Introduction
On a critical look at the football business in UK (which is popularly referred to as English Premiership), it will be observed that the business is booming and apparently doing well in the over the years. This gave rise and motivated the significance of this paper on the United Kingdom’s football industry (premiership) as a practical industry. For this paper, the exchange of views will be focused on the insightful analysis and management practices (managerial analysis) of Manchester United football club, one of the most celebrated and winning football clubs in the United Kingdom (White, 2009, p.15). The most important information gathered in this paper is selected from Manchester United’s official website. In addition, the records acquired from the website will be employed as the foundation and the logical device in probing the competence of the club as a business organization.
History of Manchester United Football Club
Manchester United Ltd, which functions as a soccer club in England and has an official website known as: www.manutd.com, employs 505 employees. The company runs as a subsidiary of the main brand; Red Football Shareholder Ltd (White, 2009, p.20). The company was previously recognized as Manchester United PLC, but altered its name to Manchester United Ltd in the year of 2005. Manchester United Ltd became a united corporation in 1990 and its headquarter is in Manchester, England.
The famous company makes profits mainly by ticket sales at its admired and honored Old Trafford stadium, as well as through broadcasting, distribution rights and sales of the soccer club’s sports goods and merchandise such as T-shirts and footballs.
Management
Mr. David A. Gill is the chief executive officer of the world’s richest soccer club. The management team consists of Mr. David Beswitherick as the company’s secretary of risk management steering committee, Mr. Paddy Harverson as the manager of Communications, Mr. Peter Draper as the manager of Marketing and Mr. Ben Hatton as the director of business development. It is owned by the Tampa native businessman Malcolm Glazer, who possesses the Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL team as well.
Manchester United Management
Hiring Policy
Manchester United hires employees for various departments using various ways. The practice of hiring football players differs greatly from that used in hiring other forms of staff. Staffs seek employment online where various vacancies are posted. Such types of vacancies include catering services, membership services, temporary within match day and events services among others. On the other hand, the official of the Manchester United use a different method when hiring players. The club has scouts who comb various matches in various countries where they look for potential players. Then, they buy the player off from his current club and use their Football Academy to coach and nurture the new player.
Leadership
The style of leadership of Manchester United is that of a democratic style. Using this style, the leaders allow their team members to voice their views. However, it is also lead using dictatorial style whereby the leader explains to its team members what they are supposed to do without reaching on a compromise. For example, under the leadership of Alex Ferguson the Manchester United Club embraces change. The team uses the flexibility of the players, their trust and commitment to bring about change that would otherwise cause uncertainty in the team. For example, Manchester United was reported to have used more around 115 players at the 15 seasons that were in a Premier League. The team uses leaders to assists the team members in overcoming not only the successive changes but also the status quo.
The team seeks quality talent from the youthful and dynamic players and develops it. However, the company doesn’t seek new talent rather seeks the talented as per their expectations and develop the talents. The Manchester Club has also created a trend for winning where the team members are not only expected to work in liaison but also expected to win. This can be summed up by the comments of Ryan Giggs, a Manchester player who said that they were not only expected to play well but also win. Thus, the Manchester United team management has cultivated a culture where the team players are both expected to and looked upon to deliver the team’s expectations. The management structure of Manchester United is as follows: David Gill is the CEO, Michael Bolingbroke is the Chief Operating Officer and Ed Woodward is the Chief of Staff. The Directors are: Richard Arnold (Director of Commercial), Steve Deaville (Director of both IT and Finance), Sameer Pabari (Director of Media), Phil Townsend (Director of Communications), John Alexander (Secretary of the Club), Karl Evans (Director of Venue) and Patrick Stewart (Director of Legal and Business Affairs). Manchester United players are members of Professional Footballers Association. The Manchester United profession union is the Major League Soccer (MLS) Players’ Union which oversees the player issues of its members.
Internal Communication
To improve the internal communications the Manchester United, the company has a quarterly newsletter called ‘Redlines’.Manchester United has a policy that strictly prohibits its players for using social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook. The Club framed the policy in order to protect it player from “skepticism”. However; critics believe the strategy was developed to increase traffic to the Club official website and was uncertainty the motivating factor. In broad sense the policy has helped the Club to prevent media a storm was witnessed by other clubs in EPL through social media channels. Therefore, all official communication is done through the official website through Phil Townsend the Director of Communications.
Among the surprising facts is that both as a football club and a global brand, it has registered such a success. As a football club, it has won eight premierships in a period of eleven years. Media rights accounts for about a third of the company’s turnover.
Analysis of the Company
The SWOT Analysis is the most accepted mechanism used in strategic planning and managerial setback determiner. SWOT points out the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of any business organization in the like of one of the world’s most famous football club (Manchester United).
Strengths
The most important strength of Manchester United football club is its awareness of its brand name, Manchester United, to an exceptional degree perceived to be the same internationally. It is pegged to be the international football with the biggest number of supporters worldwide. (Hayes, 2010). As a result, it means that any produce that they exhibit in the world of commercial activity, with the club’s logo, name and badge will be instantly acknowledged by the club’s supporters which in turn will generate huge returns. On the other hand, Manchester United football team needs backing to make sure that they are still conscious of what their supporters and the customers expect from them. With such all-embracing recognition, it may be disheartening for Manchester United football club to stop the use of its logo in promotion of products as it may mete out a blow to the lucrative business.
By the basis of possessing the vast fan support, the sales of tickets is also well thought-out as the strength for Manchester United football club, as there is a large waiting list for entrance for each game, and with the latest lengthened stadium, the profits of ticket retailing is definitely going to increase in the future. All the same, this is not the only avenue of generating revenue for Manchester United football industry and merchandises are still necessary to be taken into consideration as the most important fraction of total income. The Manchester United football club in the same way has diverse ways of selling their company’s product either directly or via distributors with various retail stores worldwide. This will be extremely supportive when bringing in new products into the world market. As these familiar relationships are in the past organized, Manchester United football club has to pledge that they are using these way of selling the company’s product either directly or via distributors to the full capability. This distribution channels can be used to gather statistics of the manufactured products

Weaknesses
The main weakness found on the clubs website is their manufactured goods and the variety of the goods produced. It is clear that they have put in a lot of assorted items for use at many different events. There is a question however whether the club’s supporters were asked for advice in this perspective. It appears that Manchester United football industry has introduced a wide selection of products from the club’s sport shirts to Credit Cards. It has been suggested that the club is more perceptible revenue channels, and as a result money-wise. It would be more helpful to carry out more research in this area or channel of revenue generating.
The club obviously needs looking into their accessible product assortment and from this, they will be competent of placing their products, using mechanisms like the Boston Matrix, and it will let the club to distinguish which of their manufactured goods are successful in the market.
Furthermore, an additional weakness for Manchester United is that at this time, the club has been at the high point in their career or reach a high point in football significance or importance, and it is now running on such a titanic level, there is a worrying assessment that the club has now lost its first part or stage of subsequent events, and it is no longer anxious with the competition of football matches, but all about follow ups.
Unhelpful viewpoints such as this can have a destructive outcome on the club’s supporters. Even though on condition that Manchester United football team continues making good records and playing well, this may not result in too much fearful expectation or anticipation for the club, as it has international support, on the other hand, it is still mandatory to be taken into consideration.
Opportunities
The fundamental opportunity for Manchester United at the present time is the entering into to the American commercial activity. There is an opportunity in the near prospect to organize the coalition with one of the international most prosperous team in the game of football and sports, the New York Yankees. This will indicate vast retail channels in the United States of America, and present Manchester United on the leading edge over all other Football sides in the American environment and worldwide, introducing their product to a new retail and commercialized market. Even if there is a greater height of possibility by exhibiting their products over to the United States market, then going into the open market, on the basis of the partnership with the Yankees, this threat is reduced.
Threats
They are three key business threats to Manchester United. First, takeover bids from other companies. This was the case with the takeover bid by the Glazer family. That was seen to erode the rich football traditions of Manchester United and had a poor understand the English football culture, the Glazers being from an American background. Takeover bids such as this are likely in the near future therefore a likely threat to the Club.
In addition, wages on players can serious erode the profits. As witnessed clubs such was the likes of Chelsea, Real Madrid and recently Manchester City have increased the wage level to unimaginable level. This is seen as the main motivating factor to attracting and retaining good player in clubs. Therefore, for Manchester United to compete with best Football clubs in the world it must pay such high unrealistic wages to its best players.
Poor performance on the football pitch can easily erode its fan base, leading to ultimately a reduction on the clubs revenue. Lastly competition from other clubs in EPL can erode the status of the clubs as the most successful club in England. In such a case the brand name will be diluted and luck the appeal it current holds. In such a case potential sponsors will be unlikely to premium rates as they do.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it will be observed that the club and industry popularly referred to as Manchester United is in a very aggressive position at this moment in time, even so they need to be vigilant that they are not getting uncritically satisfied with their present position, performance and actions; thereby, not looking to improve, and that they are concentrating on the sales market, and the musts of their customers and fans. By carrying out the investigation into their present world markets, it will let them to increase products for the customers throughout the world, which will result in continuous support from the supporters and in turn leads to success.

Reference
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