As Manchester United celebrate yet another Premiership, and a record haul of 20 of the most sought after prize in English football, spare a thought for Dave Whelan. Had things turned out differently the Wigan owner would today not be fearful that his team may not survive in the Premiership. Instead he would be lording it over Old Trafford and joining the celebrations of the fans as the owner of greatest club in the land.
Fantasy?
No, that is how the wheel of fate turned.
The story which Whelan told me recently goes as follows. Back in 1990 with Martin Edwards, then chairman of United and main shareholder, was looking for funds and trying to find a buyer. Whelan held talks with him about buying the club. “I bought,” says Whelan, “Man United. I agreed to buy it off Martin, 52% for £12 million. I owned JJB Sports then and my wife said ‘if you buy Manchester United, Manchester United supporters will buy at JJB Sports but Liverpool supporters won’t, Arsenal supporters won’t’. So I listened to that argument, which was fair. It was wrong. I should have bought the club and said ‘Yeah, I own Man United.’ However it didn’t happen.”
Instead, says Whelan, “I persuaded Martin to float it on the market afterwards. I said ‘I think you’ll get more money.’ Martin Edwards floated it on the Stock Exchange and instead of my £12 million he got £25 million.”
And many years later that flotation finally led to the ownership of the Glazers. Many, including Alan Sugar, believe the Glazers should never have been allowed to buy United by borrowing millions and loading debt [currently £420 million] on a previously debt free club. However Whelan cannot praise the Americans enough. “All I can say is good luck to them. They are nice people. They have managed Man United fantastically well. They are still the most profitable club in the football league.”
And arguably the best run.
And this raises the question, does it matter who owns a football club as long as it has success on the field?
And here again Manchester United provide a good example that what dictates the mood of fans are not events in the boardroom but those on the field of play. So observe that all the anguish and torment that attended matches at Old Trafford a couple of years back have disappeared. Now there is hardly any sign of Newton Heath, the name of the club when it was founded in 1878 and one that evokes its working class roots. The fans it seems are once again reconciled to the Americans, or at least not inclined to protest.
Some fans have always argued that the Glazers, contrary to popular mythology, are good for the club. One such fan, who has followed the club since 1976 and is a season-ticket holder, is Majid Ishaq. It must also be said that he is an adviser to the Glazers and close to the Americans. Listen to his defence of the Americans:
“The people who didn’t want the Glazers in charge say the club is over-burdened with debt. Actually they are not over-burdened with debt. I will give you one very quick example. If Abramovich walks away from Chelsea tomorrow, they are doomed. And if the Glazers walk away from United tomorrow, United is a sustainable business. You haven’t got an uneconomic club like Chelsea, Manchester City. If all of a sudden the wells dry up in Abu Dhabi, what is Sheik Mansour going to do? City is an unsustainable club at that point. Genuinely, if you sit back and say objectively, ‘Have the Glazers done a good job with United?’ or ‘Has Abramovich done a good job with Chelsea?’ Look at the statistics. When the Glazers took over United, Chelsea had won the league two years running. United hadn’t got a sniff and everyone thought, the fans thought, we are doomed and therefore this debt burden will doom us even more. Since then, for Abramovich, what a bad investment. Look at how much money he has put into the club and he has got three championships out of more than a billion pounds of investment, if not more actually because of the operating losses he has to fund. The proof is in the pudding here. That is not a great place to be.”
Even before this season’s triumph it was hard to argue with that conclusion. The accounts for the year to June 2012 show turnover of £320m, Chelsea’s by comparison was £261m and Manchester City’s £231m. And while the net debt is £366m, interest and other finance costs add a further £50m, the Glazers who have shifted the business end of the club to London have vastly increased the club’s commercial income with shrewd global sponsorship. If Ferguson is doing the business on the field of play, Glazers men in suits are doing it off the field as well.
Of course lack of success on the field of play has always led fans to look at the boardroom and moan. So back in the 80s, just before Whelan made his bid for the club, fans compared Manchester United very unfavourably with Liverpool – there were even books written about this. They abused Martin Edwards for not following the Liverpool way. Liverpool were then the kings of English football and their directors were praised for the way they were running the club. Now such an attitude seems to belong to the sepia tinted world of English football and hardly believable.
But that fans should have such an attitude is not a surprise. Fans want success and lack of it makes them turn first on the manager and then the board. As Irving Scholar, former Tottenham chairman, used to say when fans start shouting sack the board, that is when the manager gets his P45.
It is not surprising that Arsenal’s lack of success is leading to the same phenomenon at the Emirates with many fans increasingly convinced that Arsene Wenger has passed his sell by date and the board is useless for not recognising this.
Yet those fans should look back at United’s history and pause. Consider that back in the late 80s and early 90s Martin Edwards was pilloried for not sacking Ferguson when it looked like he would not be able to bring the title back to Old Trafford. I remember how in 1989 a bad League Cup defeat at the hands of Tottenham even led some fans to try and climb into the directors box and assault Edwards for not getting rid of Ferguson.
And even after Ferguson had worked the miracle Edwards was mocked as the butcher’s son who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. He was famously dubbed the Ringo Starr of football, just lucky to be there.
Yet who can now doubt that for all his faults he got something right. Yes, one man is responsible for Manchester United’s incredible domination of English football: Alex Ferguson. But it also owes a little to the man who employed him and stuck by him.
Such a long view is difficult in football. But fans would do well to develop it if they are not to wallow in despair when their clubs are struggling.
Mihir Bose’s latest book: Game Changer: How the English Premier League Came to Dominate the World has been published by Marshall Cavendish for £14.99. Follow Mihir on Twitter @ mihirbose