Will American cut losses and run with United on brink?
Ogren must be eyeing exit as costs mount and team falter
DESPITE hailing from Minnesota, Mark Ogren has never pretended that he is over here for the milder winters. Back at the end of 2018, having purchased a controlling stake in Dundee United, the American was candid about his motivation for adding a Scottish football club to his portfolio.
‘This isn’t a hobby for us,’ he stated. ‘We expect to make money long-term but, let me say, for that to happen we need to be competing in the Premiership on a continual basis.’
Clearly a capable man, with diverse business interests, the assumption was that Ogren had done his due diligence, but he did seem somewhat taken aback when one reporter asked him that day if he knew exactly how difficult turning a profit in the Scottish game would be in practice.
Six months previously, Stephen Thompson had sold his shares to end his family’s long-standing association with the club. An affair of the heart that started with his late father Eddie is believed to have cost around £6million. Oddly, Ogren admitted he had never spoken to the former chairman. Fast-forward four-anda-half years and Ogren (below) is on the hook for double the sum the Thompson family sunk into the Tannadice club without ever seeing a return.
If United were in the top half of the table right now, perhaps with a distant chance of securing a European place, you might reserve judgment on Ogren’s chances of seeing a return on his investment any time soon.
But the club are now in imminent danger of going back to the division in which they were residing when the American bought in.
Turning a coin in the top flight has been every bit as difficult as seasoned observers of the Scottish scene felt it would be. If the worst happens, and United do go down, making a single penny on his investment will move into the realms of fantasy.
Irrespective of whether Jim Goodwin’s side can yet pull off an escape act beginning at Livingston today, Ogren must privately be contemplating cutting his losses.
The word on Tayside is that a consortium of local businessman is putting together a proposal which would allow the American a way out of all of this. The deal wouldn’t come close to covering his losses but, right now, any deal might feel like a good deal.
Faith in his stewardship of the club has evaporated. Goodwin is the sixth permanent manager in his four-and-a-half years and the club will surely be looking for a seventh if they take the drop.
Ogren has kept spinning the ball on the wheel, but it’s never landed on his big number.
The final straw for many supporters came at the AGM on February 21 this year.
Ogren stated that night there would be no changes to the manager’s position or that of the sporting director. Within days, Liam Fox had been fired, with Tony Asghar soon stepping down from the latter position. A case of talk being not so much cheap as worthless.
What raised eyebrows more than anything, though, was Ogren’s assertion that relegation would not be ‘the end of the world’ because the team would come straight back up.
When he bought his controlling interest, United had already been in the second tier for two-anda-half years. It would take them another season-and-a-half to get back up. If anything, the Championship has become even tougher in the interim. The belief that any relegated team would bounce back purely because of their stature seems badly misplaced. With morale low, the dog-eat-dog second tier can chew teams up and spit them out. Just ask the likes of Dunfermline and Falkirk. There is nothing about the current United squad to suggest that it has the wherewithal to cut through the Championship like a knife through butter. Even with relegation clauses apparently in their contracts, the wages of Steven Fletcher — who could miss their remaining three games due to injury — and Dylan Levitt would be far too high to sustain at that level. The club would simply have to try to move them on for the final year of their deals. There would not be a chance of Jamie McGrath returning from Wigan for another loan spell. What’s likely to remain is the guts of a squad that’s won three successive games only once this season. While club insiders insist that relegation would be financially damaging but survivable, whoever find themselves at the helm will also be short on money.
United made a profit of £300,000 in their 2021-22 accounts — a big improvement on the £2.5m loss to June 2021.
Turnover more than doubled to £8.3m with the wage-turnover ratio falling to 71 per cent from an alarming 132 per cent.
That all sounds like a welcome trend until you consider that the latest figures were helped by a £600,000 Covid insurance payout, a £100,000 Scottish government grant and a £1.3m profit on player sales following Lawrence Shankland’s switch to Beerschot and Kerr Smith’s transfer to Aston Villa.
The last recorded wage bill was £5.9m — a rise of 18 per cent — and that was before Fletcher signed to become the highest paid player in the club’s history.
United are reported to have banked £3m as a sell-on fee from Harry Souttar’s move from Stoke to Leicester, but much of that money will have been swallowed up as the club has been forced to pay for its own mistakes.
Jack Ross signed a two-year deal and left after just seven games in charge. His replacement, Fox, was axed after five months.
This time last year, Tam Courts was still at the helm as United closed in on a fourth-placed finish and a return to European football, which brought just a hint of money flowing into the coffers in the way Ogren clearly believed it would.
When Courts left to ‘explore other options’, the appointment of Ross seemed shrewd, particularly after a home win over AZ Alkmaar.
How little we knew. Ross looked shell-shocked when United lost the return leg 7-0 and was done for when Celtic won 9-0 at Tannadice. Fox had some moments of promise but six straight defeats in February did for him.
You had to feel for the former first-team coach. Tony Watt’s loan move to St Mirren in January necessitated a direct replacement. None arrived. Huddersfield teenager Loick Ayina, a defender, came in on loan instead. Little wonder United are now on the brink.
The appointment of Goodwin — the man United turned to in their latest hour of need despite being humiliated at Darvel in January while Aberdeen manager — felt like a last roll of the dice.
Hired on a short-term deal, no one knows what the future holds for the Irishman even if he pulls this one out of the fire. If he doesn’t, no one will hold him wholly responsible for the club ceasing to function.
Privately, Ogren must hope that the identity of the man leading the team next season soon becomes someone else’s concern.
Never have the Minnesota winters been more appealing.