Football News - Malcolm Glazer

The Purist looks at Malcolm Glazer's takeover of Manchester United PLC

A lot of Manchester United supporters, whatever their creed, are unusually irate for the traditionally fertile, if not downright merry, month of May.

A lot of them are angry, a lot of them confused and even more are going to find, once the gestures have passed into old news, that they most definitely are not the potential fanbase on which a so-called FC United can be built from scratch.

Now Malcolm Glazer has installed himself at the helm, a lot of bluffs are about to be called, and the infighting will no doubt get ugly in the battle for moral high ground.

But did it really start on the fourth of October, with the first bid from this mystery tycoon built around preferential shares, and those memorably "aggressive assumptions"? No, going public did it for MUFC, back in 1991.

Then there were marches too; there were flyers and protests aplenty but to no avail, and, as Alex Ferguson’s team embarked on plundering the lion’s share of English football silverware in the 90s, the agenda for most fans narrowed inexorably to playing matters.

More spilt milk to cry over as the so-called cash cow changes hands? Maybe, but the role of former chief executive Martin Edwards and his family in the context of buying up and then fattening up the company has scarcely been mentioned in the blizzard of pages generated, be they business, news or sport. To say that profit has not in fact been the bottom line at Old Trafford for generations is to fly in the face of the evidence presented by Michael Crick and David Smith in Betrayal of a Legend back in 1989.

Years after Betrayal's publication, "Fill your boots," a cocky Edwards advised Manchester City season ticket holder Stuart Hall over a game of tennis - in reference to United shares; and when Murdoch made his move in 1999 you could see what he had in mind.

Now Edwards has bowed out of the frontline, the success he presided over as well as the corporate seeds he sowed have nevertheless combined to enable a deal that could hardly be more hostile in cultural terms, whether or not it fits the FTSE definition. Edwards was hardly chastened by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission’s rejection of Murdoch; he simply re-upholstered his pension plan.

Now that the acronym FSA is unlikely to be mistaken for the Football Supporters Association ahead of the Financial Services Authority, the stealth with which Martin’s father Louis staged his boardroom coup post-Munich deserves a wider audience. In contrast, the recent takeover could hardly have been more widely chronicled.

Given the capacity for denial implicit in the slogan Not For Sale (since 1991 United have been), how complacent were the words of the Supporters United board as recently as their May 7th agm. All talk of "Red Knights" (aka "fans with millions") riding to the rescue has been blown to smithereens by Glazer’s Red Football Partnership Group. With the 17 per cent of shares then in supporters’ hands never enough to block him, it had, by the eve of the deal, come down to a parallel policy of putting the frighteners on the key economic players. As one campaign insider admitted when asked about the origin of spurious loyalist paramilitary links: "Anything that scares the yanks or Irish is ok, I guess." Just like the FC United ploy, such efforts ring hollow at best in hindsight.

Defiance and optimism went hand in hand in February 2005 despite the opening of the club’s accounts to Glazer, with cult players Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s and Eric Cantona’s public opposition bolstering Sir Alex Ferguson’s coded "back-off" that went beyond addressing outside interest in general.

On February 12 the Manchester Education Committee, adopting guerilla chic, mounted an effective series of raids on city-centre premises belonging to Vodafone, Nike, Ladbrokes and Rothschild. Distinct from the Not For Sale coalition of Shareholders United, the Independent Manchester United Supporters Association and fanzines Red Issue, Red News and United We Stand, the MEC mustered a substantial number of fans and temporarily closed down all its targets. One text (SMS) message summed up the sense of vindication felt by the organisers:
14:10:15: Nothing robbed no damage (this time) police evaded stores closed. About 1,000 by end. We can do this every week
Even blind busker Andy was co-opted on his Market Street patch, as Duane Eddy and Shadows covers gave way to his accompaniment of "We’ll Never die, We’ll never die, we’ll keep the red flag flying high, cos Man United will never die."

Secrecy, while key to the strategists, was easier demanded than delivered: another round-robin message went, "Break ranks and you’re fucking dead". But the menace disseminated publicly was strictly for show and when songs remodelled to demonise the Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner were interpreted as death threats no one was about to point out the convenience involved in converting hackneyed terrace favourites into topical ditties.

AC Milan’s visit on February 23 was the campaign’s highlight, with up to 15,000 fans mobilised on Sir Matt Busby Way. But even here a warning regarding solidarity went unheeded as the irresponsible suggestion of one coalition member for torches to accompany the march was over-ruled. The week leading up to West Brom’s visit showed those lessons had not been learnt as a squabble over a fanzine idea of a match boycott was clumsily covered up.

SU have not been alone in their complacency; not only did the omission of replay ticket details from the club programme for January’s third round visit of Exeter City not go entirely unnoticed, but those chants of "You sold your arse to a Russian" and "You’re not Chelsea any more", aired as recently as May 10, ring that bit more hollow this week.

As that pioneering American news brand CNN makes reference to Glazer’s acquisitions including "stately Old Trafford" questions remained unasked. A neutral stance from the board, for example, took too little account of the bid’s effect on the "product" and allowed its members to secure an albeit uncertain part in the club’s immediate future. Now the activists are left trying to hit the club’s income when that is exactly what will push undecided shareholders into taking up Glazer’s offer.

There is one Florida resident whose tune the faithful have no problem dancing to of a match day. Whether Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life continues to serenade the players onto the pitch in the years ahead, however, remains to be seen.

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