What Manchester United’s reviled Glazer family can learn from Liverpool’s American owners

Before Casemiro, there was Philippe Coutinho, who arrived at Anfield near the end of the January window in 2012-13, when the United-Liverpool dynamic was almost the opposite to what it is now. Then, United were the lauded and conquering partner in the relationship – on the march towards one last Ferguson title – while Liverpool were the put-upon ones.

Liverpool were uncertain under an idealistic new manager, Brendan Rodgers, and Liverpool were the ones whose transfer business and hierarchy were in question. Under the control of Fenway Sports Group they had bought the likes of Andy Carroll and Charlie Adam, and explored swapping Jordan Henderson for Fulham’s Clint Dempsey.

They had brought back, then sacked, Kenny Dalglish. When Luis Suarez abused Patrice Evra Liverpool handled it poorly, with the squad donning those T-shirts in support of the Uruguayan.

FSG were seen as remote American moneymen with a limited feel for football, and English sporting culture. Their president, Mike Gordon, would later tell The Sunday Times that the signing of Coutinho was pivotal, the moment FSG turned a corner in their stewardship of the club.

Coutinho, then 20, was their first true “Moneyball” deal, bought for £8.5 million from Inter Milan, where he was a peripheral figure, but on Liverpool’s radar thanks to impressive underlying data and a successful loan spell at Espanyol. He excelled on the pitch, helping to fire Rodgers’s title bid the following campaign, while paving the way for similar signings, such as Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson. The profit made when Coutinho was sold to Barcelona for £142 million in 2018 then funded Liverpool’s game-changing, world-record purchases of Alisson and Virgil van Dijk.

Perhaps most importantly, the success of Coutinho cemented a new power base at Liverpool – that involving Gordon, who took over the club’s day-to-day running in the summer of 2012, and Michael Edwards, who, in the wake of Damien Comolli’s departure as sporting director, was on the rise to becoming the club’s recruitment chief.

It helped Liverpool to institute a culture of signing players for reasons beyond short-term needs and a coach’s whims, which remains today under Gordon, Edwards’s successor (and present sporting director) Julian Ward and Jurgen Klopp, the manager.

Casemiro is anything but a Moneyball deal. He is 30 years old, is costing £60 million, plus up to pounds 10 million in add-ons, and arrives on a four-year contract that will commit United to an estimated £73 million in wages – and all that is before any cut due to agents. He fits a familiar template of investing in experience beloved by United’s owners, the Glazer family. It has worked for them in American football – where Tom Brady won their Tampa Bay Buccaneers franchise the Super Bowl in 2021, at the age of 43 – but much less so in the English version.

On social media, rival fans are baiting United followers with lists of the many other established stars who have arrived at Old Trafford as expensive but seemingly certain bets, only for things to go wrong. From Bastian Schweinsteiger to Alexis Sanchez to Cristiano Ronaldo, a sulking want-away only a year after rejoining the club.

And yet, for all that, Casemiro is a hell of a footballer. He was man of the match when Real Madrid won the UEFA Super Cup against Eintracht Frankfurt only 10 days ago, and played a fundamental part in Real defeating Liverpool in last season’s Champions League final – a game where he made the most tackles, won the most duels and aerial challenges and was influential in creating the only goal. He comes with five Champions League and 13 other major winners’ medals, and a record of playing 40-plus games in every one of his past six seasons.

The Glazers hope that he will prove their Coutinho moment. The planned protests by United supporter groups before Monday’s North West derby contrasts with the love-in between Liverpool and their fans, but those who have had regular dealings with both ownerships attest to the Glazers’ belief that they and FSG are not as different as they are seen to be.

They are both US investors who make a business out of sport. FSG has followed the Glazers’ strategy of multiple global partners over multiple sectors, which increased United’s commercial income 500 per cent from 2005 to 2020. Revenues are soaring at Anfield. The two ownerships were hand-in-hand as the main English movers behind the European Super League.

The take on things at Old Trafford is that Liverpool copy United off the pitch and the real difference is being more successful on it, so now it is time for United to do some copying of their own. They see their new football structure as a facsimile of the Gordon-Edwards/Gordon-Ward axis, and a break from the Ed Woodward years, when he was in effect chief executive and sporting director.

John Murtough is a football director separate from the chief executive, Richard Arnold, and reports to Joel Glazer. They believe this, plus a big overhaul of their scouting this summer and the arrival of Andy O’Boyle as Murtough’s No.2, puts United in a position to recruit as successfully as Liverpool do.

Casemiro is Murtough’s first genuine transfer coup, but the start of something? There are no other pointers that suggest so yet. The deal emerged like a pearl from a heap of sewage, after aborted pursuits of questionable targets such as Adrien Rabiot and Marko Arnautovic, and with a summer-long, and increasingly futile-seeming effort to sign Frenkie de Jong stalled.

Looking properly at Liverpool’s past 10 years, what you see is that it is less about the structure and more about the quality of people filling the roles. Edwards was a bright former player, who built a career in analysis before focusing on recruitment, where he showed the acumen of a poker player and wiles of a spy (he once spent five days, incognito, hanging out at a team hotel to study a manager target off duty).

Behind him – and now supporting Ward – was Dr Ian Graham, a Cambridge physics graduate hired by Edwards as Liverpool’s director of research in 2012, and whose genius with data had inspired a host of clever Daniel Levy signings at Tottenham Hotspur. Murtough has risen from academy football to his present role and was very much part of Woodward’s failed regime. Last season he headhunted Ralf Rangnick then quickly changed his mind about the German, curtailing Rangnick’s involvement and abandoning a deal to use him as a consultant.

So, Murtough and O’Boyle (a former United academy coach and sports scientist, who rejoined the club after 16 years at the Premier League) have some way to go to prove themselves as Old Trafford’s own Edwards and Graham.

Gordon is also hard to replicate. An urbane Boston asset manager, his style is informal, empathetic and unusual. It is said that when his children were growing up, colleagues knew not to call him between certain hours because they were boxed off for him to play with his kids. If that is unusual for a high-powered executive, so is his ability to defer to underlings in comparatively minor roles. His rapport with Klopp is key to the club’s harmony and in that chat with The Sunday Times (in 2018) Gordon said: “Speaking your mind at Liverpool isn’t ‘allowed’ – it’s mandatory.”

It is also significant that Gordon was given the reins at Liverpool after the club’s principal owner, John W Henry, and his business partner, Tom Werner, had the humility to accept that an initial period of trying to run the club themselves had not been a success. Relinquishing control and soft-touch leadership are not qualities associated with the Glazers.

The disclosure, in The Times, of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s interest in buying a minority stake in United with a view to taking full control, was greeted by supporters with excitement. But it is believed – including by another party interested in buying into United – that Joel and Avram Glazer intend to hold on to the club. Despite a stagnant share price, the pandemic, and an on-pitch downturn, United’s valuation, according to Forbes, rose 27 per cent to £3.4 billion from 2016 to 2021, and the £4.25 billion sale of Chelsea and £3.95 billion sale of the Denver Broncos (for 45 per cent more than Forbes’ 2021 valuation) points to the value of sports clubs spiralling ever higher.

It has been speculated that Ratcliffe, 69, the Ineos chemicals billionaire, a Mancunian who supports United, could buy them for £5 billion. But one would-be investor believes the Glazers would sell only for the “silly money” of double that.

They are, however, exploring options for the redevelopment of Old Trafford and the Carrington training ground, likely to cost about £200 million, amid reports of talks with a New York investment firm, Apollo Global Management.

Liverpool have not entirely copied United off the pitch: the big difference between FSG and the Glazers is that the Glazers pay themselves dividends from United’s revenue and these have amounted to £166 million since 2005, according to the football finance blogger Swiss Ramble. Factoring in the exorbitant interest the Glazers have paid over the years on loans secured against the club, plus salaries, fees and share sales, Swiss Ramble estimates £1.6 billion has gone out of the club.

“[United] remain in a relatively strong financial position compared to most other clubs, but fans are increasingly angry that their club continues to pay huge sums merely for the privilege of having the Glazers as owners,” he notes.

The Glazers would counter this by pointing to the £1 billion invested in players since 2013, but a source who has worked for the club characterises it as “worn out and tired”, describing a malaise that permeates all levels.

The evening before United’s 4-0 humbling at Brentford their under-21s played Crystal Palace. They were thrashed 5-1.

– The Sunday Times

Originally published as What Manchester United’s reviled Glazer family can learn from Liverpool’s American owners