Football: United opposition starts to grow

A broad front against Edwards' expansionist plans is emerging.

MANCHESTER UNITED and the media have always danced happily together. But not any more. Rupert Murdoch's takeover bid and the club's possible move to join Media Partners' planned European Football League threaten to turn the Theatre of Dreams into a venue for the worst of futuristic footballing nightmares.

Just picture it: a club with few traditional loyal supporters regularly playing over-exposed foreign rivals in an empty stadium for the benefit of pay-per-view armchair viewers with no allegiance to the history, passion or traditions of United.

That, in part at least, is the bleak vision according both to United shareholders and fans working to block BSkyB's pounds 623m bid and also many Premiership clubs, who are growing tired of the United boardroom's perceived disdainful arrogance towards them.

As the latest chapters in what now threatens to become an epic tale of ambition, chicanery, greed and sheer folly unfolded in Lisbon and London last week, it was the Football Association who made the most decisive move by urging the Office of Fair Trading to block the Murdoch bid.

The FA's letter, revealed by chairman Keith Wiseman the day after Uefa announced their plans for a revamped 32-club Champions' League next year, was one of 350 submissions by the OFT who have extended, until 2 November, their deadline for their review of the case. Then they will report their findings to Peter Mandelson, the Secretary of State at the Department of Trade and Industry.

"I can't understand it all," Wiseman said. "Football and television have been getting closer. But you cannot see these media organisations acting in the interests of the game. That is our job at the FA.

"They are there to make money. I think Manchester United are nothing without the clubs they play against. The strength of other clubs has to be kept to a reasonable level. If Manchester United beat everyone 10- 0 every weekend, it wouldn't be long before nobody turned out to watch."

The FA blow was well-aimed. Encouraged by it, the Shareholders United Against Murdoch group followed up with another designed to delay the bid's progress further. All this at a time when the club's chairman Martin Edwards was again being closely linked with the Media Partners' proposals, supported by Real Madrid and, it is understood, possibly five other leading European clubs.

No sooner had Media Partners' president Rodolfo Hecht said on Thursday that he expected "both Manchester United and Arsenal to be back in our project very soon" than SUAM were claiming on Friday that BSkyB's offer document was incomprehensible, misleading and in need of an overhaul under instruction from the Takeover Panel.

"Many shareholders were misled into thinking they had only three options - all of which involved selling their shares to BSkyB," said SUAM's spokesman, Professor Jonathan Michie. "Shareholders have every right to keep their shares in Manchester United and there is no reason at all why they should hand the club over to BSkyB."

BSkyB dismissed the criticisms. "All these publications are governed by strict rules with which we have to comply," said a spokesman. "There is no suggestion that we have not. It is a document offering to buy something - someone's shares. That is the whole basis of it."

United, stretched on all fronts from Murdoch to Munich, have every reason to ask for a breather. But they are unlikely to get one until all is finally resolved by Mandelson and the next meeting of the Uefa Task Force scheduled for Jerusalem on 10 December.

This last will see European football's governing body finally reveal their hand on detailed income proposals to the biggest clubs in the new Champions' League. If they pale against those on offer from Milan, United could follow Ajax, Bayern and the rest into the 21st-century techno-league.

The worst possible scenario, from a traditionalist's point of view, could see United taken over 100 per cent by Murdoch's BSkyB (a 90 per cent takeover, the least of SUAM's ambitions, would allow 10 per cent of rebel shareholders to retain some nuisance value), then buy the best players available and seek to win the inaugural EFL in 2000-01.

In the best possible scenario, from the same viewpoint, SUAM will drag the takeover out to the point at which it fails to go through and United stay in the Premiership instead of, as Sheffield Wednesday's secretary Graham Mackrell put it, "ending up playing Bayern Munich and Co every other week".

Many Premiership clubs preferred not to comment on the record when asked if United's latest moves had put them beyond the pale, but Mackrell was forthright and provocative. "I think the takeover will go through, but it will leave the club facing a very delicate situation when it comes to the negotiations that relate to television. A fine line will have to be drawn between the Plc ownership and the club's interests," he said. "And don't forget, their representative will sit down with those of 19 other clubs. There will have to be some clarification."