You perhaps can't compete when PSG and City get involved and you fail to draw the player with the allure of trophies, but you've always been willing to spend £40m+ a year as far as I can tell, and you have two players on contracts which are (I think) approaching £200k a week
I have to go to work now, so if you tear my post to pieces and I don't respond, don't take that as a face-saving action
Okay, well I will leave you some reading for tmrw.
This will be a long post but I'm gonna try to best explain that I'm dead serious with what I said and that United are not actually that powerful financially, at the moment. I'll split the post up a bit to help.
EDIT - Highlighting headline figures so people who can't be bothered to read can just see the differences in list format.
Well there are two costs to consider. The wages and the transfer fees.
Until now the transfer fee has always been considered the important factor...and in fairness for quite a while it was simply because so few clubs could afford the really big payouts. We paid £30m for Ferdinand and £25m for Veron way back in the early 00's. That was well beyond what anybody else could afford within the Premierleague. Today that isn't the case, domestically there's competition from City and Chelsea, two clubs which can pay more than us on any given day, no questions asked. That puts us in a weaker position to them in the transfer market and the same is true against the likes of PSG, Barcelona and Real Madrid. Before including other clubs, that's us 6th already. And we are losing players to them - we lost Hazard and Moura just this summer. We wanted Alexis Sanchez and Barcelona signed him. Real Madrid paid the £30m for Modric we weren't prepared to do. I know there are other factor's at play here too, but United are not really capable of fighting competitively amongst that top bracket any longer.
Yes, we signed RVP for £24m, Kagawa for £12m-£15m, De Gea for almost £20m - and they are all wonderful signings for us and they cost alot of money...but we're picking from those below us in the food chain.
Domestically we aren't even #3, these are the transfer spends in the PL for the last 5 years:
Gross Spend
1) Man City- £530m
2) Chelsea - £326m
3) Liverpool - £252m
4) Tottenham - £205m
5) United - £184m
Net Spend
1) Man City - £407
2) Chelsea - £229
3) Stoke - £75m
4) Aston Villa - £69m
5) Liverpool - £60m
5) Man United - £57m
We are lucky we have a strong team already with alot of great players so yes we don't have to spend like City had to and we have youth products etc - but quite simply if you want to be the best you have to buy the best players and there are quite a few clubs out there looking to sign the best players and they can afford it more than we can. Going forwards into the future...those clubs can eclipse us with ease, just look at the difference between us and Chelsea and City, it's insane.
This is why I said what I said, and I know it must sound insane to fans of clubs even as big as Liverpool, difficult for Kyoufu to comprehend when his club can just about find the money for Debuchy and totally alien for the fans of Bradford, Swansea and QPR who sometimes post here...but that's the reality of it for us because we are competing against those clubs who will pay that amount of money.
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Then there are the wages. United do pay handsome wages no doubt and Rooney and RVP in particular are most likely amongst the worlds top earning players but again, against other clubs our wages are not at the same level.
Latest financial results show United's wage bill is lower than:
Barcelona - £101k/w
Real Madrid - £90k/w
Man City - £86k/w
Chelsea - £80k/w
AC Milan - £71k/w
Bayern - £68k/w
Inter Milan - £66k/w
United - £64k/w
In the case of the Milan clubs that is almost certainly no longer the case. All the others are still paying more wages than us and the top 4 especially are paying ALOT more than us. I think we were about £20m-£30m less than City and Chelsea on last years wage bill so that's about £400k wages per week, that's 2 players earning £200k. A big difference. Most likely closer this year however as we signed RVP. Barca's average wage is £100k, United's is something like £65k. For reference latest results suggest Liverpool's are something like £55k...so we are much closer on that front to you than we are to the others at the top of the game.
The best players/staff want the most money. We've been gifted with Fergie and with an amazing group of players and the allure of the club but it won't last going into the future. Money talks and wages more than ever, and we already see it now...and a big big factor.
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So yeah, I'm dead serious when I say we need to be more competitive lol. It's actually kind of amazing that United remain as competitive as they are when on a financial level we are well behind the others. Yes there are always caveats and things aren't that straightforwards...but we aren't the #1 power in the transfer market, we're not even top 3 and maybe not top 5. If we want to be the best club in Europe, we gotta be better than that...and for that we need money.
Now just think about how far behind Liverpool are on this particular front. It's crazy.
And yes I know there is alot more to it than money, Barca aren't the team they are down to money, neither are Dortmund and neither are Juve...but it's one factor and it's an important one where at the moment Man United are someway behind
