Green and Gold Manchester United - Red Knights

PUBLIC RELATIONS – The proposed Red Knight takeover at United is an interesting story.

United fans are hungry to depose the Glazer family and have organised a high profile ‘green and gold’ campaign to make their views known.

As a United fan the idea of ensuring United are placed on a strong financial footing is appealing to me, as is the concept of the fans owning the club. However, from a PR perspective the communication to date puts forward an interesting public relations question.

Is the proposed deal from Red Knights a tangible fan led operation, or does the Red Knight group mean another debt backed acquisition, similar to the last one?

The following paragraph from The Times both worry and excite me. Surely a takeover of this nature means more debt and more fees paid out of the club to deal makers, or does it mean a Barcelona style fan owned scheme?

“Their plan is to use their contacts across the world to find a number of “super-investors” who could raise the money — estimated at a minimum of £1 billion — needed to make a bid to buy the club from the Glazers.” (does this mean more debt?, which currently stands at £700m)

Or…

“They hope that some of that money would come from supporters’ groups, who would in turn be offered a “golden share” and the prospect of some representation in any new regime.” (does this mean a fan owned club?)

From a PR perspective these two paragraphs show the importance of communications and PR. Both markets and fans like stability and clear and concise communications.

Over the coming days and months the details of the Red Knights’ deal will come to the fore. However, in the mean time ambiguity will surround the story, while the fans will no doubt get be roused by the scent of revolution and thoughts of deposing the Glazers.

It’s a brilliant story from both a footballing and PR perspective. If you want to join the Green and Gold movement you can do here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxvrRggOQjo

(gratuitous opportunity to show Moscow penalty miss)

The John Terry super injunction story is more proof that celebrities or organisations should turn to PR professionals and not lawyers when dealing with a media crisis. Only public relations professionals have the tools to ensure that a story such as this one can be kept under control.

A super injunction can work, sure. However there is no plan B.

Once the injunction is made public, what was a negative story is amplified tenfold. The whole affair seems more sordid. He is now on the front of five national newspapers. This is a massive fail, nearly on the same proportions of his penalty miss in Moscow (Viva John Terry – bit of Man Utd gloating there…).

Of course PR isn’t 100 per cent fool proof, far from it, but media relations would have been a better strategy, rather than litigation. John’s PR consultant could have negotiated and traded other content, tried to kill the story and prove it to be incorrect, or managed the story, so the coverage was minimised.

Most people wouldn’t be that surprised about John Terry behaving this way, so really taken on its own the story of a footballer trying to impregnate someone is fish and chip paper. We’ve already seen him urinating in bars, fighting and taking cash in hand payments from journalists for tours of the Chelsea training ground. So really this story is not that newsworthy. John has made it newsworthy, thanks to his legal advice.

Liverpool are in crisis

This morning it looked like Ryan Babel, the multimillion pound superstar footballer who plays for Liverpool FC had deleted his Twitter account after publicly criticising his manager, Rafa Benitez.

The page was taken off line for a few hours and now has reappeared without the offending tweets. In fact there are no tweets older than one hour.

I was going to write a short post on how football clubs should handle football stars and their Twitter feeds, but now I think the fact that Ryan has deleted his account is even more amusing!

You can find his Twitter feed here Twitter account.

I’m guessing he is knee deep in trouble. Ryan is probably in less trouble than his manager who seems to be cracking up again and reeling off facts.

For anyone who is disappointed at Babel’s page being taken down, you can read his inane Tweets in full. find them here

Ryan, a word in your ear. It is not your Twitter account that is the problem. Try engaging your brain before speaking.