“Too late…” – Man United fans have same reaction to latest Premier League rule change

On Wednesday, at their annual meeting, Premier League clubs unanimously agreed to prohibit fully-leveraged buyouts in the division.

This will mean that the acquisition of top flight English clubs will no longer be able to be completed by individuals or companies with almost entirely borrowed funds.

In a fully-leveraged buyout, there is usually a ratio of 90% debt to 10% equity, as explained on Investopedia.

This news is, of course, positive for the league but has received a similar reaction from Manchester United fans.

The Old Trafford club is currently up for sale and could be led by either Sheikh Jassim or Sir Jim Ratcliffe in the coming weeks. But, the current owners – the Glazer family – acquired the club in 2005 through this exact method.

Premier League Chief Executive at the time, Richard Scudamore, sat silent as the Glazers would drop unimaginable debt onto the club. He told BBC Radio Five Live in 2005:

“We have looked at the numbers ourselves. Clearly, there is a way of seeing how it works. It’s not for me to comment on that.

“It’s only for directors and owners of clubs to really assess that balance of risk. Nobody underestimates this – if you take football generally across the 92 professional clubs in this country, everything is a stretch.

“The fans were concerned by the lack of debt before the takeover and the level of debt there is now. But it’s not out of ratio or sync with other clubs with that sort of turnover.

“The most important thing for us when we met with them was to talk about their aspirations regarding television rights and collective rights generally, and there was a very positive outcome.”

Now, with the latest news that these takeovers can no longer be made, United fans on social media all have a similar reaction to the news.

“About 17 years too late lads…” one fan wrote.

Another tweeted: “18 years too late but never mind,” with an eye-rolling emoji.

However, there were also many asking whether this would affect Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s potential acquisition of Manchester United and leave a free run for the Qatari bid.

This will not be the case, the British billionaire reportedly rejected using such a technique when he first announced his intention to take over in February. INEOS plan for any debt incurred in financing a takeover to be put on the books of the petrochemicals company.