Why will MUFC's FFP position be greatly improved this summer? See the below picture. As of this date, the 3rd biggest loss EVER in the PL from 21/22 will be off-the-books. If investments aren't made in the squad this summer, it should not be blamed on FFP.

What Martin Samuel writes can barely be questioned, talking about United winning a title in a foreseeable future is just a fanciful dream. United has spent squad player money on squad players, the last three years, and recently signed some youths. In total, Chelsea has spent more than 2x on transfer fees during this period than United has. If United signed Jean-Clair Todibo — people would point at him and ask why the club isn’t performing better despite top names. Same guy sits on the bench for West Ham. The talk about ‘marginal gains’ is utterly ridiculous. The competition in top football is very tough, and it takes so much to get to the top. If there is a corner United can cut when building a team, it has been cut. Ole had a complete mishmash. ETH game plan was built on dynamic CBs who were comfortable on the ball, he got Martinez for 3/4s of a season and Evans and Maguire for the rest of his tenure. The change was made from ETH to Amorim — which is about as big of a 180’ you realistically can make in football. Amorim has so few players to work with that suits his style of play. Yet — Ratcliffe sat down and told media that this was what he was going to do. It wouldn’t be about spending money, he made factually completely incorrect claims that it wouldn’t be possible for United to spend more, that it would be about being in best in class management persons and other nonsensical ideas. Like — how can United make up miles of ground in City, Arsenal, Liverpool and co by bringing in ‘best in class’ management personell, doesn’t those clubs have that already? It can’t give you a competitive edge. United can’t spend more money? Complete nonsense. United factually has no cash and close to a billion in debt. On that debt, interest is paid. If you have cash in the bank, you can pay people up front, United pay most of its transfer fees over 4 years. Is it good business to buy stuff and pay for them over 4 years? Football clubs’ economy is not different than yours or mine in this regard, you just piss away a lot of money by buying things on credit. Investment in the academy doesn’t even impact FFP, which City has utilized. The financial cut backs United have made has impacted the academy. United is a club that never ever have utilized any levers to spend money. Someone like Boehly could easily have spent a billion plus on transfer fees had he bought United instead of Chelsea. Why aren’t people questioning Ratcliffe?

@MJW393 Going this route was absurd to me — but regardless — what has United done right? Nothing has been done properly. The support ETH got was absurdly poor. The support Amorim has received is just as poor.

You got to be really good to comfortably beat teams like this on a regular basis. I just think that there absolutely are no reasons for why anyone should expect United to be really good. Better than Leicester? Sure — but I do hope that we will have had a lot better season than Leicester when this season is over. We have so far. And have played what 10 more games.

RT @anneapplebaum: The world's richest man takes food and medicine from the world's poorest children

@_M_Deezus @Muppetiers @KieranMaguire Had United bought Trump coins for the same price they bought Malacia, it would have generated enough profit to fund 10 new Old Traffords. (I think)

Hyfsat övertygad om att det inte går att läsa in något alls i denna statistik — i detta perspektiv. Typ: Å ena sidan har du kanske 50 000 mammor som ’per default’ fått uppfostra barnet från noll till 15, på andra sidan 5 000 pappor som under speciella förutsättningar åtagit sig att uppfostra sitt barn under samma ålder. Sen måste ju statistiken vara väldigt svår tolkad eftersom jag antar att det är väldigt vanligt att barn typ bor med båda föräldrarna till 5-10, sen bara med mamman tills de blir tonåringar och pappan är extremt överrepresenterad när det kommer till 16-17-åringar.

Intressant, men känns som ett område där det kommer vara mycket ”noise” i statistiken. Slår vad om att det — i genomsnitt — är ganska stor skillnad i många avseenden mellan mamman som får uppfostra sitt barn själv och pappan som får uppfostra sitt barn själv. Exempelvis i förhållande till ålder, inkomst, osv.

@ElisabethKster9 Du glömde Ukraina-krigt, det fick han stopp på efter 24h.

C.S. Forester is better.

@refsupportuk

@AbsB498343 It’s meaningless speculation, but I think Oliver has had a much bigger impact on the outcome of the last PL seasons than many realize…

@pheez25 @JackyHenchman Guys it’s just humor, he only posts stuff like this, nobody who follow him would ever believe something like this.

@AcademyScoop I follow Billy M and 99/100 of his posts are just crazy stuff that often is really funny — anyone who follow him will know that it’s just humor.

Realistically, there isn't much to play for, for MUFC during the reminder of the PL season. But I am tremendously skeptical of the notion that you just can 'mail it in' for big parts of a PL season without it having a big impact. Last season by this point -- United had an awful fall. Onana had been a trainwreck in the CL, and the results in the PL was average. But the club was 6th in the table, the play had not been 'that horrible' (at least, the worst was yet to come by a mile). The club only had one striker on the squad, a 21 y/o inexperienced Rasmus Hojlund. The club had no healthy LBs after terminating the loan of Regulion. The club had no healthy CBs that even remotely could play in the manager's system. While things were very negative at the last day of the transfer window last season -- the following 4 months scarred everyone involved pretty badly. Week in and week out the club played humiliating games. The confidence of the team went from being 'we should be in a top 4 race' to completely going down the drain. Casemiro's career was more or less ended. Etc etc etc. If we go back and listen to what SJR has said since taking over the club -- most is just based on a completely misrepresented state of the real world. Finances isn't a problem, its all about making sure that we get in top in class football people to run the club, and so forth (just nonsense). But he did say one thing that was correct -- United had been run by business people with business interest in mind and not football first and foremost. This is just another example of that haven't changed.

@1_3Aadz I've basically only seen Edwards in European games and like once when Sporting played Benfica and I was watching Joao Neves -- but I would say that he is a more limited version of Garnacho. Definitely. Great speed and work ethic. Fairly limited in all other aspects of his game.

I've not seen enough of Tel to stick my neck out and call that he would be a good or bad signing. If we get him and he turns into the next Thierry Henry the coming years he would be a great signing. But -- I can say this -- in the vast majority of cases players like Tel aren't on the same level at age 19 when it comes to competing on the pitch as "veterans" like say Brian Mbuemo or Dejan Kulusevski. This is especially obvious when you watch football in L1 or L2. Teams with younger talents can look so promising early in the season, but after 46 games, so often, its the clubs with squads built around a strong core of players the age of 25-30 y/o who sits at the top of the table. The stamina, body strength, consistency, mental maturity etc just has a big impact in football. Looking at MUFC's squad -- I am definitely not convinced that the way to go forward is to invest most of the club's resources in more talented youths from an overall balance perspective. We got Rasmus, Zirkzee, Amad, Mainoo, Garnacho and the academy is loaded with talent. In terms of experience and players in their "prime", we only have Bruno and then Eriksen who clearly is past his prime. From this perspective, I would be a lot more interested in an experienced leader than a young talent. Reality can of course be different, and if you get a chance to sign a future mega star, of course you got to take it. So I am not saying that we should sign someone like Mbeumo and not Tel -- I've not seen enough of Tel to evaluate him. But I would not use 'talented 19 y/o' as the blueprint for what we should be looking for. At all.

There can go trends in these things -- but facts are that school shootings etc doesn't impact the statistics and there have always been lunatics committing completely meaningless crimes. And without any doubt, we have a lot fewer lunatics committing crime in 2024 than we had in 1950, 1900 or 1850 in the UK, US, Sweden and Norway. AIINEC. But the killings just looked different, people committing series of burglaries were entire families were killed and so forth. Robberies with deadly outcome, people that just 'lost it'. Those type of murders are much rarer nowadays due to better safety nets and higher standards of living.