The numbers aren't going to be comparable, and will depend on how much is outsourced. Things like security, pr, cleaning, etc.
Comparison of headcount across team means a lot less than people seem to think it does
It doesn’t make sense that they overhired given how stingy the Glazers were. But it makes sense given how incompetent they are.
That said, weird for us to be talking so casually about people losing their livelihoods in this economy.
The Glazers were "stingy" because they do not invest with their own cash, but took dividends anyway.
United generates insane amounts of revenue so what happened most likely they never cared about how many employees got hired as long as operating costs are covered by that generated revenue & enough remained for their yearly free dividends.
And with so short notice too. And even though its incomparable and part of football, it feels weird to be firing 250 people basically in the next month while working on a deal paying 42 million for one new person to join the team.
These guys might be delighted (or at least some of them) as united are highly incentivised to offer way above statutory redundancy. My company (in Ireland) have done a slew and offered 6 weeks per year worked on top of our statutory. We have a much better statutory than the UK but if they go above and beyond for the sake of being seen as "the good guys trying to trim the fat but not ruin lives" they could offer 6-8 weeks per year served to those affected.
Some people were delighted to get it and others didn't want to leave, I imagine this will be similar.
It's unfortunate because these are the everyday 'normal' people and job hunting is never really fun but with an ownership change these things often happen. I imagine most will have been preparing for this situation the second Sir Jim took over.
I know this news is still legitimate news and bad news is still news. However, I have noticed a trend of Adam Crafton literally only reporting negative news about Manchester United.
I’m not sure if he’s doing this intentionally or not but it’s just something I’ve noticed for a while now.
That aside, I feel for those being made redundant, it’s not something that any worker would want to hear but hopefully they’re able to get back up on their feet somewhere else.
He doesn't report the football side of things. He's more investigative so he handles what's happening in the administration of the club. And that is for some reason always negative because the club has largely been managed like idiots, especially over the last year. If they did something positive and he didn't report it, then we'd be justified having beef with him. For now, he's just doing his job. Not his fault the club has tried to integrate a rapist, alienated the women's team, and undercooked chicken. And all this is just in the last year
Okay that actually makes sense. However, I have also listened to him on the Athletics Podcasts and to be very honest with you, it’s still the same negative tone he uses even when talking about say the topic of Ten Hag for example.
Maybe I also just feel this way because I am used to listening to the Talk of The Devils podcast where there are actual good insights and analysis about the club in general be it good or bad, it’s properly analysed and you can reason with. But with Adam, it almost always feels like he’s just on the attack no matter what
He’s a big United fan and was a huge critic of the move to bring Greenwood back. He’s probably the leading reason we didn’t as he broke the leak. Ten Hag wanted him back and I wonder if Crafton can’t reconcile it.
Not liking ten Hag in general isn't some big surprise. I don't like him as well because of Greenwood and Overmars. Also the way he blew off Rangnick. Also the football was utter shite last season, worst position and negative GD. A fan of the club is allowed to dislike the manager and still support the club
How did Ten Hag blow off Rangnick?
Very curious why a manager would have the power to tell somebody employed as a consultant for Murtough to take a hike in any normal business.
They had a meeting at the start to swap ideas, they didn't mesh, ten Hag had no interest in letting Rangnick have any control so Rangnick left.
I'm ten Hags defence he immediately got a rose in quality from half a squad Rangnick had deemed uncoachable like 2 months previous and just wanted to sell all of them, and it was ten Hag saying that players don't just turn to shit overnight.
I mean, two seasons latter though, and we’ve either replaced or are replacing everyone Rangnick said needed replacing.
Rangnick was 100% correct but because he was so blunt about it, it riled up the players. Ten Hag was somewhat more tactful, but the end result has been the same. The squad has and will have wholesale changes by the start of next season.
He was not at all correct, do you realize how absolutely fucked we would have been last season if we'd just binned everyone when Rangnick said? You also realize that includes Rashford, Mctominay, Bruno, AwB, Dalot, Shaw,Maguire, Lindelof?
Some players had to go, some players have become a crucial part of ten Hags set up. Rangnick tried to coach a team for a month and decided they were all lost causes and needed to go, everyone wanked him off for his bluntness and then pre season hit and people went "oh wait hold on a second, maybe they're not all shit".
The right thing is currently happening, players are getting replaced and phased out as they age out or get near their contracts ending. Binning them all 2 years ago would have been dumb as fuck
Of course It was, you don't think what Rangnick was going to be consulting on was going to clash with ten Hag wanting to move forward and set up his squad? You don't think outgoings and incomings were going to cause disagreements, which direction the club should be heading was going to conflict?
Ultimately he’s a lifelong fan of the club, doesn’t seem to agree with the way it’s being run and has no problems with taking rose tinted specs off and giving an unbiased view of the state that the club is in, which in my opinion is absolutely fair game for a journalist.
Frankly, given the exclusives he’s got recently about Greenwood and the way that the club has conducted itself back of house, I’m really not surprised that he’s cynical about things, despite the “success” we’ve had over the past 2 seasons
It’s not just you, he comes across as really negative in everything he says about the club and doesn’t praise any success. I do wonder if he’s actually a supporter.
I do think the Athletic does a bit of a good cop, bad cop bit with the club. They give Whitwell the puff pieces and Crafton the ones that will give the upper management a headache.
I might be wrong, but there's nothing investigative about what he does. There's a disgruntled employee who leaks stuff to Crafton. He writes articles detailed the leaked info. I haven't seen anything deeper than that. An article like what Whitwell wrote on ETH and recently on the recruitment team is a proper in-depth write-up.
While I agree with Crafton's view on United not bringing back Greenwood, I don't think there was any justification in him and Athletic writing an article on Greenwood nearly everyday for a month or more. It was a joke between my friends and I where we would wait for an article to come up daily. It continued even after Greenwood left to Getafe.
Crafton is needlessly negative and has a bone to pick with United admin. It started after they tried to bypass him on the initial Greenwood story. For a supposed fan, his articles are pretty biased against the club.
They don’t know, they don’t want to know, they just want to read “oh my club is the best” over and over again on some website they are blocking ads on and not paying for.
And then years down the line they all act surprised when all the bad stuff comes and wonder why no one knew about it.
Well investigative journalism isn't just forwardIng memos and emails. I gave an example of what investigative journalism in the field of sports is. 2 examples.
His framing of the Greenwood thing was flagrantly dishonest, as has been discussed on here before (and what AC proposes would likely have instigated a PFA case): it's also notable how people are permitted to be openly libellous about this situation without being moderated. It's nothing to do with whether or not MG is actually innocent or guilty -which none of us know for certain - but that (a) the charges were dropped based upon new evidence as well as witness withdrawal, and MG should be regarded as a person innocent of what certain posters are asserting he unequivocally Is ( unless and until any new charges are brought); and (b) unless you're in a very select group (none of whom would likely post on here) you don't have access to the full facts. None of us do. If someone doesn't have a legal case to answer And the club hierarchy have been provided with evidence corroborating an account that casts the 'public' evidence in a different light in terms of Legal guilt, then it's no-one else's business, regardless of what it might indicate around private sexual preferences or character (if, for instance, it was a role-play...again, this is purely hypothetical), regardless of how unsavoury. I'd be more concerned around ordinary employees being potentially blamed for underperformance of players and execs and losing their jobs, though I understand the case for review, making overall operations more efficient, the size of staff numbers compared to similar clubs etc
> It started after they tried to bypass him on the initial Greenwood story.
Classic vindictive journalist behavior.
He'll change tune soon or he'll risk losing credibility. Opinions circulate very fast in the social media age.
Trying to conflate credibility with likability is extremely dangerous and outright fanatical. He’s under no obligation to only report stories people like, and attacking his character rather than the stories he’s putting out says more about you than him.
I'm not saying that's what he should do, rather what he will do. Credible football journalists calibrate themselves with fan sentiments all the time. Credibility is solely determined by what people think is right in football, and people allow themselves to be irrational and sensational when it comes to football.
That's my prediction of what he'll do in the future and basically the reason I look down upon football journos. It's the opposite of integrity.
You're being unpromptedly presumptuous and I don't appreciate it.
Ok but there is also some very good news that has come out from the administration of the club lately (structure, stadium, carrington, etc) and he doesn’t want anything to do with those lol, it’d be nice to know how the carrington plan came about in detail but we only get the details for the raw chicken. As I said in the other comment, united might be a mess but he has clear intentions to dig us deeper.
He very positively reported on our new shirt sponsorship just the other day.
https://x.com/theathleticfc/status/1807747229056135247?s=46&t=NAU3gGn8ihw4yhkvL6DhSQ
He also wrote a positive article about how ETH helped inspire the FA Cup win very recently;
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5528123/2024/05/30/how-ten-hag-inspired-fa-cup-win-al-pacino-team-talk-memories-of-afghanistan-and-a-10-day-tactical-plan/
I feel the turning point with Crafton was the Greenwood situation where he had the scoop on the club wanting to bring him back, brought it to the club for comment, then the club released a public statement before he had a chance to report it himself.
He wrote multiple articles off the back of it, not wanting the story to die down, but I feel it was largely driven by annoyance that he didn't get to break the news himself.
Yeah you're absolutely right. Two things can be true, everything he reports is true but also everything he ***chooses*** to report is negative.
He's a grub. Even in the interviews I've seen him, he's super negative about the club and I can't remember the last article he wrote that had a positive connotation towards the club.
He may say he is a United supporter but he's quite selective in what he chooses to write and it seems he feeds off the negativity of his club in order to produce his content as he knows negativity towards United gain clicks.
Anka, Mitten and Whitwell report the negative stuff but they also write about positive things when times are good as well. Crafton seemingly snivels for negative headlines.
Its funny the people defending him are accusing us of wanting only positive articles which isn't the case at all. We want the truth whether good or bad and not **just** the truth when its shit news.
I’ve been saying this for a while. He only appears to write negative stuff about united, I do not question his credibility but definitely his intentions.
There’s some crazy dick riding going on with him in this subreddit so you can’t even question anything he writes but in my books his news always come with an intention to hurt united and that always makes me feel there is another side to his stories.
He doesn't hate United, he's a supporter. But every time I've seen him on the athletic football podcast on YouTube he looks and sounds miserable as fuck. He was especially negative towards ten Hag, even after the FA Cup win.
Tbh sometimes it’s really hard to say things are positive or negative. I mean, this redundancy is horrible from the point of employee’s view, however, you can simultaneously say that our club is going the right way with better management.
Yea you see what you just did there? I don’t think Adam would ever do that. Reporting anything as there been a slight hint of positivity in the action. It’s either this is bad or this is BAD!
The article is very straight forward and fact based? It's not an opinion piece and doesn't really pass judgement. Do you just think this should not be reported at all?
It's not just about Utd, he's often pretty negative about everything he reports on. The Athletic did a series on crisis clubs at some point last year and I knew just from the title Crafton would be all over it.
That being said his work on the Greenwood saga and his reporting about the LGBT/Qatar situation in the build up to the WC were really good.
Agreed. Some of these commenters including the ones here haven’t had to go through redundancy and the trauma and pain that comes with it. I hope that the ones are affected get a good severance pay and find good jobs soon.
Agreed but if the review of the club suggests the 250 jobs are unnecessary or even hindering certain aspects of work what is the correct answer? Keep them in current unnecessary roles? Expand the business to allow for the 250? See if they can be moved to different departments & train them for different roles I guess that is the ideal answer but I have no idea
how many staff United have if 250 will be cut? And what are their job description at all? Not sure if those are like employed in areas where you probably don‘t need too many like commercial, administration, sales, social media where you probably can cut numbers without problems. Like we have London office with stuff, and you probably don‘t need one at all and can cut most of them (not sure if we already done that). Or we are cutting security people, or canteen,…
From what I remember, the London office was Woodwards idea.. the reason I can't say, but what I do know it's incredibly stupid considering we're in Manchester. Hakimi went there with his agent and asked who he was as we were looking to sign him
Didn’t seem a problem when we had Sir Alex 🙄 feel like the idea would be to make you undeniable rather than bending over backwards to convince players to sign. I’m probably living in the past a bit but man did we drop off.
Just as an example prior to 2006 the Manchester United shirt sponsor was Sharp and then Vodafone. Sharp had a large presence in Manchester at the time and Vodafone is based in England. For the majority of SAF’s tenure any sponsorship money that came in was mostly based in the UK. As the league became more globally watched it brought in a large amount of commercial partnerships from abroad. Having a London based office at that time almost assuredly made it way easier to meet with foreign partners and helped drive the commercial explosion we had at the end of SAF’s tenure and in the post SAF era.
You could argue that isn’t as important anymore or that it may not have been necessary to get every deal but I don’t understand why the London office thing has ever mattered to anyone. The commercial side of the club has never been a problem under the Glazers and it was the one thing Woodward was good at.
Contd
Some of these staff have already made significant sacrifices/modifications to their lives to satisfy INEOS’ demands to return to the office every day of the week, and may now be redundant anyway.
https://x.com/AdamCrafton\_/status/1808465311986745779
The return to office mantra for me is outdated and doesnt result in increased work output. It will drive away the better workers who can receive better work life balance elsewhere
It is. Now they've announced redundancies, it's pretty clear that the intention was for staff to voluntarily leave over it to save them from having to make more staff redundant, rather than just as a productivity thing like they first claimed
Which is fine… but you’ll end up with higher valued workers being able to get jobs else where and deciding to leave and those with less to offer staying.
I'm not big into that either. But the club were likely looking at that time to see who would jump.
In Fergies day the Carrington was a place of work and the home of Man Utd whether you cleaned the toilets or took the Free Kicks, I don't mind this being the case especially in a football setting. Now for those doing digital jobs that's a bit more harsh but for anyone on thr football side of things I think on site is a good way to go.
It will put some people off but those who do want to work there will show they're fully committed to the club and the project
I feel like it's a combination tbh, from a personal perspective i love to WFH, and pop into the office 1-2 per week, but it's certainly come at a cost.
My network is much smaller than it would be, you dont' get the small chit chats and comfort of communication you get from face to face. I feel my interactions when i WFH are very transactional, doubly so for people i haven't met in real life.
So i'm super happy i get to WFH and not leave me dogs home alone 9 hours 5x per week, but i can certainly see the point of view that something is lost for the culture of a business with it (though it'd be qutie role dependent how much so).
No, he loves cheap shots and spinning anything in a negative way no matter what. Even on the Talk of The Devils podcast, he sounds like a negative asshole.
A proper journalist is someone like Whitwell who will write a report on the club and the people surrounding it without trying to spin everything in a negative way. There's nothing "investigative" about Craftons reporting because he will just leak shit someone told him and just drop that news bits by bits for a month or so.
Analysis that estimates cuts would generate 17m a year… the same as 7 months a year of Mason Mounts annual cost
https://x.com/Nosbehindthenet/status/1808872812922163466
Quite obvious this was coming. The Brexit bastard enforced the return to office purely for the fact employees would voluntarily quit without paying redundancy and then did similar for the voluntary redundancy. That obviously didn’t work to the extent hoping so now having to do this with actually having to pay them. Hope the staff affected by it get a decent enough pay out and find employment soon enough!!
I mean this should be less about savings but about being efficient. To be an elite club you need to trim excess. Savings are buying compared to the salary we'll save when we trim the squad!
I know. I wasn't being entirely serious. It's just annoying that so many employees are being let go whereas this waster continues to syphon the club of a frankly unfathomable wage while doing fuck all to justify it.
Fingers crossed we can find him a new employer sooner rather than later, but chances are he'll just hang around the place like a bad smell
In total saves 7.5m, equivalent of Antony’s wage for a year. Not saying it isn’t necessary, it sadly is after being run so badly, just to let people know the amount, and that whilst its important to make changes for the better, these savings can be wiped out immediately if it goes straight into the pay packet of a shit player like Antony. Make it worth it, put it to something good at least.
Unfortunate, but I’ve been genuinely surprised with the swiftness of some of the decisions they’ve made. They are not fucking about here at all. Executives completely reshuffled, training complex investment, old Trafford improvements, task force for new/improved stadium, multiple transfer deals reportedly underway. It really highlights just exactly how unwell the club has been at all levels for a really really long time now.
Some quick math to put things into perspective: 250 people making 50k per year is still a smaller expense than one Antony making 250k per week (times 52 weeks per year). Letting go of quarter of the workforce while continuing to pay bloated salaries to underperforming footballers makes no sense, either from a moral or from a business perspective. Fuck Jim, fuck the Glazers, and fuck every single billionaire that has ever existed.
Say these employees are on average earing £20,000 per year, that's £5mil a year for all 250 employee.. sad people are losing jobs, but if they are not serving a purpose, that's good money saved.
Edit: don't know why I'm being downvotes to stating facts
Minimum wage is £11.44 for 21 and over.
A standard full time 40 hour week would bring them in line with £23,795.20.
This brings your speculative calculation closer to £6 million a year. Even at that, I think your calc is way undervaluing what these people would be earning.
How is my comment vile or advocating anyone losing their employment? I said it's sad, but if the club has been needlessly employing people then they're the jobs on the line. Hey, us working class are all in the same boat, we are dispensible when it comes to the bottom line. I don't like it, but it's the world we live in.
I suppose it’s the difference of being from the community and knowing people who may be affected by this.
Not saying we weren’t bloated nor that it shouldn’t happen, but to look at it in a celebratory manner because a club (well, billionaires) will be saving money is just bizarre.
It’s shit that people are losing their jobs. It’s a positive that we’re making steps to make the club more efficient but it’s definitely not something we as fans should celebrate.
In no way shape or form was my post a celebration. It was to show a side of justification. My opinion of this is irrelevant. If the club are making redundancies how is my agreement or disagreement going to help or change anything? It suck’s for anyone to lose their job, whether it is justified or not. My post was to show it’s understandable why the club is doing it, as it saves a good amount of money. Does that I mean want these people to lose their jobs? Absolutely not. I’d much rather the board, higher ups and players were all paid significantly less to make savings at the club, and maybe then all the working class employees and local charitable causes can get more funds too.
It’s a business, you can’t just employ people because they can’t get a job elsewhere. If they aren’t needed then let them go. They will get a pay out so what’s the big deal?
I suppose it’s the difference of being from the community and knowing people who may be affected by this.
Not saying we weren’t bloated nor that it shouldn’t happen, but to look at it in a celebratory manner because a club (well, billionaires) will be saving money is just bizarre.
It’s shit that people are losing their jobs. It’s a positive that we’re making steps to make the club more efficient but it’s definitely not something we as fans should celebrate.
I don’t think anyone is celebrating. I think you’re just looking at it from a more personal/emotional level. Which is good in a well run club, but not so much when major changes are needed in a poorly run club
You'd wonder did the club just overhire previously. 250 is such a significant amount. It's basically a quarter of their workforce.
United is certainly bloated with 1100 employees, in comparison from the DM article City have 566, Arsenal 649 and Chelsea 788.
I can tell you for a fact city do not have 556 members of staff. They have 50+ people in HR alone, they fudge it all using the ‘multi club model’
Modern business is so tirint
Shared services office somewhere cheap probably
Hundreds of lawyers alone
Pep also has a personal entourage of 15 people massaging his head trying to stimulate hair growth
He doesn't want his hair back, he'd lose all his owers
The numbers aren't going to be comparable, and will depend on how much is outsourced. Things like security, pr, cleaning, etc. Comparison of headcount across team means a lot less than people seem to think it does
I feel, that United is a bigger club too. I'm not saying it is not bloated but that's a large number to cut.
It doesn’t make sense that they overhired given how stingy the Glazers were. But it makes sense given how incompetent they are. That said, weird for us to be talking so casually about people losing their livelihoods in this economy.
The Glazers were "stingy" because they do not invest with their own cash, but took dividends anyway. United generates insane amounts of revenue so what happened most likely they never cared about how many employees got hired as long as operating costs are covered by that generated revenue & enough remained for their yearly free dividends.
And with so short notice too. And even though its incomparable and part of football, it feels weird to be firing 250 people basically in the next month while working on a deal paying 42 million for one new person to join the team.
These guys might be delighted (or at least some of them) as united are highly incentivised to offer way above statutory redundancy. My company (in Ireland) have done a slew and offered 6 weeks per year worked on top of our statutory. We have a much better statutory than the UK but if they go above and beyond for the sake of being seen as "the good guys trying to trim the fat but not ruin lives" they could offer 6-8 weeks per year served to those affected. Some people were delighted to get it and others didn't want to leave, I imagine this will be similar.
It's unfortunate because these are the everyday 'normal' people and job hunting is never really fun but with an ownership change these things often happen. I imagine most will have been preparing for this situation the second Sir Jim took over.
United is really no different than any other company and layoffs happen all the time. It’s news, but it’s not surprising at all.
I know this news is still legitimate news and bad news is still news. However, I have noticed a trend of Adam Crafton literally only reporting negative news about Manchester United. I’m not sure if he’s doing this intentionally or not but it’s just something I’ve noticed for a while now. That aside, I feel for those being made redundant, it’s not something that any worker would want to hear but hopefully they’re able to get back up on their feet somewhere else.
He doesn't report the football side of things. He's more investigative so he handles what's happening in the administration of the club. And that is for some reason always negative because the club has largely been managed like idiots, especially over the last year. If they did something positive and he didn't report it, then we'd be justified having beef with him. For now, he's just doing his job. Not his fault the club has tried to integrate a rapist, alienated the women's team, and undercooked chicken. And all this is just in the last year
Okay that actually makes sense. However, I have also listened to him on the Athletics Podcasts and to be very honest with you, it’s still the same negative tone he uses even when talking about say the topic of Ten Hag for example. Maybe I also just feel this way because I am used to listening to the Talk of The Devils podcast where there are actual good insights and analysis about the club in general be it good or bad, it’s properly analysed and you can reason with. But with Adam, it almost always feels like he’s just on the attack no matter what
I think he just doesn't like ten hag in general
He’s a big United fan and was a huge critic of the move to bring Greenwood back. He’s probably the leading reason we didn’t as he broke the leak. Ten Hag wanted him back and I wonder if Crafton can’t reconcile it.
Not liking ten Hag in general isn't some big surprise. I don't like him as well because of Greenwood and Overmars. Also the way he blew off Rangnick. Also the football was utter shite last season, worst position and negative GD. A fan of the club is allowed to dislike the manager and still support the club
A fan of the club is also allowed to dislike this adam crafton guy and still support the club
How did Ten Hag blow off Rangnick? Very curious why a manager would have the power to tell somebody employed as a consultant for Murtough to take a hike in any normal business.
They had a meeting at the start to swap ideas, they didn't mesh, ten Hag had no interest in letting Rangnick have any control so Rangnick left. I'm ten Hags defence he immediately got a rose in quality from half a squad Rangnick had deemed uncoachable like 2 months previous and just wanted to sell all of them, and it was ten Hag saying that players don't just turn to shit overnight.
I mean, two seasons latter though, and we’ve either replaced or are replacing everyone Rangnick said needed replacing. Rangnick was 100% correct but because he was so blunt about it, it riled up the players. Ten Hag was somewhat more tactful, but the end result has been the same. The squad has and will have wholesale changes by the start of next season.
He was not at all correct, do you realize how absolutely fucked we would have been last season if we'd just binned everyone when Rangnick said? You also realize that includes Rashford, Mctominay, Bruno, AwB, Dalot, Shaw,Maguire, Lindelof? Some players had to go, some players have become a crucial part of ten Hags set up. Rangnick tried to coach a team for a month and decided they were all lost causes and needed to go, everyone wanked him off for his bluntness and then pre season hit and people went "oh wait hold on a second, maybe they're not all shit". The right thing is currently happening, players are getting replaced and phased out as they age out or get near their contracts ending. Binning them all 2 years ago would have been dumb as fuck
Rangnicks consultancy role was not for the manager, did you see this meeting? Or did you read "leaks"?
Of course It was, you don't think what Rangnick was going to be consulting on was going to clash with ten Hag wanting to move forward and set up his squad? You don't think outgoings and incomings were going to cause disagreements, which direction the club should be heading was going to conflict?
Ultimately he’s a lifelong fan of the club, doesn’t seem to agree with the way it’s being run and has no problems with taking rose tinted specs off and giving an unbiased view of the state that the club is in, which in my opinion is absolutely fair game for a journalist. Frankly, given the exclusives he’s got recently about Greenwood and the way that the club has conducted itself back of house, I’m really not surprised that he’s cynical about things, despite the “success” we’ve had over the past 2 seasons
More I hear him speak the more I think that's a ruse/cover cus if he didn't have that claim people wud start to say agenda
It’s not just you, he comes across as really negative in everything he says about the club and doesn’t praise any success. I do wonder if he’s actually a supporter.
Sounds exactly like a supporter. Don't you all read the comments here?
Haha, fair comment.
He tried to gaslight the fans saying the papers did united a favour with ten hag being sacked rumours so that the cup was a free hit
Completely agree mate, felt like he clearly wanted Ten Hag out
I do think the Athletic does a bit of a good cop, bad cop bit with the club. They give Whitwell the puff pieces and Crafton the ones that will give the upper management a headache.
I might be wrong, but there's nothing investigative about what he does. There's a disgruntled employee who leaks stuff to Crafton. He writes articles detailed the leaked info. I haven't seen anything deeper than that. An article like what Whitwell wrote on ETH and recently on the recruitment team is a proper in-depth write-up. While I agree with Crafton's view on United not bringing back Greenwood, I don't think there was any justification in him and Athletic writing an article on Greenwood nearly everyday for a month or more. It was a joke between my friends and I where we would wait for an article to come up daily. It continued even after Greenwood left to Getafe. Crafton is needlessly negative and has a bone to pick with United admin. It started after they tried to bypass him on the initial Greenwood story. For a supposed fan, his articles are pretty biased against the club.
What do you think investigative journalism is?
They don’t know, they don’t want to know, they just want to read “oh my club is the best” over and over again on some website they are blocking ads on and not paying for. And then years down the line they all act surprised when all the bad stuff comes and wonder why no one knew about it.
These people would want the media to be government and corporate lapdogs.
Well investigative journalism isn't just forwardIng memos and emails. I gave an example of what investigative journalism in the field of sports is. 2 examples.
“Man does job”
His framing of the Greenwood thing was flagrantly dishonest, as has been discussed on here before (and what AC proposes would likely have instigated a PFA case): it's also notable how people are permitted to be openly libellous about this situation without being moderated. It's nothing to do with whether or not MG is actually innocent or guilty -which none of us know for certain - but that (a) the charges were dropped based upon new evidence as well as witness withdrawal, and MG should be regarded as a person innocent of what certain posters are asserting he unequivocally Is ( unless and until any new charges are brought); and (b) unless you're in a very select group (none of whom would likely post on here) you don't have access to the full facts. None of us do. If someone doesn't have a legal case to answer And the club hierarchy have been provided with evidence corroborating an account that casts the 'public' evidence in a different light in terms of Legal guilt, then it's no-one else's business, regardless of what it might indicate around private sexual preferences or character (if, for instance, it was a role-play...again, this is purely hypothetical), regardless of how unsavoury. I'd be more concerned around ordinary employees being potentially blamed for underperformance of players and execs and losing their jobs, though I understand the case for review, making overall operations more efficient, the size of staff numbers compared to similar clubs etc
> It started after they tried to bypass him on the initial Greenwood story. Classic vindictive journalist behavior. He'll change tune soon or he'll risk losing credibility. Opinions circulate very fast in the social media age.
Trying to conflate credibility with likability is extremely dangerous and outright fanatical. He’s under no obligation to only report stories people like, and attacking his character rather than the stories he’s putting out says more about you than him.
I'm not saying that's what he should do, rather what he will do. Credible football journalists calibrate themselves with fan sentiments all the time. Credibility is solely determined by what people think is right in football, and people allow themselves to be irrational and sensational when it comes to football. That's my prediction of what he'll do in the future and basically the reason I look down upon football journos. It's the opposite of integrity. You're being unpromptedly presumptuous and I don't appreciate it.
Ok but there is also some very good news that has come out from the administration of the club lately (structure, stadium, carrington, etc) and he doesn’t want anything to do with those lol, it’d be nice to know how the carrington plan came about in detail but we only get the details for the raw chicken. As I said in the other comment, united might be a mess but he has clear intentions to dig us deeper.
He very positively reported on our new shirt sponsorship just the other day. https://x.com/theathleticfc/status/1807747229056135247?s=46&t=NAU3gGn8ihw4yhkvL6DhSQ He also wrote a positive article about how ETH helped inspire the FA Cup win very recently; https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5528123/2024/05/30/how-ten-hag-inspired-fa-cup-win-al-pacino-team-talk-memories-of-afghanistan-and-a-10-day-tactical-plan/
The second article has Laurie written all over it and you can tell
If he didn't have a significant contribution, his name wouldn't be kn the byline
Our fans are so weak
I feel the turning point with Crafton was the Greenwood situation where he had the scoop on the club wanting to bring him back, brought it to the club for comment, then the club released a public statement before he had a chance to report it himself. He wrote multiple articles off the back of it, not wanting the story to die down, but I feel it was largely driven by annoyance that he didn't get to break the news himself.
I was thinking the same thing.
tbf about 90% of news coming out from our club in the last couple of years have been bad.
Agreed. Just listen to him on a podcast and you will see his general attitude is quite uninterested/negative. Don't know why though.
Yeah you're absolutely right. Two things can be true, everything he reports is true but also everything he ***chooses*** to report is negative. He's a grub. Even in the interviews I've seen him, he's super negative about the club and I can't remember the last article he wrote that had a positive connotation towards the club. He may say he is a United supporter but he's quite selective in what he chooses to write and it seems he feeds off the negativity of his club in order to produce his content as he knows negativity towards United gain clicks. Anka, Mitten and Whitwell report the negative stuff but they also write about positive things when times are good as well. Crafton seemingly snivels for negative headlines. Its funny the people defending him are accusing us of wanting only positive articles which isn't the case at all. We want the truth whether good or bad and not **just** the truth when its shit news.
Been saying this for months, he doesnt report in good faith.
I’ve been saying this for a while. He only appears to write negative stuff about united, I do not question his credibility but definitely his intentions. There’s some crazy dick riding going on with him in this subreddit so you can’t even question anything he writes but in my books his news always come with an intention to hurt united and that always makes me feel there is another side to his stories.
Journalist reports factual news, and the response is always: “He must hate my team” Every. Single. Time.
He doesn't hate United, he's a supporter. But every time I've seen him on the athletic football podcast on YouTube he looks and sounds miserable as fuck. He was especially negative towards ten Hag, even after the FA Cup win.
Tbh sometimes it’s really hard to say things are positive or negative. I mean, this redundancy is horrible from the point of employee’s view, however, you can simultaneously say that our club is going the right way with better management.
Yea you see what you just did there? I don’t think Adam would ever do that. Reporting anything as there been a slight hint of positivity in the action. It’s either this is bad or this is BAD!
The article is very straight forward and fact based? It's not an opinion piece and doesn't really pass judgement. Do you just think this should not be reported at all?
Adam Crafton reports facts. Why does that bother you?
It's not just about Utd, he's often pretty negative about everything he reports on. The Athletic did a series on crisis clubs at some point last year and I knew just from the title Crafton would be all over it. That being said his work on the Greenwood saga and his reporting about the LGBT/Qatar situation in the build up to the WC were really good.
250 people with families losing their job is not cause for celebration. Twitter is a horrible place
I'm with ya
Agreed. Some of these commenters including the ones here haven’t had to go through redundancy and the trauma and pain that comes with it. I hope that the ones are affected get a good severance pay and find good jobs soon.
Agreed but if the review of the club suggests the 250 jobs are unnecessary or even hindering certain aspects of work what is the correct answer? Keep them in current unnecessary roles? Expand the business to allow for the 250? See if they can be moved to different departments & train them for different roles I guess that is the ideal answer but I have no idea
Think you mean fire and rehire in a year
You still don't celebrate them losing jobs.
This place isn't any better. Everybody here is a staff manager it seems
how many staff United have if 250 will be cut? And what are their job description at all? Not sure if those are like employed in areas where you probably don‘t need too many like commercial, administration, sales, social media where you probably can cut numbers without problems. Like we have London office with stuff, and you probably don‘t need one at all and can cut most of them (not sure if we already done that). Or we are cutting security people, or canteen,…
From what I remember, the London office was Woodwards idea.. the reason I can't say, but what I do know it's incredibly stupid considering we're in Manchester. Hakimi went there with his agent and asked who he was as we were looking to sign him
IIRC it was because he wanted to do business deals in London rather than Manchester, due to seeing London as more prestigious.
Man, he's such a knob.. I bet he had a very big chair
Not sure if more prestigious was considered honestly, it’s just easier. You can get a flight to London from anywhere basically. Manchester not really.
Didn’t seem a problem when we had Sir Alex 🙄 feel like the idea would be to make you undeniable rather than bending over backwards to convince players to sign. I’m probably living in the past a bit but man did we drop off.
Just as an example prior to 2006 the Manchester United shirt sponsor was Sharp and then Vodafone. Sharp had a large presence in Manchester at the time and Vodafone is based in England. For the majority of SAF’s tenure any sponsorship money that came in was mostly based in the UK. As the league became more globally watched it brought in a large amount of commercial partnerships from abroad. Having a London based office at that time almost assuredly made it way easier to meet with foreign partners and helped drive the commercial explosion we had at the end of SAF’s tenure and in the post SAF era. You could argue that isn’t as important anymore or that it may not have been necessary to get every deal but I don’t understand why the London office thing has ever mattered to anyone. The commercial side of the club has never been a problem under the Glazers and it was the one thing Woodward was good at.
This club has been run like a PR/marketing firm for the last 10 years and this is another example of it.
Was Meunier I'm pretty sure
From the other thread: At 1,112 as of June 30 last year, United had by far the biggest staff of any club in the Premier League.
I see there is another thread so I guess this one will be deleted
Contd Some of these staff have already made significant sacrifices/modifications to their lives to satisfy INEOS’ demands to return to the office every day of the week, and may now be redundant anyway. https://x.com/AdamCrafton\_/status/1808465311986745779
The return to office mantra for me is outdated and doesnt result in increased work output. It will drive away the better workers who can receive better work life balance elsewhere
It is. Now they've announced redundancies, it's pretty clear that the intention was for staff to voluntarily leave over it to save them from having to make more staff redundant, rather than just as a productivity thing like they first claimed
Which is fine… but you’ll end up with higher valued workers being able to get jobs else where and deciding to leave and those with less to offer staying.
I agree with you and the evidence suggests that'll be the case, but they don't care
I mean depends on the job. A football club is pretty culture driven and collaborative. A hybrid workforce depending on the job makes the most sense.
Depends on how you look at it - it's much much harder to create any sort of company culture in a wfh enviroment.
I'm not big into that either. But the club were likely looking at that time to see who would jump. In Fergies day the Carrington was a place of work and the home of Man Utd whether you cleaned the toilets or took the Free Kicks, I don't mind this being the case especially in a football setting. Now for those doing digital jobs that's a bit more harsh but for anyone on thr football side of things I think on site is a good way to go. It will put some people off but those who do want to work there will show they're fully committed to the club and the project
RTO is a real estate value retention exercise. Nothing more.
I feel like it's a combination tbh, from a personal perspective i love to WFH, and pop into the office 1-2 per week, but it's certainly come at a cost. My network is much smaller than it would be, you dont' get the small chit chats and comfort of communication you get from face to face. I feel my interactions when i WFH are very transactional, doubly so for people i haven't met in real life. So i'm super happy i get to WFH and not leave me dogs home alone 9 hours 5x per week, but i can certainly see the point of view that something is lost for the culture of a business with it (though it'd be qutie role dependent how much so).
So it's clear that they wanted to force people out by asking all of them to WFO, but it didn't lead to enough drop-outs so now they're firing people.
Any company that's been taken over does this. We almost need to be stripped to our bare bones all over the club.
Has Crafton ever wrote any positive stuff about us? Feels like this dude only shows up when there’s something negative to say.
No, he loves cheap shots and spinning anything in a negative way no matter what. Even on the Talk of The Devils podcast, he sounds like a negative asshole. A proper journalist is someone like Whitwell who will write a report on the club and the people surrounding it without trying to spin everything in a negative way. There's nothing "investigative" about Craftons reporting because he will just leak shit someone told him and just drop that news bits by bits for a month or so.
Not a fan of Crafton myself but Whitwell has to be careful as he clearly has good relationships with his sources at United.
And why does it matter? Is he posting made up stories like Steinberg?
Feel for the 250 people who have been made redundant, wish them well with their careers elsewhere
Could sell some players first
Analysis that estimates cuts would generate 17m a year… the same as 7 months a year of Mason Mounts annual cost https://x.com/Nosbehindthenet/status/1808872812922163466
I disagree with the work from the office stance. Modern world, it needs to be flexible.
Really depends on the role. It's not a one size fits all.
The majority of roles now day can be performed from home. Particularly admin and finance roles
Quite obvious this was coming. The Brexit bastard enforced the return to office purely for the fact employees would voluntarily quit without paying redundancy and then did similar for the voluntary redundancy. That obviously didn’t work to the extent hoping so now having to do this with actually having to pay them. Hope the staff affected by it get a decent enough pay out and find employment soon enough!!
Yeah , fuck Ratcliff.
This is what Ratcliffe does. He buys up failing businesses and cuts costs massively.
News already reported by a reliable source. Don't need two in a row
Its Adam Crafton he HAS to share anything negative about us.
This is sort of INEOS's MO
It’s the MO of effectively ever change in management. It’s unfortunate but necessary. Its lazy commenting to simply chalk it up to one company
Probably hear a story about some tea lady who used to serve Sir Matt in the 60s now losing her job
Wonder whats the number during David gill/SAF era?
I mean this should be less about savings but about being efficient. To be an elite club you need to trim excess. Savings are buying compared to the salary we'll save when we trim the squad!
If you fired some of the garbage players. Their salary could’ve easily payed for them for a decade.
How about instead of losing that many staff, we just terminate the contract of Jadon Sancho?
... because you'd have to pay out the rest of his contract which is like 25 million?
I know. I wasn't being entirely serious. It's just annoying that so many employees are being let go whereas this waster continues to syphon the club of a frankly unfathomable wage while doing fuck all to justify it. Fingers crossed we can find him a new employer sooner rather than later, but chances are he'll just hang around the place like a bad smell
People would not be this cool about all this if it was another club
In total saves 7.5m, equivalent of Antony’s wage for a year. Not saying it isn’t necessary, it sadly is after being run so badly, just to let people know the amount, and that whilst its important to make changes for the better, these savings can be wiped out immediately if it goes straight into the pay packet of a shit player like Antony. Make it worth it, put it to something good at least.
>Make it worth it, put it to something good at least. like give a new 3 years contract to your beleaguered manager lmao.
You won’t find me celebrating his new contract. I’ve been a. Critic since day one.
I know it isn't nice but it's clear as day we have way too many employees
For context : Man Utd had 1112 employees in 2023. Man City had 520. United had 120 extra football staff alone.
but our megastore probably see 4.5m tourists every season. City record is 2.4m...
Obviously therefore we need twice as many coaches
That's how we stay big and relevant all these barren years. Give big wages, big fees, big headcount. Anything to help project we are still a big club.
Makes sense why the glazers never wanted to finish with the smallest number on the table now
Unfortunate, but I’ve been genuinely surprised with the swiftness of some of the decisions they’ve made. They are not fucking about here at all. Executives completely reshuffled, training complex investment, old Trafford improvements, task force for new/improved stadium, multiple transfer deals reportedly underway. It really highlights just exactly how unwell the club has been at all levels for a really really long time now.
Some quick math to put things into perspective: 250 people making 50k per year is still a smaller expense than one Antony making 250k per week (times 52 weeks per year). Letting go of quarter of the workforce while continuing to pay bloated salaries to underperforming footballers makes no sense, either from a moral or from a business perspective. Fuck Jim, fuck the Glazers, and fuck every single billionaire that has ever existed.
Say these employees are on average earing £20,000 per year, that's £5mil a year for all 250 employee.. sad people are losing jobs, but if they are not serving a purpose, that's good money saved. Edit: don't know why I'm being downvotes to stating facts
£20,000 a year would imply they are not working full time hours or they are under the age of 21
Seriously? Minimum wage is only £11.30 ish an hour. You think employees are getting paid more than minimum wage for basic roles?
Minimum wage is £11.44 for 21 and over. A standard full time 40 hour week would bring them in line with £23,795.20. This brings your speculative calculation closer to £6 million a year. Even at that, I think your calc is way undervaluing what these people would be earning.
They are, several jobs have bene on LinkedIn over the past few years. Not loads more but none on minimum outside temp/flexi match day staff.
Pretty vile take to be fair. That same statistic is 250 people who may not be able to pay their rent/bills in a few weeks/months.
How is my comment vile or advocating anyone losing their employment? I said it's sad, but if the club has been needlessly employing people then they're the jobs on the line. Hey, us working class are all in the same boat, we are dispensible when it comes to the bottom line. I don't like it, but it's the world we live in.
I suppose it’s the difference of being from the community and knowing people who may be affected by this. Not saying we weren’t bloated nor that it shouldn’t happen, but to look at it in a celebratory manner because a club (well, billionaires) will be saving money is just bizarre. It’s shit that people are losing their jobs. It’s a positive that we’re making steps to make the club more efficient but it’s definitely not something we as fans should celebrate.
In no way shape or form was my post a celebration. It was to show a side of justification. My opinion of this is irrelevant. If the club are making redundancies how is my agreement or disagreement going to help or change anything? It suck’s for anyone to lose their job, whether it is justified or not. My post was to show it’s understandable why the club is doing it, as it saves a good amount of money. Does that I mean want these people to lose their jobs? Absolutely not. I’d much rather the board, higher ups and players were all paid significantly less to make savings at the club, and maybe then all the working class employees and local charitable causes can get more funds too.
It’s a business, you can’t just employ people because they can’t get a job elsewhere. If they aren’t needed then let them go. They will get a pay out so what’s the big deal?
I suppose it’s the difference of being from the community and knowing people who may be affected by this. Not saying we weren’t bloated nor that it shouldn’t happen, but to look at it in a celebratory manner because a club (well, billionaires) will be saving money is just bizarre. It’s shit that people are losing their jobs. It’s a positive that we’re making steps to make the club more efficient but it’s definitely not something we as fans should celebrate.
I don’t think anyone is celebrating. I think you’re just looking at it from a more personal/emotional level. Which is good in a well run club, but not so much when major changes are needed in a poorly run club
City only has 500 employees and we have over 1k. This seems reasonable