I was reading recently about how the Glazers bought Man Utd using a ‘leveraged buy out’. Effectively, it’s like getting a mortgage on a house. Put a deposit down and borrow the rest. Apart from they put the outstanding debt against the club and have paid only interest on the loans since then (it was actually a clever move by them).

It got me thinking whether we could do that as fans. We as fans could raise 20 or 25% of the value of the club between us. Apparently Lai wants £150m (I’m sure he’d negotiate). If so, we’d need to raise £30m for 20% deposit, which is an average of £1k from 30k fans.

The rest could be borrowed against the club. The problem here would be the interest rate, which would likely be at least 7-8%. So borrowing £120m, we could be paying £10m per year in interest and saddle the club with lots of debt, if we weren’t promoted, but then is that any worse than having Lai dipping his hand into the club coffers and taking out loans against the ground. At least the fans would have control of the club.

Just an idea, are there any finance experts, or people who know someone in that field? Would people on here prefer a fan ownership like this, despite the level of debt that it would incur?