Man Utd Boss Labelled Judas
By Tom Dunmore • Jan 18th, 2008 • Category: Politics and Economics • 19 responsesDavid Gill, the Manchester United Chief Executive, came home tonight to find the outside walls of his mansion daubed with slogans including “Judas Gill”, “LUHG” (Love United Hate Glazer) and “Glazer Out”.
Pretty obviously, this is related to the ongoing dispute between a faction of United supporters and the regime over issues including the club’s debt and rising ticket price burdens, as we’ve reported on again and again.
Graffiti around Manchester has long attacked the Glazer regime, but this is the first time Gill’s $1.5m property has been targeted. The Fight For United website explains the rationale for the graffiti:
In a gesture to show their disapproval of yet another episode in David Gill’s continuing display of contempt towards the legions of loyal Manchester United supporters, with his latest pro-Glazer “all is rosy in the United garden” nonsense, a group of fellow United fans paid a visit to the leafy lanes of Cheshire. Presumably, until now, this modern day Quisling would’ve felt nice and safe, far away from the high rise blocks, the council estates, and the tap-rooms of Greater Manchester hostelries, where the people he continues to betray, bemoan the death of what they have known, almost from birth, as their right to have the chance to support their beloved football team as they’ve done, father and son, for decade after decade, from the stands and terraces of Old Trafford.
British newspapers, including The Guardian, are unsurprisingly reporting the graffiti in rather more negative tones.
Manchester United supporters have attacked the house of the chief executive, David Gill, in protest over his support for the club’s owner Malcolm Glazer. Anti-Glazer slogans were daubed in red paint on the outside of the property in Bowden, Cheshire, with one message reading “Judas Gill”.
Gill chose not to make any response to the attack, which occurred late on Thursday evening, but he is understood to be shaken and thankful that he and his family were all out at the time. Maurice Watkins, the club’s solicitor and former director, was targeted for a similar attack two years ago when it emerged that he had sold the Glazer family some of his shares in the club.
What do you think of this escalation in the ongoing fight between United supporters and the Glazer regime?
Tom Dunmore is the editor of Pitch Invasion.
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I understand the frustrations of the United supporters, but still, what a childish thing to do. I can’t see how this will possibly help their case in any way.
There’s also an implied physical threat in that maudlin and self-pitying statement from the Fight for United website (”until now, this modern day Quisling would’ve felt nice and safe, far away from the high rise blocks…”—Quisling, of course, being a Nazi collaborator who was executed by firing squad) that I find distasteful, to say the least.
I suppose the costs (in alienating possible sympathisers by going too far) and benefits (considerable publicity) in this case are similar to any radical direct action — but I wonder if a bit more creativity and rather less menace might work better for their cause.
I’ll write a post sometime on the direct action Brighton fans took in the 1990s against our even more despicable owners, but whilst some of it crossed the line occasionally, most of it was creative and kept the broader community behind our protests, which were ultimately successful. Though we were not facing such a distant and powerful foe, it should be said.
It’s a tough one. I don’t think anyone doing this is thinking that they’ll win friends and influence people. I think they hope David Gill will leave. Or at least have a thought to what his nice lifestyle is built on.
Sir Roy Gardiner left as plc Chairman as he didn’t want anything to do with it. Gill, initially opposed to the deal, stayed. Should he be free of any impact from his actions? He earns - like most executives in the Premier League - much more than any in a comparably sized operation would earn. He implements a business plan which looks at the loyalty of 100 years of fans of the club - the ‘inherited social capital’ as David Goldblatt would call it - and sees this as a reservoir to milk to make money for his bosses. He can’t expect to look upon an institution like that in this way and expect this to not arouse anger and ire any more than David Bellotti or Bill Archer could have expected to destroy BHAFC without anyone having a care for their actions.
The sad fact of this is simple. Playing by the rules doesn’t win. Wimbledon fans fought a wonderful campaign and lost. York City fans won the argument, but still have to fork out 2 million to Douglas Craig in money for their own ground. By contrast Swansea City fans made life so uncomfortable for the owners oppo that the local police advised him to stay away. The club was soon sold on and no asset stripped as planned. The sad lesson here is that for every campaign that works, more fail. Man Utd fans tried to get the government to act, but being New Labour, they don’t do that intervention thing. They tried to use the OFT to no avail. What else are they to do? Sadly, when the good guys play nice, they often - nay usually - lose. I think as much of the blame here is with people who stood by and let this happen, people put in place to protect clubs, protect people from the rampant profiteering, people who leave people only those actions which many would possibly seem futile where it not for the simple fact that the only other action for them is to quit. And that they can’t and won’t do. Thank god.
To direct their dissatisfaction with the Glazer-run enterprise on Gill is a show of cowardice. What do the fans expect Gill to behave as a chief executive? Condemn the Glazers and lose his job? Nobody in the right mind will do such a thing. Even Alex Ferguson has jumped to the defence of Glazer.
I agree with Tom that more creative methods can be employed to show their displeasure and vandalism is counter-productive. Let the Glazers understand that this is not personal and the fans love their club and want it to be in the pink of health. Squeezing the fans dry is not going down well.
John
SoccerNet Live
Perhaps this is a stupid question but are Man United supporters upset over inflated ticket prices or is it because it was a “yank” that raised ticket prices? Part of me thinks the backlash wouldn’t be what it is currently if the men pulling the strings were not Americans. I could be wrong but that’s my impression.
Micah, I think Man United supporters would be upset at whoever had come in and raised ticket prices, which is really just the tip of the iceberg — most of the anger is driven by the underlying debt issue, still a big hammer hanging over the club. It also goes back to earlier distaste at the way the club had changed its culture, preceding the Glazers, as the club and Old Trafford had become alienated from its traditional fanbase. Remember, United fans have protested before against takeovers, including those by a Brit (Robert Maxwell) and an Australian (Rupert Murdoch — OK, a U.S. citizen, but not seen as a “yank”).
That said, the fact the Glazers were foreign and perhaps in particular Americans has played a role, particularly rhetorically. There is, I think, a feeling that those who do not even live in the country and have never been football fans could not handle a football club in the right way. Whether or not that’s fair, I don’t know.
But the varied experiences of the Glazers, the Liverpool owners and Lerner at Villa suggests that the first and foremost issue supporters care about is that those buying in should not land the club heavily in debt and should handle things in a low-key manner — which the latter has done, and has not received abuse for being a “yank” to the same degree at all.
So I’d say it’s not just because the Glazers are American, but it is probably an exacerbating factor. Any United fans want to challenge or clarify that?
So is the fear that Glazer will continue to raise prices if debts mount? Are the supporters worried about a financial crisis in which players would have to be sold? The financial aspect is interesting to me because it’s not a thing fans of American sports seem to care about. I’ve never heard a single person complain about their favorite teams debt. You’ll hear plenty of complaints about an owner being cheap but I have never heard a complaint or read an article criticizing the debt of a team here in America.
You are a treasure trove of information, Tom. Keep it up!
Micah, I think some part of the difference here is due to the prevalence of revenue-sharing plans in American sports leagues: the Lions may horribly mismanage their money, but since they’re going to get a cut of the money earned by the Cowboys, they can be pretty sure of staying solvent. Also, since the movement of players between teams happens in the form of trades rather than in the form of straight cash payments—meaning that players can’t be used as assets to be sold in a pinch—financial problems don’t have the same immediate effect on what sort of team the organization is able to send out on the field. Soccer clubs don’t have these kinds of safety nets, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that a money crunch can hurt a team more quickly.
Does any American sports team has a debt hanging over them the size of Man Utd’s (one they have only to fund the Glazers purchase of the club)?
The Glazers borrowed over one billion dollars, which means interest payments running into tens of millions per year, and that debt has been hanging over the club itself all this time. Supporters were concerned that this would at some point impact upon the funds available for the team — though this has not been a major issue yet — and that ultimately, they would be the ones paying for this.
Remember, even though United had a remarkably successful season and generated record profits last year, they still barely made more than they’ll have to pay out in interest. Should United ever falter on the pitch, it’s much easier for a team to spiral into serious financial trouble (as Brian points out), as Leeds United did a few years ago, falling from the Champions League to near-bankruptcy and League One.
The Manchester United Supporters’ Trust released a statement on this last week that’s worth reading.
John - why shouldn’t Gill redesign? It’s what men of principle, as opposed to men guided by lucre, have done through the ages. You say nobody in their right mind would do it - but people do it every single say. Whistleblowers do it. The only people who never countenance it are people who can’t afford to quit, or doesn’t see why the should.
He doesn’t need the money, unless one defines human need as requiring plush mansions in leafy suburbs. Why shouldn’t he resign? Roy Gardiner - his boss before Glazer - did just that. That he didn’t says that he either agrees, support and enjoys implementing their plans, or he’s agnostic, but will take the cash anyway from them.
Either are moral judgements, and people who make moral judgements have to expect a response. It’s like someone closing a factory down and putting hundreds of families on the breadline, then being aggrieved that people had a pop back at you as if this was an act at which its unreasonable to have a response to. It’s about accountability, which is a major deficit for most people - the people who make decisions that affect the material substance of life are generally unaccountable for it.
David Gill doesn’t have to defend his actions in the media, because he doesn’t interview, unless he’s in control of the story. He’s not losing his job because of it. He’s not a public official in line to lose his job at the next set of elections. He’s a private sector official in day-to-day control of a cherished cultural asset. The private sector doesn’t have an impact because football doesn’t operate like most markets. There’s no way to hold him to account in the normal ways advanced societies have, of checks of balances, or action and response. Like Mr Burns in his gated community, making decisions that affect thousands, but immune from the people who make those decisions.
As for Ferguson, he’s a monomaniac. At last, he’s got the club he’s wanted. Total control of things, he’s the king of the place. The previous regime, terrified of another Busby hanging around inhibiting a successor, started to ease him away from things. But the Glazer’s only chance of success is to have a winning team in the short-term, and so they’re needing him like nothing before. His refusal to condemn the Glazers - in spite of previous words to the contrary - and active condemnation of fans opposed to the takeover makes him a shill. As Upton Sinclair might have said, it’s hard to make a man understand when his chances of a second Champions League trophy depend on him not understanding it,
Alan, if there are two questions here
1) Is David Gill morally obliged to resign from his position with Man Utd as a protest against the Glazers’ mismanagement of the club?
2) Do Man Utd supporters then have the right to punish his failure to resign by vandalizing his property and threatening his physical safety?
the answer to #1 can be as unequivocally affirmative as you like, but the answer to #2 is just as unequivocally no. This is a football club, not the Roman occupation of Judea.
Tom,
I am pretty sure the answer to your comparative question about debt load is no, though there are a number of reasons for that particular state of affairs, including the following:
1) Relatively few North American sports franchises are worth as much as Man Utd; roughly the top half of the NFL and a few marquee baseball franchises can match their valuation, but it is way ahead of any basketball or (especially) hockey team.
2) The NFL is notoriously conservative in who it approves as an owner, and one of the things they look at very closely is the financial wherewithal of the various bidders. I don’t think that the league would have approved such a highly-leveraged plan for the purchase of one of its franchises, and Glazer himself put in a much higher percentage of his own funds when he bought the Tampa Bay Bucaneers.
3) North American franchise owners have long ago mastered the art of maximising revenues through raising ticket prices, the introduction of “personal seat licenses”, earning nine months of interest on season ticket “deposits”, stadium naming rights, corporate boxes and club seats. Notwithstanding the recent increases at Old Trafford, Man Utd still has some way to go in this regard before they would approach what the Glazers are used to extracting from Bucs’ fans.
4) Similarly, North American owners have been able to extort massive financial support from local politicians terrified of “losing” their franchise. Again, the Glazers got a very sweet deal from Tampa (including a completely new stadium and highly attractive economic terms) after threatening to leave for Baltimore (which had had its team moved to Indianapolis in the middle of the night by a rapacious owner).
All of that means that a North American owner doesn’t “need” the kind of debt the Glazers have taken on at Old Trafford.
Finally, it should be noted that Brian has been spot on throughout this thread.
Brian - I’m not saying that Gill has to resign. I’m arguing he either gets out of dodge, or hunkers down and quits bitching. David Gill has no moral obligation to resign if he sees no problem with the Glazers. Remember this guy was CEO before they took over and gave interviews saying how it was a bad thing for the club if they did take over. Now, I’m not saying a man shouldn’t change his mind, but either he believed what he said then, in which case he’s a whore, or he didn’t believe it then, in which case he’s a liar. The truth is probably neither - he’s a hired gun and doesn’t get paid to invest any of this stuff with anything as existential as belief.
But if he wants a quiet life, he should bugger off to private industry. He’s running a football clubs for god’s sake, and running it in a way that by design excludes thousands and thousand of people who’s family history and memories and narratives are utterly entwined with that football club and he shows no sign of treading softly on their dreams.
My question to you is brian, what should Man Utd supporters that might actually work, since raising the matter with MPs, with competition authorities and the government and the media has stopped precisely fuck all happening?
You say it’s not the Roman occupation of Judea. But what is it then? If it’s just a business, they why the hell are you reading this blog? Why do you care? At what point should Man Utd stop fighting to retain a sense that the club isn’t a money-making machine, isn’t some adjunct of the modern global sports-entertainment complex but something more than that, in the face of people who genuinely couldn’t give a frig about any of that? And if you think that any of those things aren’t worth bothering about, then we’ll have to agree to disagree. If you do think they matter, then I’m afraid warm words will do the square of sweet FA to preserve them.
Honestly, Alan, I don’t think it matters if there’s no other way that will work. I think it’s a pillar of liberal society that you don’t have the right to take retribution into your own hands just because you think something’s important, or you think someone’s an asshole, or you can’t think of a better way, and I don’t think football is so important that it transcends that.
@ Alan -
I appreciate your passion about this issue but we have to consider if any incoming CEO, in the event Gill has resigned, will have acted differently. And if they perform their role in the same manner as Gill, which is to carry on jacking up the prices and defending the Glazers, then similarly, they can and should expect more of such vandalism from the fans? Is that right or moral?
My main concern is to condemn the act of vandalism itself. If the fans think vandalism or delivering personal threat will strike fear into the “regime” and cause them to back off from increasing the prices, then it is too naive. There will be certainly be more alienation between fans and management but nothing will change.
Already, the Americans style of ownership has not won any fans because everybody is clear that they are no benefactors but just bringing debts onto the clubs. I don’t mind boycotting the tickets and merchandise or petitioning. Either way, it is better to work together and highlight the dissatisfaction in a manner which the management will be more receptive to.
I’m sorry, but those responses are handwringing, well-meaning and ineffectual. We can disagree about whether the vandalism will have any impact. What I can say without a doubt is that other strategies won’t make any difference at all. The idea of a mass boycott is a lovely one, it would work, and it isn’t gojng to happen. You seem to be implying that to commit vandalism is ultimately futile, when I think that’s a matter for the future. 2 years of nicely-worded letters, complaints, lobbying et al have done precisely nothing. What next? Give up? Say ‘ho hum’ and off they scoot, conceding defeat?
Brian, I’ll join you in defending liberal society from people who refuse to accept that there is such a thing as the cultural sphere that embodies values that transcend the financial. In the meantime, it’s worth remembering that civil disobedience has a long history within the self-same liberal society you mention. It’s a pillar of protest that when the routes to bring about change are denied not because your case has no merit, but because wealth brings influence and power, and its not a fair fight, then debates about liberalism are essentially for the textbooks and divorced from the realities of life at the sharp end. Are road protesters right to lock on? Are environmentalists right to board whaling ships? Civil disobedience has a long and crucial part in our culture. As things go, it worth pointing out that most of the rights and priveliges we currently enjoy we have not because anyone thought we should have them but because they were demanded by people, who usually broke the law.
John - lets turn the tables. Is it moral to do what Gill does? If you think it is, then that colours your views. I think it’s disgustingly immoral. I’ve met the people on the receiving end of this - people who feel alienated from places that they scattered relatives ashes at, places that a woven into the way they understand their lives and that of their family, and people like Gill force them away from that. Is that right or moral? A pox on his house, then, if not grafitti.
Alan, the last thing I’ll say about this is that your suggestion that a person has a fundamental human right to a football club with a manageable debt load is perfectly in keeping with the supporters’ statement Tom quoted above, which compared David Gill to a Nazi sympathizer. Calling this act of trivial vandalism “civil disobedience” is rather a breathtaking rhetorical leap to make on Martin Luther King Day, don’t you think? Sadly Dr. King was ineffective in having the right to pay reasonable prices for sports tickets enshrined in the American Constitution.
Well done for misreading me consistently Brian.
I’ve not said it’s a fundamental human right. I’ve said there’s more at stake here than a business and its business plan. I also didn’t say that this was the peak of civil disobedience up there with Rosa Parks. I’m arguing that there is a place for protests like this in the context of them having nowhere else to go with their campaign as they’ve been shut off.
Also, Gill wasn’t being compared to a Nazi sympathiser; he was called a Quisling, which if you wilfully wish to portray as an Nazi comparison;I’d say they’re using a word that’s in common usage to mean ‘turncoat’ or ‘collaborator’. Maybe there’s a better word, but in the list of crimes perpetrated at MUFC in the last few years, I think linguistic errors are pretty low down, and it’s revealing that this choice of word seems more bothersome to you that 600M of debt.
Ultimately though, you think that football clubs aren’t worth this much effort; it’s all just a bit of fun at the end of the day. I think they’re much, much more important to society than that. Maybe that’s one for Tom to cover off here?
We want Glazer out,we want glazer out
LUHG!!
Gill is jus tinkin of the money!!Deserves wat he gets!!