Red Knights battle for United as Beckham returns to Old Trafford
It is a journey that David Beckham has made hundreds of times before.
Down the steps at the front of the team bus, through the security cordon, past the photographers and autograph hunters and into the sanctuary of Old Trafford. But for Beckham, who makes an emotional return to Manchester Uniteds home ground tonight in an AC Milan shirt, pictured below right, playing against his former club in a Champions League tie, it is likely to be a bittersweet occasion. This is the club that made him and where he enjoyed his greatest success as a player. But, though he will recognise many of the faces, much about the club Beckham left seven years ago is hardly recognisable.
The red shirts and scarves that once proclaimed the Man U fans loyalty will be drowned out tonight by a sea of green and gold. Those colours worn by Newton Heath, the forerunner to United, on its formation as the works team of the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway depot in 1878 have become the symbol of the supporters crusade against the Glazers, the secretive Florida-based family who have turned the richest club in football into the most indebted.
According to reports yesterday, thousands of fans are preparing to boycott the opening ten minutes of the match, leaving the television cameras to pan empty seats in a visual demonstration of anti-Glazer feeling. The prime mover behind the green and gold movement, the Manchester United Supporters Trust (Must) sought yesterday to play down talk of a mass boycott tonight although the ploy may be used at other matches.
Whether or not the protest goes ahead tonight, it is clear that Manchester United is a club divided between the supporters on one side and the despised owners on the other. Caught in the middle are Sir Alex Ferguson, the teams manager, and the players including several of Beckhams contemporaries, such as Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes, who have been with the club since childhood and, as they will no doubt tell him, it can make for a surreal atmosphere.
There has been an air of revolt among United supporters ever since Malcolm Glazer and his sons bought the club in a highly leveraged takeover in the summer of 2005. In stark contrast to the benevolence of Roman Abramovich at Chelsea or Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City, the Glazers ownership is seen as bringing little benefit to United, which is so burdened by the interest payments needed to service its new owners debts, that it took the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo for a world record 80 million to turn a loss into a profit.
Many supporters have been driven away by huge ticket price increases, with the average season ticket price going up from 487 pre-takeover to 722 this year. The effect has been that while there has traditionally been a long waiting list for season tickets as demand far outstripped supply, for the first time in living memory a limited number of season tickets were available on general sale last summer.
The leveraged takeover may be a standard procedure in the business world, but, to Uniteds supporters a militant lot at the best of times it represents an unnecessary danger to the clubs future. The debt stands at 716 million, with 41.9 million paid out in interest in the past financial year. The debt has been restructured since January, through a 500 million bond issue, but the terms of the clubs PIK (payment in kind) loans, which accumulate interest at 14.25 per cent per annum and are due for repayment in 2017, are terrifying.
Duncan Drasdo, the chief executive of the supporters trust, told The Times yesterday: Its really quite simple. If you look at the real effect of their ownership, a huge amount of money has gone out of the club and much, much more will go out over the next seven years if they remain in place. It has been very damaging to the club.
The air of popular revolt has been heightened by the emergence on the horizon of some knights in shining armour specifically the self-styled Red Knights, a group of City financiers-cum-Man U fans who are exploring the possibility of raising the minimum 1 billion that it would require even to lure the Glazers to the negotiating table. The Knights include Keith Harris, the chief executive of Seymour Pierce; Mark Rawlinson, a senior partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; Paul Marshall, the co-founder and chairman of Marshall Wace; and Jim ONeill, head of global economic research at Goldman Sachs and, intriguingly, a close friend of Sir Alex Ferguson.
The Times learnt yesterday that the Red Knights search for cash is heading east, with their adviser Nomura, Japans biggest investment bank, set to begin a trawl of Asia for new super-rich investors next week. The Knights will announce within the next two days that they have formally signed up Nomura to advise them on a takeover bid. The banks top-level contacts in Asia were a key reason for its appointment on this campaign.
Asia is Uniteds fastest-growing market and the club, according to its own research, has at least 40 million supporters in the region, particularly in China, Japan and South Korea. However, the main focus for Guy Dawson, who is leading Nomuras team on this project, will be to find dozens of high net-worth supporters who can afford to contribute between 5 million and 20 million each to the Knights coffers. So far the Glazers have shown little inclination to sell, but despite suggestions that fan boycotts are part of an attempt to devalue the club and force them to the negotiating table.
The Red Knights themselves are keen to disassociate themselves from such tactics. One told The Times yesterday: We dont want to upset the Glazers. We need to have a dialogue with them to buy the club. But if the rumours about their finances are true it could be a good time for them to sell.
This evenings game will be the first at Old Trafford since news of the Red Knights interest emerged last week. That was the catalyst for a surge in membership of the supporters trust, which was formed in response to the Glazer takeover and which has publicly offered its backing to the Red Knights. They have included the group in their preliminary discussions with a view to offering it representation in any future regime if they succeed in buying the club.
Like many a labour of love or hate in this case the trust is reliant on volunteers but, with membership having increased from 34,000 in January to 125,000 last night, the organisation is big enough to require a chief executive, a finance director, its own office barely a corner kick away from Old Trafford and to have developed contacts within Whitehall, as well as securing the services of Blue State Digital, the internet-technology company used to great effect by Barack Obamas team during his election campaign. One of the prime movers behind the trust is Richard Hytner, the deputy chairman of Saatchi Saatchi.
To judge by the number of green and gold scarves sold by a trader on the forecourt at Old Trafford yesterday yards from the clubs Megastore, that desire for a change in ownership shows no sign of letting up. It has been a bonanza, Sammie Simpson, the trader, said. Im selling more green and gold than red scarves.
Ian Morris, 55, from Warwick, a season ticketholder who has been supporting United for 47 years, spoke for many fans. The ownership of the club has undoubtedly changed things for the worse since Beckham left. The people who own the club have no emotional attachment. Even previous plc boards professed to be supporters. They were essentially United fans. For some years it has been a matter of supporting the team and trying to ignore the money men. The Glazers have been so appalling you just cannot ignore them. I have put the traditional colours in mothballs and, like most fans, I now wear green and gold to home and away games.
For Ferguson, the original Red Knight, it must be a confusing situation as he juggles his long-established friendships in the City with his unwavering public commitment to his paymasters in Florida, but he did his best to steer a way through the minefield yesterday. Im sure, whether youre wearing the traditional red and white scarves or the protest green and gold scarves, we will be united and speaking with one voice to get us safely through, he said.
Its unlikely that the rebel fans will share his sentiments. It does feel that theres an unstoppable momentum building, Mr Drasdo said. I dont really see how the Glazers can resist it.
