Two Manchester Uniteds? (All Other Clubs in General)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	All Other Clubs in General
Date:	24/03/09 (159 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The romance of football lives on

Disadvantages: Too much money at the top

Most of you will know that a while back a group of disgruntled Manchester United fans formed a breakaway football team, FC United of Manchester, to represent the 'real fans' after United were effectively second mortgaged by the Glazier Brothers, the Americans piling huge debt on to a once financially stable club, reducing the new owners personal exposure in the process. Anti-Semitic comments were made and graffiti scrawled on iconic statues that guarded the Old Trafford legend, what the brothers were really buying into, the moronic egging of the Glaziers car and hotel making it clear it would be tough for the Americans. The core fans over-reacted to the new face of football. But Manchester United went on to win two premierships and the fabled Champions League with the Glaziers at the helm in the interim to prove it was the right decision, the squad value doubling in quality and expense in just three years. In fact Manchester United are the first team since Liverpool in the seventies to be on for all four major trophies since the great Liverpool sides in the 70s. They currently hold every trophy bar the FA Cup. If they reach and win the Cup Final and retain the league they will be the first to hold all of five.

Like any huge business you need capital to expand and so succeed and United did just that, the consolidated debt down from £765 million to £560 million, but the interest payments an incredible £52 million a year. If you don't invest in the future you die like Newcastle United or you stagnate like Everton. The top four are the top four because they have made the right choices.

So after nearly four years where are FC United today? I have a feeling one or two of you have been wondering that. Well, after three straight promotions, two league championships and two cups they are one win away from the play-off zone in the Unibond Premier League. If they go up they will be in the Blue Square Premier North, two promotions away from the actual league. With home crowds of 3,000 plus and up to 1000 regular travelling fans they are more than capable of making the Blue Square Premier. Most of those fans are still Manchester United ones but their stance is based purely on not going to Old Trafford so not to give money to the new owners and the premadonna players. It cost £2 to watch FC United at Gigg Lane and its feasible they could well be playing United in the Cup in the 3rd round one day soon. Football still has its romantic stories.

A similar divorce is that of Wimbledon FC, very close to meeting their other half of the Milton Keynes Dons in the FA Cup this season. AFC were also started up from scratch at park football level and are now clear at the top of the Blue Square Premier South and so likely to be just one promotion away from the league proper come next season in The Conference. The MK Dons are also moving forward and their brilliant chairman has created something special in the city of Milton Keynes with a 30,000 all-seater stadium and now in-line for the Division one play-offs to get into the Championship for the season 2009-10, one step away from the Premiership. As in this case, as with Manchester United and FC, both separated twins clubs are success stories and so both sets of fans happy. Scarborough Athletic, formed after Scarborough Town went bust, have just won their first promotion, a mere six levels below the professional level.

Another interesting story of innovative fan power at a lower league level is Ebbsfleet United. Although an established team for 60 years the story here is not of rags to riches from scratch but 'myfootballclub.com', a bold experiment by the fans to use supporter's donations to buy a controlling stake in the club, which they succeeded in, collectively running the club from January 2008, taking part in all the clubs decisions, including who plays on Saturday and who to buy and sell. 18,500 punters paid £35 each, raising 700 grand, the plan being for the team not to make or lose money from the 700k, run not for profit, spend every penny, socialism in practical theory... Last January the fans voted 95% in favour to continue the experiment and Liam Daish, the Ebbsfleet manager, was retained at their bequest. In the first season of the experiment they won the FA Trophy (the non-league FA Cup) at a packed Wembley Stadium and added the Kent Senior Cup just for good measure. So novel was the idea that people from over 80 countries have a stake in the club. Financially the reinforcing of the scheme this January proved less successful, the sponsors, 'Eurotunnel', not the only dark tunnel Ebbsfleet are now looking down as relegation looms form the Blue Square Conference, just this one investment their core income, new members down 60%. The novelty has gone and the credit crunch has replaced the dream.

These three clubs have done what they have done to retain the essence of football. Its suppose to be about your local community and your local area. But it's no longer the case with the big boys. Manchester United enjoys reminding everyone of the Munich air crash to express that community at the club, as do Liverpool over Hillsboro. But these memorial events are more about promoting the brand abroad to the new international fan revenue and than the memory of those days, all rather cynical if you ask me. Liverpool demanded that UEFA did not schedule their Champions League QF on the 20th anniversary of the Hillsboro Memorial. Fair enough, a terrible event that scarred all footballs fans back then, especially Liverpudlians. But they did it nosily and it's all part of the commercial game. The Manchester United Megastore is shameless over making money off 1958 and religiously push that day every year to reinforce the community club ethos United certainly no longer have. They don't help local lads get in the team any more but buy players from all over the world just to sell shirts in those countries. They guy from China never played once and was quickly on loan and Manucho from Africa was only bought in to cash in on the African Nations Cup. He's not even good enough to start for Hull City! I don't even think Park Ji Song was meant to be a serious signing but he showed willing and ran around a lot and so Fergie didn't have the heart to dump him out on loan in Eastern Europe or something. When United do get genuine home grown talent they don't seem to get a fair go for the first team. Danny Wellbeck is the first outstanding talent from Manchester to be given the chance around the first team for a long time and will prove that United don't need to buy these dead beats from abroad because the talents already here. All the Manchester United guys on loan are British players while ten or so foreigner's lounge around on great money in the second team...Rodrigo Possebon anyone?

The players are just as much to blame for the separation from fans and the clubs identity as Sky and the media are, putting these guys on a pedestal. Part of the glamour of football comes from the separation of fan and player but for some it's gone too far. The wages are absurd in the Premiership and the League is three years away from implosion for me. Everyone knows it's going to collapse but no one wants to sort it as everyone's earning. I read the other day that their union leader, Gordon Taylor of the PFA, is the highest paid union boss in the world, earning 450k a year! His PFA team pull in an annual £3 million in 'admin costs' from their 4000 contributing members who, bizarrely, considering the amount of income the Premier League players makes, pay in just £291,965 pounds in subs a year between them. Incredibly the Premier league pay the PFA 17 million a year to subside the union ,instead of the players paying means tested subs to help the guys further down the pile, the point of the union. It's an extraordinary state of affairs that Ronaldo pays just £300 a year subs for the full support of his union, the same levy charged to the second team keeper in the Blue Square Conference, far more likely to need the Unions help than the strutting poser from United.

Summary: The end is nigh..