Any Manchester United fans nosing through Twitter on Thursday afternoon might have had the feeling that bad news was imminent.
Somewhat bizarrely, the club's official account chose to send out a tweet about National Pizza Day to its 10 million followers, almost as if they were deploying the same distraction techniques commonly associated with their current manager.
https://twitter.com/ManUtd/status/829654776556187648
At roughly the same time that the account retweeted a couple of pizza pun replies to their tweet, news was breaking that the club's debt - lumbered on them by the Glazer family takeover 12 years ago - had risen by 27%.
Now standing at £409m, it was explained that one of the contributory factors in the rising debt was the impact of Brexit.
As explained in the tweet below from Sky Sports' Kaveh Solhkol, the weakened value of the pound against the dollar had ramped up the debt by as much as £87m.
https://twitter.com/SkyKaveh/status/829671849822916608
£87m is a lot of money. Almost enough to buy a very expensive French midfielder back from Juventus, four years after he left. Unsurprisingly, lots of people were quick to make this point.
https://twitter.com/Rob_marven19/status/829678192826937344
https://twitter.com/HATjackBOY/status/829672426527133696
https://twitter.com/Craygroupious/status/829673203198992384
It wasn't all bad news for United, however. The club's revenue was up by 18%, rising to £157.9m during the second quarter of the year. Profit had also risen to 6% - £17.5m.
Don't rule out another big 80-odd-million pound arrival at Old Trafford this summer.
