Except that ManU made profits of £50m, but owe £650m due to the leveraged debt that the Glazier’s took out to buy the club.

At the risk of simplifying this a bit, that’s like bragging to your mate, “Look, I’m rich, I’ve got 50 squids in my pocket” when behind the scenes, you owe another mate 650 squids.

Even your own supporters don’t back up your article, visit http://www.joinmust.org/thefacts/theirdebt.php and you will see what I mean.

Laughable, really – and I dare you to publish this posting.

Revenue $331 million ($315 million)

Operating profit $98 million ($92 million)

Profit before tax $62 million ($22 million)

Operating profit usually relates to normal transactions, while profit before tax would take into “unusual” items such as transfer fees. Hence, one of the reasons why the profit before tax has increased so much is that the $24 million received from Chelsea from the transfer of John Obi Mikel was included.

As they are now a privately held company, Manchester United is not required to publish financial statements, but it seems that they certainly want to leave the impression that their financial house is in order.

All seems well, except for the issue of interest payments on the debt that the Glazer family has assigned to the club. You may remember that in July 2006 the Glazer family secured a refinancing deal that saw the interest payments dropped from hundred and $180 million a year to $124 million a year – a substantial saving.

However at the same time, the overall borrowings of the club increased from $1.16B to $1.32B an increase of $160 million. So how come borrowings went up so dramatically?

Without detail financial statements it is impossible to say what exactly was done so I freely admit to a bit of speculation. Could it be because the Glazer family opted to capitalize the interest payments incurred during the first year of operations? (It is the equivalent of opting to not pay interest on your mortgage but rather adding it to your principal – so you pay interest on interest).

We can’t tell for sure from the results released, but it would certainly explain why interest payments of approximately $180 million don’t appear to have shown up in last year’s financial results.

If the interest payments were capitalized it is not a trick that can be turned every year and a charge of $124 million will surely show up in next year’s accounts.

However, it is difficult to see how the club is going to stay in the black with such a crippling level of debt and interest repayments.