Manchester DisUnited: Trouble and Takeover
at the World’s Richest Football Club
ISBN: 1-8451-3121-5
Publisher: Aurum Press Ltd (Oct 2006)
RRP: £20.00
Manchester United is the most valuable soccer brand in the world: the highest turnover, biggest profits, widest fan base and, over recent years, the best players and greatest success.
But then star player David Beckham was sold to Real Madrid. Record buy Wayne Rooney developed an unenviable disciplinary and gambling record. Their inspirational defender Roy Keane departed, apparently after a volcanic bust-up with Sir Alex Ferguson, who in 2004 himself fell out with the club's two major shareholders over the jointly owned racehorse Rock of Gibraltar.
In 2005 the club succumbed to a controversial takeover by Malcolm Glazer, the American tycoon who turned the Tampa Bay football team into champions. United were eliminated from the lucrative Champions League, and beaten to the Premiership by high-spending Chelsea. Now Mihir Bose tells the full story of how this sporting behemoth became the inevitable victim of its own success.
This book has been updated twice and was originally published under the following two titles:
Manchester Unlimited: the Money, Egos and Infighting Behind the World's Richest Soccer Club
ISBN: 1-5879-9037-7 (paperback)
1-5879-9008-3 (hardback)
W. W. Norton & Company (hardback 2000)
Texere Publishing (paperback 2000)
RRP: £9.99 paperback; hardback no longer in print (available second hand)
Reviews:
The Sun:
'An explosive book . . . which blows the lid on the bitter feud between Old Trafford chairman Martin Edwards and his manager.’
The Financial Times:
‘[Bose] does an excellent job in skilfully interweaving the narrative with material on the club's history and its remarkable development as a commercial enterprise following the establishment of the Premier League in 1992.’
The Mirror:
‘Edwards is furious that a new book, Manchester Unlimited, has quoted him as calling his manager a "troublemaker" and "useless with money”. ’
The Independent:
'It is clear Bose has impeccable sources and direct access to the figures . . . The book is fascinating on the motives that drive the new soccer business and those who seek to exploit the game’s profile.’
Manchester Unlimited: the Rise and Rise of the World's Premier Football Club
ISBN: 0-7528-2081-8
Orion Business (1999)
RRP: £18.99
Behind Closed Doors: Dreams and Nightmaresat Spurs
by Irving Scholar with Mihir Bose
ISBN: 0-233-98824-6
Andre Deutsch Ltd (1992)
RRP: No longer in print (available second hand)
This book is the first detailed view of football ever presented from the boardroom. It describes in gripping and colourful detail the nine years during which Irving Scholar, principal shareholder of Tottenham Hotspur and chairman of the club from 1984 to 1991, was involved with the game. This is the first time that Scholar has broken his self-imposed silence and he describes how he got involved in negotiations with Robert Maxwell in an effort to help the club and finally selling to Alan Sugar.
The story is all the more valuable because it goes beyond Tottenham to the wider world of football, where Scholar was intimately and prominently involved with the plans for the formation of the Premier League and for contracts about televising football. Scholar was in charge at Tottenham during a decade when football went through a crisis, with the disasters at Bradford, Heysel and finally Hillsborough, throwing the game into chaos and making it almost a plaything of the politicians. Scholar had to deal with issues such as ID cards, the banning of alcohol, the Taylor Report and several politicians eager to impose their fiat on the game, including Mrs Thatcher, Colin Moynihan and others.
Scholar also discusses with great perspicacity the peculiar nature of English football, comparing it with the vastly different world of the Continent. There an Agnelli can be an owner, but in England a Hanson is not involved. Why? Discussions of these and other questions provide an added dimension to the book.
What Scholar and Bose have to say is all the more relevant and urgent given the formation of the Premier League and the problems its television contract with Sky have caused. By the end of the story the reader will have been taken into the corridors of football power, heard the true details behind the headlines that have dominated the back pages for almost a decade, met some of the men who make the decisions, and gained a real understanding of how English football works and why it is in the state it is in.