week that Manchester United made a $56 million bid to acquire the rights to Dimitar Berbatov. United have seemed interested in Berbatov for some time and are seemingly going "all-in" to land the striker. I am all for getting Berbatov and think he would add a new depth to our attack and bring in over 20 goals for us next term. I also would like to see the transfer happen this week so Berbatov can join up with United in South Africa for their pre-season tour.With all of that said, is he really worth that much? He is an outstanding goal scorer but does it not seem the price of players is astonishing and must be driving up the cost to watch the games on both here on TV and in the stadiums in the U.K. For instance, the rights for EPL broadcasting costs SkySports $2.6 billion. Setanta paid $785 million for the rights to Monday Night matches. (Even the BBC got the rights to replays for their sports new shows.) This amount gets divided among the teams according to how they finish in the table. Manchester United racked in nearly $30 million from television revenue alone. How does this effect us? SkySports would certainly not pay $2.6 billion unless they knew they could make it up in some way or fashion. The cost to purchase "soccer" channels in the U.S. is not cheap, to be able to watch Setanta on directv you must pay $14 dollars extra a month, and to get FoxSoccerChannel you have to pay even more for the SportsPack. The cost hits even harder for fans in the U.K. where ticket prices have been raised up to 14%. So all of this is all a part of business but it makes you wonder how much is Berbatov really worth?
United had there best financial year in history where it rose 21% from last year to over $400 million. So some of you might see this as a silly question to be asking. You might be
saying this is just a small percentage. However, I would like to ask you to reconsider. Even with Manchester United having their best financial year in its history, it is nothing to be to happy about, especially since we still had a "$113.4 million net loss in the fiscal year ending last June 30." CNBC.com goes onto say that United owes a whopping $1.8 billion to creditors, including (and this is the important part) $109 million on players in transfer fees and other cost. So I ask again after we see that 10% of our debt is on players, is he really worth it? I am not trying to say that United are destined to debt but we should be more careful with how we spend our money. Considering even with financial gains we have one of the highest salary wages in the game, second only to Chelsea.Getting Berbatov would be nice, but we can not afford to pay that kind of money for the player,. It would seem David Gill agrees as reports claim United will not pay that amount and seem contempt with waiting to look at all their options. This is something Fergie has always done, he plays it cool, and tries to make sure he isn't waisting the clubs money. Very few buys of that magnitude have been big busts, even the decision to buy Juan Sebastian Veron worked out the first season and he certainly didn't hurt the team in the wrong run, he however never lived up to the hype that surrounded him. If United get Berbatov I am sure it will be closer to the initial $40 million, but you could see that price rise as Tottenham seem keen to get full and above value for there striker. It still seems to me to be to pricey, Santa Cruz of Falco are looking better.
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