You forgot to log in to your @BruidheanChaorthainn account @Fran. Also, where’s Shea Lacey?
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A lot of these dinner ladies haven’t even been given a run in the first team. What’s the worst that could happen?
He’s only a chap still. I might dig out some videos of him doing stepovers and running down blind alleys against 16 year olds
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Have you ever been to Saudi flatty?
I haven’t but one of my best friends lives there. I’ve been to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Oman.
I’ve met Saudi folk (women actually) at a meeting and they were lovely.
I asked one was there any sign of women being allowed to drive.
She smiled, and replied “why would I want to drive? I have a driver”
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Brailsford taking a step back I believe.
I think it’s the Saudi men who are more of the issue though?
Yeah the problem is the driver is probably Indian or Nepalese who are treated like dogs over there. Maybe some of the women folk you met were lovely but I certainly wouldn’t describe the many many Saudis I have dealt with as lovely and the way they treat the immigrants is abominable. Painting with a wide brush here but I would describe them as a horrible bunch of cunts from my interactions with them. The whole stoning gay people to death wouldn’t sit comfortably with me in particular.
The ban on women drivers was lifted six or seven years ago I think.
And how do you propose we deal with them?
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Going back to the cycling team to support Geraint Thomas
Didn’t realise you’d gone woke lad
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Me too. But once you get going it’s very hard to know when to stop.
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That’s ‘whole stoning’, not ‘hole stoning’ btw.
A major reshuffle coming for the Ocean’s 11. It’ll be ‘Five Go Down to the Sea’ at this rate.
Manchester United, Red Football Limited and the battle to stay PSR compliant
This past week, many supporters of rival Premier League clubs have watched Manchester United agree a £62.5m deal with Wolverhampton Wanderers for Matheus Cunha, then make an opening offer worth up to £55m for Brentford’s Bryan Mbeumo, and asked one very simple question.
Given they just posted their lowest top flight league finish since 1974, failed to qualify for Europe and, according to part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe in March, could have gone bust by Christmas if not for cost-cutting measures, how are United not in danger of breaching the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR)?
United are on the record regarding their concerns over compliance with PSR, introduced in 2015 in an effort to prevent clubs overspending and encountering financial difficulty. In January, in a letter to fan group The 1958 responding to criticism over mid-season ticket price increases, United issued a statement said they were “in danger of failing to comply with PSR/FFP requirements in future years” unless action was taken.
But there was not quite the same sense of jeopardy upon release of the club’s latest full-year financial results in September, when chief executive Omar Berrada said that United remain “committed to and in compliance with” both the Premier League and UEFA’s financial sustainability regulations.
In the end, Berrada’s confidence was well-placed and United were not charged by the Premier League with breaching 2023-24 PSR.
Then, in the very same round of interviews as his infamous ‘going bust’ remarks, Ratcliffe suggested it would not be an issue moving forward either, claiming that United are “comfortably in the middle” on spending limits. “We are not going to breach PSR,” he told BBC Sport.
So, are United at risk or not? The picture, as ever, is complicated but the answer may lie in the consolidated group accounts of a hitherto little reported company called Red Football Limited.
What is Red Football Limited?
Red Football Ltd, which was registered at the UK’s Companies House in February 2005 shortly before the Glazers’ takeover, is a subsidiary of Manchester United plc, the club’s ultimate parent company which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and publishes quarterly financial results.
Sources familiar with details of United’s financial situation, speaking anonymously due to the sensitivity of the information, have confirmed to The Athletic that Red Football Ltd’s accounts are those submitted to the Premier League and UEFA for testing against spending regulations.
The Premier League declined to comment when contacted by The Athletic. In a statement, UEFA said: “UEFA doesn’t comment on Financial Sustainability matters or the situation of specific clubs unless a decision has been made and communicated by the relevant independent bodies.”
While the plc is registered in the Cayman Islands, Red Football Ltd is registered in the UK at Companies House. And crucially, according to Premier League’s rules, clubs can only submit the accounts of a UK-registered company for testing against PSR.
Historically, there has been little significant difference between Red Football Ltd’s accounts with those of the Cayman-registered plc. Last season, however, that changed, with some large disparities between some key figures in the two sets of accounts.
The starting point for the Premier League’s PSR calculation is a club’s pre-tax profit or loss. Clubs are allowed to lose a maximum of £105million ($142m) over a three-year period, after deductions are applied for spending on women’s football, academy, community work and other beneficial causes.
United’s pre-tax loss at plc-level was a staggering £130.7m during the 2023-24 season alone, exacerbating concerns over a potential regulatory breach. But Red Football Ltd’s was far smaller — just £36.2m, a difference of £94.5m compared to the plc.
That figure is corroborated by UEFA’s most recent European Club Finance and Investment Landscape report, which lists United’s 2023-24 pre-tax loss as €42m (£36m), in line with Red Football Ltd’s accounts.
This has implications for United’s compliance with the Premier League’s spending rules. Whereas the plc’s combined pre-tax losses over 2023-24’s three-year PSR cycle stood at £311.9m, Red Football Ltd’s were only £200.6m — a £111.3m difference.
Any estimate of United’s PSR position is just that — an estimate. Industry insiders stress that determining what exactly goes into and is taken out of a PSR calculation can be problematic.
Both the Premier League and UEFA use the concept of a ‘reporting perimeter’, which requires clubs to include all costs “in respect of football activities”, which can encompass amounts that come under the auspices of other legal entities.
But the differences between Red Football Ltd and the plc’s accounts point to how a club that has recorded five consecutive years of significant losses is yet to breach the top flight’s spending rules.
Where are the main differences in the Red Football and the plc accounts?
One of the biggest differences between the two companies’ figures last season was in exceptional items, which stood at £47.8m in the plc’s accounts as a result of costs associated with Ratcliffe’s investment.
These costs were not passed down to Red Football Ltd, however. Exceptional items only amounted to £4.5m on the subsidiary’s books — £3.6m of which was compensation paid to management and senior staff upon leaving the club.
It was widely assumed that costs related to Ratcliffe’s share purchase had to be allowed for in United’s PSR calculation, as their inclusion would likely have led to non-compliance. But their absence from Red Football Ltd’s accounts suggests that they were never part of the equation.
Red Football Ltd also benefited from an additional £10.5m in ‘centralised services recharged to other group undertakings’ during 2023-24 — in other words, recharging staff time to elsewhere in the business.
United sources say this is related to executives conducting business related to the NYSE-listed plc, such as investor relations.
Not all differences between the accounts benefit United’s PSR calculation, though. Another key difference was finance costs — essentially, the interest the club incurs by borrowing money.
This figure stood at £61.4m at plc level but only £21.1m in Red Football Ltd’s accounts, a difference of £40.3m. Meanwhile, the accounts of Red Football Ltd’s immediate parent company — Red Football Joint Venture Limited (RFJVL) — show £42.8m in finance costs.
RFJVL sits above Red Football Ltd in United’s corporate structure, outside of the accounts sent to the Premier League and UEFA, though potentially inside the reporting perimeter. RFJVL had not incurred any finance costs over the previous decade until last season.
This change appears to be due to a formalising of intercompany balances owed to Red Football Ltd and a subsidiary by RFJVL, a move which converted those balances into interest-bearing intra-group loans in December 2023, shortly before Ratcliffe’s minority investment was agreed.
Red Football Ltd subsequently benefited from this formalisation, earning £25.1m in interest income from intra-group loans. And while that income nets out at plc-level, the interest costs incurred in RFJVL give rise to income in Red Football Ltd.
That helps explain Red Football Ltd’s lower pre-tax loss — however, United sources have told The Athletic that the interest income arising from intra-group loans is stripped out of the club’s PSR calculation, and the real cost of the club’s debt (as seen in the plc accounts) is instead reflected.
Furthermore, foreign exchange differences — such as the £12.4m gain in Red Football Ltd’s 2024 accounts — are also excluded for PSR purposes. As a result, the gap between the pre-tax loss in United’s PSR calculation and that seen in the plc accounts is not so vast as it would be if Red Football Ltd’s bottom line was used unadjusted.
Old Trafford sources believe that United’s treatment of costs is appropriate under the letter and the spirit of the rules and consistent with the practice of other clubs.
When approached for comment, United referred back to Berrada’s previous statement alongside the club’s 2023-24 full-year results: “The club remains committed to, and in compliance with, both the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules and UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations.”
Is this kind of accounting common in football?
Other Premier League clubs have assigned costs to separate companies within their wider corporate structure.
When Chelsea were sold in May 2022, former club directors received a collective £49.75m for services in relation to the club sale. Those services were deemed outside the terms of the directors’ club employment contracts, and were paid by Blueco 22 Limited – now Chelsea’s parent company. Such costs were therefore kept off the club’s books and out of its PSR calculation.
On the flipside, the previously mentioned ‘reporting perimeter’ employed by football’s governing bodies seeks to ensure all football club-related costs are captured in PSR submissions, even if they take place elsewhere in the corporate structure.
Per the UEFA report cited earlier, Manchester City’s wage bill in the 2023-24 season was £475.8m – £63.2m higher than the staff costs disclosed in the club’s accounts. If any of United’s football-related costs occur outside the Red Football Ltd group, the rules dictate they still need to be included within the club’s PSR submissions.
So what is United’s PSR headroom?
The upshot is that United have had and should continue to have more PSR headroom to play with than previous estimates based on the Cayman-registered plc suggest.
The Premier League’s 2024-25 PSR test will be based upon the financial years ending June 30 2023, 2024 and 2025. After two lots of full-year accounts up until June 2024, Red Football Ltd’s combined pre-tax losses stood at £55.1m — well below the £105m limit, even before applying any deductions.
An estimate by The Athletic based on assumptions relating to deductions and add-backs suggests that, according to Red Football Ltd’s figures, adjusted to exclude finance income from intra-group loans and any foreign exchange differences, United could lose around £141m in 2024-25 alone and still remain PSR compliant.
From July 1 onwards, a new PSR cycle will begin, taking in the financial years ending June 30 2024, 2025 and 2026.
While clearly too far out from the summer of 2026 to make any reasonable estimates, Red Football Ltd’s £36.2m pre-tax loss in the first of those three years is again significantly below the £105m limit before acceptable deductions.
Concerns over United’s compliance with the Premier League’s rules can largely be put to one side then, but that does not mean the club can throw caution to the wind.
United would also typically need to comply with UEFA’s financial fair play rules, which carry a stricter limit on allowable losses — usually €60m (£50.5m, $68.3m) over three years, after similar acceptable deductions.
After failing to qualify for Europe this season, United will not be tested under UEFA’s rules. That does not mean they can spend freely, though.
Money spent this summer will count towards UEFA’s three-year cycles for tests in 2026-27 and 2027-28, when United will hope to be back in European competition.
What else could affect United’s summer spending plans?
Clubs do not just need enough regulatory breathing space in order to spend, they also need cold, hard cash — something that has been in relatively short supply at Old Trafford over the past couple of years.
According to United’s second quarter results, the club had £95.5m in cash and cash equivalents in the bank at the end of last year. That is despite Ratcliffe injecting £238.5m in cash since becoming a minority shareholder just 10 months earlier.
Years of spending like a Champions League club without playing Champions League football is beginning to catch up with United, and though far from the only club to stagger their transfer spending in instalments, a tab of more than £300m for players already on their books is beginning to bite.
In an interview with The Overlap in March, Ratcliffe revealed that even if the club made no new signings this summer, they would “write a cheque for £89m” for players they have already signed, citing Antony, Jadon Sancho, Rasmus Hojlund, Casemiro and Andre Onana as examples. That £89m cheque would, in theory, almost wipe out United’s current cash pile at a stroke.
United’s third-quarter results will be released on Friday, covering the three months up until the end of March, and will give greater clarity on their cash situation heading into the summer.
There have already been clues that resources need to be carefully managed. During talks for Cunha, Wolves were willing to accept staggered payments but rejected United’s proposal to pay in five separate instalments, insisting on three equal £20.8m payments over two years in accordance with the player’s release clause. Negotiations with Brentford for Mbeumo will also be instructive on that front.
When short of cash in the past, United have typically dipped into their revolving credit facility, under which they can borrow up to £300m.
United already owed £210m on this facility as of the end of last year, meaning there was still capacity to loan a further £90m. Friday’s third-quarter results may reveal whether they have availed themselves of that opportunity ahead of an important summer.
As Ratcliffe might say, though, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Any drawdowns on the credit facility will add to United’s debt pile, which at last count stood at £731m, and will eventually need to be paid back or refinanced.
That is why money generated through player sales will still play an important role in United’s summer and why there was a possibility that a mega-money offer from Al Hilal for captain Bruno Fernandes could be entertained.
But when it comes to the Premier League and UEFA’s spending rules, those with knowledge of United’s financial situation are relaxed about their PSR position heading into the summer.
From looking at Red Football Ltd’s figures, it is easier to see why — even if many rival fans may remain sceptical.
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Brailsford is the bicycle racing chap?
That’s Sir David to you, mate.
Rasmus would make a lovely cyclist.
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First 5 games of the new season.
Arsenal (H)
Fulham (A)
Burnley (H)
Manchester City (A)
Chelsea (H)