The commonly accepted opinion is that Rooney was after more money. Simple eh? Makes perfect sense. However, one rumour doing the rounds is that the whole episode was a cleverly constructed ploy by Rooney and Sir Alex Ferguson to get the Glazer’s to put their hands in their pockets.

By questioning the ambition of the club and its ability to attract the biggest names in world football, Rooney gave Sir Alex the ammunition he needed to go to the Glazer’s and demand money for a big name signing in order to please Rooney and get him to sign on for five more years.

Could it be that Sir Alex has now been promised a larger transfer kitty in order to improve the squad next Summer? It’s a crazy theory in all honesty, but if true, who would you realistically like us to sign and why?

Following a huge push by Manchester United fans to urge friends, relatives and any United fan they know to join MUST – prompted by an appearance on Sky Sports News by Chief Exec Duncan Drasdo – numbers have risen by over 30,000 in the last 24 hours.

The move has been boosted by blogs like this one and United Rant urging members to join, and forums like redcafe  and redissue doing the same.

Drasdo stated yesterday that the Red Knights wanted a show of faith from the United faithful to know for sure that they had our support. He suggested that MUST membership would have to rise to 100,000 for it to be a big enough show of faith.

I am confident that number will be reached easily within the next day or two, but 30,000 members in 24 hours is MUST’s busiest ever day and should not be played down. In fact the website crashed several times due to the sheer number of visitors and new registrations it was receiving.

If you were unable to register yesterday, please try again today. And if you still haven’t received your activation email, please be patient.

More importantly, keep spreading the link around and encouraging the United fans you know to register and give their backing to the Red Knights.

Join MUST today!

While not wanting to give too much away, Drasdo said the Red Knights are definitely interested in moving forward with the proposal, but want a show of faith fro the Manchester United fans before moving forward with plans.

How can you show your faith? It’s simple. Join MUST. At the time of writing, the membership number stands at 54,186. Drasdo and the Red Knights want that number to climb to around the 100,000 mark.

Two months ago that figure was as low as 30,000. So if it can almost double in a matter of months, then surely we can get it over 100,000 with the coverage it gained on Sky Sports News today.

You can also help by encouraging friends and relatives to join too.

Do you own a website or a blog? Put up a banner or a link to MUST to encourage your visitors to sign up. It takes about 30 seconds to do and it completely free.

Join MUST today!

The French left back spoke after he Carling Cup final win against Aston Villa, and while he didn’t mention Glazer directly, he hinted that he is aware of the fans concerns regarding the current owners and acknowledges the reasons why they have recently been wearing the green and gold of Newton Heath.

“They are the original colours of Manchester United, and the fans wear them because they love this club,” he told the Blomberg News Agency.

“They have their reasons for doing it and we don’t think that they are crazy. They’d like things to change.”

The wording of his comments suggest he’s not alone in backing our right to protest. His use of the word “we” seems to imply that other players in the squad share his opinion.

With reports suggesting the Glazer’s are maintaining their stance of “Manchester United is not for sale“, any publicity is good publicity for the campaign to rid United of the Glazer’s, particularly when it comes from one of the team’s most influential players.

Gone are the days of quiet discontent. Now we hear anti Glazer songs at every home and away game and thousands fill the stands wearing green and gold. Without wanting to sound overly dramatic, the revolution IS in full flow and it appears it will only get stronger as more and more fans pick up on it.

Responding to criticism of the enormous debt the club is in, Chief Executive David Gill said, “people should be proud of what’s happening at Manchester United”. Have a read of these numbers and then see how proud you feel.

£716m – The debt as of February 2010.

£290  – The amount spent on interest and legal fees to service the debt as of June 2009.

£45m – Annual interest, from 2010 onwards.

£10m – Personal loans to the Glazer family from Manchester United.

£13m – The amount paid to the Glazer family in consultancy and management fees.

£6m – Net transfer spend since 2005. Just to be clear, this is not a yearly figure, this is the total net sum Manchester United have spent on players since the Glazer family took over.

50% – The average rise in ticket prices since 2005.

£0 – The amount of money spent on Manchester United from the Glazer’s pockets.

Are you proud of what’s happening at Manchester United like David Gill suggests you should be? If you are then you’re a numpty who shouldn’t be allowed near computers for your own safety. If not, do something about it today.

Wear green and gold to Old Trafford. Spread the word to other United fans about what the Glazer family has done and is still doing to our great club. Join the Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST). Copy and paste these figures to forums, websites, anywhere you can.

The green and gold army is growing and will continue to grow until the Glazer’s have sold up and moved on. Join the revolution and help turn Manchester United into something you can truly be proud of.

On the pitch, United thrashed the hapless strugglers 5-0, but it was in the stands where the fans did us proud.

For the entire 90 minutes chants of “LOVE UNITED HATE GLAZER” and “WE WANT GLAZER OUT” were sung by dedicated fans waving their green and gold scarves in protest at the spiralling debts the Glazer’s have placed on the club.

Yet anyone watching Match of the Day last night wouldn’t have heard this at all.

Sky’s Football First program showed highlights of the match and you could hear the chants loud and clear and they showed images of the fans waving their green and gold scarves. But the Match of the Day highlights appeared to be completely edited to get rid of all traces of the protests. There were no audible chants and no visible green and gold scarves.

An institution such as the BBC, paid for by the fans(TV license holders), is supposed to be 100% neutral and this act of censorship is a blatant contradiction of everything the BBC claims to represent.

They might be able to censor us on Match of the Day, but they won’t be able to censor us at Wembley in 3 weeks time for the Carling Cup final against Villa. So bring your green and gold scarves, t-shirts, hats and flags and be sure to make your voice heard.

You can also make yourself heard by complaining about the censorship at the following link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/

Fans have been protesting against the Glazer’s and the huge debt burden they have placed on the club, by wearing green and gold instead of the traditional red.

The colours represent the original colours of United, then called Newton Heath, and the protest was meant to show the Glazer’s that the fans are United in wanting them out.

But now it seems the Glazer’s audacity has no limits as they have allegedly designed a range of new green and gold products to sell in the Megastore at Old Trafford.

Do the Glazer’s have any shame?

Fred, a lifelong United fan, is the first of an alleged 50 investors keen to take the football club away from the Glazer family, who have burdened the club with huge debts.

He was approached by fixer Keith Harris.

“If we are not careful we could end up like another Portsmouth, who look like they are headed for administration.

“Sponsorship will be the next thing to drop off. And don’t tell me that United are too big to go bust. Just look at the Royal Bank of Scotland and AIG.

“I think both David Gill and Sir Alex Ferguson are being forced to work with their hands tied behind their backs. My criticism is entirely of the Glazers.”

I have always got United close to my heart.”

One wonders is Fred was so worried when he was United’s official betting partner, before being outbid by Betfair in the Summer.

They successfully raised £500 million to refinance the serve debt burden on the club. 250 million in pounds and 425 million in dollars.The former are now selling at 93% of their initial value, whereas the latter are selling at 94.5%.

The bonds guarantee a return of a set percentage, added onto the overall amount every year and payable in 2017 when the bond matures, but the uncertainty over the club’s ability to pay back the sums when 2017 comes around has led to traders selling them at a loss.

“For investors this is bad news because it means you have made losses if you are marking to market,” Jonathan Moore, analyst at Evolution Securities told the FT.

Other bond issues have actually risen in value despite the credit crunch, while Manchester United’s are amongst the worst performing over the last year.

“In a benign credit market, Manchester United is one of the worst performing bonds since the beginning of 2009,” said Suki Mann, credit strategist at Société Générale.

The Glazer family are expected to wait and see how the team performs in the Champions League before returning to the market.

The Manchester United chief Executive was asked what he thought about the ongoing protests at Old Trafford and said he had no problem with them.

“Protests are fine, it is a free society,” he told the interviewer.

Why then, were many supporters ejected from Old Trafford for unfurling a banner that read, “LOVE UNITED HATE GLAZER”?

If we truly live in a free society, then surely these fans should be able to protest in peace without fear of being manhandled by overly keen stewards and booted out of the stadium like criminals.

David Gill is a very good Chief Executive, but his blatant lies won’t wash with match going fans who know what a police state Old Trafford has become.

Green and Gold ’til they die or fold

What they have done is nothing more than rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship.

The debt is still there, it’s just become slightly more manageable in the short term, but when the bonds mature on February 1st 2017 the Glazer’s will owe the £504 Million they’ve gained through bonds, plus annual interest of over £40 million from now until then.

United’s overall debt currently stands at £716.5 million and there are no signs that this will be reduced anytime soon.

That’s why you need to throw your support behind the Green and Gold campaign.

Send it to your United supporting friends and get them to send it to theirs.

You can also print them off and take them to Old Trafford on Saturday.

Keep spreading the word about the Green and Gold ’til they die or fold campaign and let’s show Uncle Malc that we want him out of our club.

Click here for the full size image.

Here’s another.

You can also get flags and scarves by clicking here.

The thing that I have noticed particularly obvious about the whole Glazer takeover has been how good the Glazers have been at dividing the fans.

Even amongst my friends there are pro FC / Anti FC / Not A Penny More / Match Tickets Only & no pies e.t.c but the one thing that obviously unites (excuse the pun) all of us is our need to get rid of them.

I honestly do not believe for one minute that it is possible to get everyone to agree to anything, as has been shown here, but one thing is for sure we all hate the Glazers.

Unfortunately because we have different ways of showing it, and different ideas it will/has got very diluted and this is a major blow to everyone except the Glazers.

I think scarves/hats/badges etc are a good idea, alright it’s not very radical but it is something that realistically could be adopted by everyone from the ‘terrorist bomb them’ section to the ‘no pies inside’ protestors.

One thing the chants inside OT this week did achieve should not be underestimated, and that is the fact that a lot more people were showing discontent than we imagined.

Alright it’s easy to chant but it’s easy to wear a scarf/hat/badge/flag as well.

Now this bit might prove slightly controversial and it may sound like I am taking the piss but the big problem with the scarf/hat/badge/flag idea is that it is impossible to distinguish people who are wearing them and who are not.

I therefore suggest that all anti Glazer items be easily identifiable by making them a set colour (color for any Americans lurking).

My suggestion for this is Green/Gold of the old strip. This would make any anti Glazer supporter stand out and a sea of green/gold could never go un-noticed on TV.

Also even things like green/gold cards or flyers of the back pages of fanzines (we would have to have a word with the mags about this) could be used to signify our dislike of them.

And I doubt it is possible for anyone to be ejected for wearing a green/gold scarf.

It might be a bad idea, but if we can get ONE thing to unite all of us then at least we have a start.

I would gladly redo a section of the site (redissue) in this colour and explain to a few thousand people what it means when they see anyone wearing this colour.

It’s a visual impact, something that we have been severely lacking. And who knows, once people start to see how many people actually are opposed to this they may start being slightly more pro-active.

* As a side note if we ever played against Norwich it might get confusing, but sod it.
** We considered black etc but it’s hardly noticable on TV or amongst the red/black that people currently have.
*** Let’s go one step at a time. Get the people wearing colours who care. If we later want to set off g/y flares, throw g/y scarves or paint the megastore g/y then that is another question for another day.

If you have a green/gold hat, scarf, badge, dog or child then you hate glazer.

Red Football Joint venture Ltd, owned by the Glazer family, reported that the overall debt of the club has grown to a staggering £716.5million!

Despite winning the Premier League, winning the Carling Cup, winning the FIFA Club World Cup, getting to the Champions league final AND selling the best player in the world for a world record £80million, United still went further into the red as the Glazer’s financial plan unravels.

A Glazer spokesman insists the debt has no bearing on how the club is run.

“The club has a £50million surplus to work with once the interest payments have been made.”

Tell that to the millions of United fans around the world who know the truth.

To help get rid of the cancerous leeches, join MUST.

Please do your bit to help by clicking the following link and signing the petition.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/football4fans/

You can also help by joining MUST. Membership is free, but paid members are really really valuable and can join in the forum and discussions!

___________________________________________________________

We the undersigned believe the Government should urgently take action on behalf of all football supporters to prevent Manchester United Football Club (and other English football clubs) being destroyed by corporate greed

Football should belong first and foremost to the fans. We have done and continue to do our best to protect both the game and our clubs. But we need help to prevent so-called “investors” from bleeding our clubs dry.

What the Glazer family are doing to Manchester United represents merely the latest stage in the implosion of English football as we know it.

And it’s not just fans that are affected. The slow demise of Manchester United and other clubs could mean:

• Fewer tourists visiting those clubs’ home towns, following the sale of top players and other assets

• Local businesses losing out

• Damage to England’s World Cup bid: who will back a country where the FA does not stand up against the pillaging of its own football clubs

• Young people losing the desire to play football

It isn’t just a problem for Manchester United fans. It’s the problem of our footballing nation. In the Premier League alone, Liverpool and Portsmouth are experiencing similar difficulties and many more will follow if the authorities do not act to prevent it. Football clubs are both community and national assets. The FA, parliament and the government should recognise this and act before it’s too late.

The former United winger believes the last two decades of hard work and success is under severe threat of being undermined by the mountains of debt Glazer has placed on the club.

“It’s disgraceful and a huge shame what is going on with the debt.

“The hard work carried out by Sir Alex Ferguson and everyone at the club over the last 20 years is at threat.”

“United have been winning titles galore, building the club up in to a force. The Glazer’s have undermined all this hard work and stole its thunder.

“Who made the decision to sell to the Glazers? It’s wrong that the club has been put in to so much debt and then you hear stories of them taking money out of the club as well…

“At the end of the day, good players cost a lot of money. When even Manchester United can’t afford to buy players, you know that something is seriously wrong.

“I’m sure that the manager and the fans will put a stop to it. From the outside looking in it seems that everything is being taken from underneath them.”

To get involved in the anti-Glazer movement join MUST and give your support to over 35,000 reds.

Hidden in the small print of the prospectus they published is the fact that they could take £70million from the club that was raised through player sales.

The Glazer’s have also reserved the right to take £25million out of the club in the form of a dividend, plus half of the “consolidated net income”, aka cash profits which amounted to £23 last year.

Furthermore, they will pay out £6million per year for “administration and management services” to companies they THEY own. ON top of that they’ll pay £3million to directors who look after their shares in Manchester United.

That’s a total of £127million that could be taken out of the club next year alone.

If that wasn’t bad enough, this doesn’t even include the annual interest payment on the massive debts, which is around £40million.

Unsurprisingly the Glazer family have declined to comment.

Nick Towle of MUST had the following to say:

“It is a shocking picture. These are immense amounts of money being leaked out of United to pay banks, lawyers, the Glazers themselves and interest, to pay for a takeover none of the supporters, or the United board itself, wanted.

“United’s success and profits could have been used to keep ticket prices affordable or invest in the team but instead we see this heartbreaking waste, just because one family ultimately hopes to make a profit from the club.”

He said flat out that only a minority of United fans are against the Glazer’s.

One wonders whether Paddy was watching the game against Burnley on Saturday when thousands of United fans sang “We want Glazer out” and unfurled a  large “LOVE UNITED HATE GLAZER” banner.

“There are only a few hundred United fans that are against the Glazers. It’s the minority anyway,” he told MUTV.

The comments are sure to infuriate fans who are starting to gather momentum for serious protests in and around Old Trafford. There will be a feeling that Paddy has been told to toe the party line.

There may not be much we can do to get the Glazer’s out, but one thing for sure is that there’s a massive feeling of discontent following the publication of the financial figures last week that revealed the true extent of the hole the club is in.

The Manchester United captain could probably be more understanding of the fans concerns and maybe take an active role in mediating between fans groups and the Glazer family, but he says he’d rather focus on matters on the pitch.

“All the speculation about the finances at Manchester United does not affect the players,” he told the Sunday Times.

“We are always very well protected and never get involved in the financial side of things.

“There have been talks and rumours over the years going back to when the Glazers took over, and even when Michael Knighton nearly took over in the 1980s.

“As players we never get involved in those things; our job is purely on the pitch and we allow people who are paid to do jobs in other areas of the club to do their job.

“It is nothing to do with us at all.”

IMUSA believe the actions of the stewards in removing the supporters from the stadium and confiscating the “LOVE UNITED HATE GLAZER” banner could possibly have been illegal and are currently investigating the incident.

Everybody in the immediate vicinity of the flag, along with everybody in the row behind, including a child, were manhandled and “punched” by stewards and ejected from the ground.

As IMUSA reports, their attempts to stop the chanting failed. ‘We want Glazer out” rang around the stadium for the remainder of the game and support continues to grow across various Manchester United forums.

Recent financial reports show United to be in a more severe financial state than many thought, and that has prompted fans to finally voice their opinion openly inside the stadium.

A banner that read “LOVE UNITED, HATE GLAZER” was brought out by a few lads who were ejected from the stadium for their troubles by power hungry stewards.

The rest of the fans in the surrounding area responded by chanting “We Want Glazer Out!” for the remainder of the game.

This is definitely a move in the right direction, but it’ll take more than a couple of chants to get the Glazer’s out. At the moment they’re probably thinking, “Chant what you like, but you’ve still paid for your seat so it doesn’t bother us”.

The chanting needs to happen at every game, especially televised games. And there needs to be a lot more Anti Glazer banners.

Anything that makes the media take notice of the feelings of the fans is a good thing because if reported in the right way it can put pressure on the Glazer’s.

Enough is enough. We want our club back.

The financial figures released yesterday show that more than £20 million has gone into the Glazer’s pockets while the club itself draws closer to financial ruin.

The £20 million includes £10 million in “management and administration fees,” and another £10 million in personal loans to six family members, not due for repayment for five years.

The figures are sure to anger fans who are becoming increasingly concerned with the Glazer’s financial plan, which now looks to be focused on raising £500 million through the sale of bonds in the hopes that it will lower the crippling interest payments which this year stood at £41.9 million. It will also put the repayment date back from 2013 to 2017.

Despite Sir Alex Ferguson‘s attempts to allay fears by claiming he has cash to spend, it’s becoming increasingly evident that the opposite is true as his bizarre claims of there being “no value in the market” are looking more and more transparent.

The whole situation makes one think of the old adage of “re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic”.

We’ve made almost £50m this past year, now we can go and buy Ribery, right? Wrong.

In previous seasons United have released their figures before the interest has been taken off. This time they’ve released the figures even after the interest has been deducted, suggesting a change in policy.

One can assume the reason for this change in policy has something to do with the club’s current endeavour to find £500m.

The stats are also misleading. The reason Manchester United made a profit this year is because we received a world record fee for a certain Portuguese winger called  Cristiano Ronaldo. If you take away the £80m we received for him then the figures would very much follow the trend of recent seasons and the figures would have been released before the interest payments had been deducted.

Losses of around £30 would have been reported as United paid out a total of £41.9m in interest alone.

No matter how the Glazer’s dress it up, the club is still in huge financial trouble.

500 million pounds worth of bonds are allegedly being pushed by the Glazer family to raise enough capital to pay off existing high interest debts.

The way bonds work are like a loan, but in reverse.

For example, an investor might give one million pounds to MU Finance PLC and in return the company guarantees to give the investor back his/her one million pounds when the bond matures, plus interest.

This gives the Glazers two benefits.

1) It gives them more control over the debt by allowing them to set the interest rates on the bonds.

2) It buys them a few more years before the wolves come calling at the door.

The bonds wouldn’t however, cover the PIK debts which are the real worry for the Glazers.

The American family are looking increasingly desperate in their attempts to juggle the club’s finances and this has led to speculation amongst fans that the end is near.

Sir Alex Ferguson‘s insistence that he has money to spend is not an opinion shared by many fans, and his continual ramblings about a lack of “value” in the market seem to back up the popular theory that the debt situation is finally biting us in the arse.