it takes to get us back to the summit.

You need to get back in this year really regardless of the sponsorship deal as it has a knock on impact on your interest payments too.

comment by meltonblue (U10617)
posted 3 minutes ago
You need to get back in this year really regardless of the sponsorship deal as it has a knock on impact on your interest payments too.
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any early predictions ?

For you guys? Really difficult to say blabla, I think you need a couple of players more in yet. Herrera and shaw are good signings, and Van Gaal is a fantastic manager, but I don't see either of them as te finished article yet or proven fully at the very top.

Top four I think will go back to Chelsea, Arsenal, City and United, I'm just not sure on the order and wouldn't like to predict until the end of the transfer window.

melton

I don't think the effect will be as big as it could have been a few years back.

I'm sure I read recently that a few years back the interest payments were taking up 70% of our yearly income but that is now down to just 15%.

Of course it won't help, not just with repayments but also getting in the top players we want but with our new sponsorship deals with Adidas, Chevrolet and Aon we are making a hell of a lot of money that will pay off the debt sooner rather than later.

I do admire what Woodward has done regarding our commercial side but there is also a slight concern that he and the club may be looking at United more as a business making money than a football club that want to win trophies. When you hear what LVG says recently he does seem lightly irritated by the importance of the commercial side at United. Lets hope we don't get side tracked by all this wealth and understand why United exist in the first place.

Manutd,

There's a clause in your contract that a financial penalty occurs if you go two consecutive seasons without champions league football (I think it was 65 million, it was in your reports a couple of years ago). You are right that with the business side,the impact isn't as great now as it would have been before though.

I do get what you mean, of the reports I've read recently, the sponsorship commitments that you as a club have to fulfil is pretty big and I'm not surprised Van Gaal has been a bit critical of it. With a club like United, as well as Woodward has done on the commercial side, there's an argument that you should do really due to the size of your fanbase and the global exposure of the pl - it becomes a question of how far to take it and there is certainly an argument you could be close to breaking point in terms of it having a detrimental effect on the pitch.

I definitely get what you are saying.

melton

Yeah I think if we fail to reach the CL in 2 consecutive years the annual fee from Adidas goes from around £75m to £50m. It's a big loss but considering that the second biggest shirt deal is £30m a year we still won't be doing bad.

It's all about greed which is something I hate. Obviously Woodward and the money men can see all these brilliant deals and all the money that comes flooding in but lets just think about what we do on the pitch first. His interview the other day was slightly embarrassing stating we can make a world record bid if we need to and money is no object, he should be saying that AFTER we have concluded all our deals, not now, we still have a lot of work to do and saying stuff like that really doesn't help, he said similar things last season too and look how that went.

Agreed.

That first bit, just to clarify, the financial penalty I was referring to are linked to your credit arrangement, it is separate to the sponsorship one. Either way, you are still ok due to the size of the Adidas and Chevrolet deals, just that I wasn't particularly sure why the Adidas drop was big news considering other existing or stiles are bigger for you anyway.

Modern football, eh?