Regarding the acquisition of Umbro, David Pace gave Ethan his answer two days later. He was willing to cooperate.
The 39-year-old clothing merchant knew very well that this was likely a crucial turning point in his career. If he missed it, he might regret it for the rest of his life.
After finalising the cooperation with David Pace, Ethan immediately called John Davey over from the United States. John brought with him an entire management and operations team that he had built according to Ethan's requirements. Since they had already collected all the information on Umbro while they were in the United States and had made extensive preparations, they entered negotiations with Umbro as soon as they arrived.
After several days of difficult negotiations, Ethan finally succeeded in acquiring the struggling Umbro for the high price of £180 million. David Pace sold his clothing company and other assets to raise £40 million, taking a 20% stake and becoming president of the new Umbro.
While Umbro's business strategy and internal restructuring were in full swing, Ethan and John Davey rushed to Silicon Valley in the United States. On the day they arrived, they signed another acquisition agreement. This time, the investment company Ethan had established in Silicon Valley acquired Pyra Labs.
Many people might not be familiar with Pyra Labs, but they certainly would not be strangers to "blogs". In 1999, when the dot-com bubble burst and countless investors lost confidence in internet technology, blogs actually made rapid progress that year.
This was due to blogging technology becoming increasingly mature. Among the companies in the field, the Blogger publishing software launched by Pyra Labs was one of the leaders, and its flagship website ranked among the top blog sites.
Since not many internet companies were paying attention to blogs yet, Pyra Labs was not highly valued at the moment. However, in Ethan's previous life, when Google acquired the company in 2003, it caused a huge sensation. Later, even major companies like AOL and News Corp entered the blogging field.
Precisely because he knew the future of blogging, Ethan decisively took over the cash-strapped Pyra Labs at this time and planned to inject a sum of money into the company for further research into blogging technology.
At the same time, Ethan was also interested in one of the company's founders, Evan Williams, who would later become the founder of Twitter. Given Twitter's popularity in the years to come, Ethan was convinced that acquiring this company was an extremely profitable deal.
In addition to acquiring Pyra Labs, Ethan planned to establish a laboratory in Silicon Valley. This lab would focus on researching internet technology. For example, Ethan planned for them to begin researching social networking websites and video-sharing websites. These two major ideas would become The Lab's first batch of research projects.
Beyond these known research areas, Ethan would give the researchers as much freedom as possible to exercise their creativity, providing each of them with opportunities to experiment and allowing them to put their ideas into practice.
Of course, these things would take time to implement, but with Ethan's massive capital behind them, everything became possible. Moreover, his successful investments in companies like Google and Apple had made Ethan's reputation in the internet investment field especially prominent. This was clear from the thousands of people who applied on the first day The Lab began recruiting.
However, while investing in these future projects, Ethan did not forget to continue increasing his investment in Google and Apple. Apple, in particular, was definitely the most worthwhile company to invest in over the next decade. During his time in Silicon Valley, Ethan met Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, several times. Jobs agreed to let Ethan further increase his stake in Apple. In return, Ethan used his foresight of the coming years to exchange ideas with Jobs regarding Apple's core development in the near future.
Ethan was very familiar with MP3 players, mobile phones, and tablets. Although he had not been able to afford such luxuries in his previous life, just as he had been passionate about sports cars, he had also been very familiar with these electronic products. He spoke at length with Jobs, and many of his ingenious ideas received high praise from him. This indirectly led to Jobs agreeing to Ethan's proposal to further invest in Apple.
In just a few short days, Ethan successfully negotiated several major deals. The remaining matters were left to John Davey and his team to handle, while Ethan returned to Manchester on January 14th.
After the FA Cup third-round replay was completed on January 13th, the draw for the FA Cup fourth round was officially announced on January 14th.
The highly anticipated clash of New Manchester United facing the Red Devils did not happen. New Manchester United were drawn against Premier League powerhouse Chelsea in the fourth round of the FA Cup, and it would be an away match. Meanwhile, Manchester United would host Everton at home.
Rumours were widespread that the hype surrounding a potential match between New Manchester United and Manchester United had been too intense. Coupled with New Manchester United's previous match against Arsenal, The FA did not dare to make the controlled draw too obvious, which was why New Manchester United did not face Manchester United.
Even so, English football had been very lively lately.
Since the Brazilian media exposed the prostitution scandal, Edwards did not dare stay in Brazil and returned to Manchester. Unexpectedly, three days after his return, British newspapers found the Brazilian woman, Maria.
"I think I've tried everything a woman can use, and it was very, very bad!" Maria's tearful accusations frequently appeared on English television and in newspaper headlines.
There was no doubt that the English media always loved digging up the most private scandals. To generate sales and ratings, they would even use a method of building up stars before tearing them down, constantly creating English stars while secretly collecting their private secrets and scandals, only to expose them and destroy the star once they had become famous.
Now, Edwards' scandal was clearly more interesting than Manchester United's Triple Crown failure in Brazil. As a result, major media outlets across the UK and Europe began focusing on Edwards, digging deep into his private life.
The first thing exposed was Edwards peeping in women's toilets. This was not the first time something like this had happened, but digging it up now and hyping it undoubtedly made things worse for Edwards.
Then, the media uncovered Edwards' love nest for his mistresses. He actually owned a den of vice just 6 kilometres from his own home. To prove the reliability of this news, they even found Sarah Carter, a call girl who had been involved with Edwards for many years.
According to Sarah Carter's testimony, Edwards had been involved with multiple women at this location and had even hosted several sex parties and orgies. In the eyes of this call girl, Edwards was a stingy, self-righteous, perverted old man with sadistic tendencies.
Once this news broke, it immediately caused a huge sensation in English football. Especially in the eyes of Manchester United fans, Edwards' image became even more despicable than before.
For a long time, Manchester United fans had been dissatisfied with Edwards' desire to sell his shares in the club. Now that these scandals had broken, the fans immediately launched a wave of criticism against him. Especially after Manchester United returned from their defeat in Brazil, protest marches could often be seen outside the gates of Old Trafford.
Some more radical fans even called for a boycott, refusing to go to Old Trafford to watch matches. They demanded that the Manchester United board punish Edwards, because they felt that allowing the proud Red Devils to be associated with the disgraceful Edwards was an insult to the club.
Under these circumstances, the Manchester United board clearly could no longer sit idly by. They quickly convened a board meeting. After intense discussion, the board finally decided to dismiss Edwards from his position as Manchester United chairman and appointed his assistant, Peter Kenyon, as Manchester United's CEO to take over his duties.
However, despite the intense personnel changes at the top of the club, under Ferguson's control, the Red Devils swept away the gloom of Brazil after returning to England and continued their triumphant march. This became the most comforting thing for Red Devils fans recently.
What the vast majority of fans did not know was that the newly appointed Kenyon still followed Edwards' strategy in terms of club policy. He was currently in the middle of a secret plan to raise ticket prices at Old Trafford for the next season.
As mid-to-late January approached, New Manchester United's schedule became easier than before, which eased the players' physical burden somewhat and quickly produced results.
In the two National League matches held on January 15th and 18th, New Manchester United successfully took all 6 points. In these two games, Žigić continued his stable goal-scoring form for the season, scoring 3 goals.
In the FA Cup fourth-round match on January 22nd, although New Manchester United took the lead through a Žigić header in the first half, they could not avoid defeat at Stamford Bridge. The team lost 2-1 to the home side, Chelsea. The Liberian star George Weah, who had just been loaned to Chelsea from AC Milan, performed excellently with a brace and was named Man of the Match.
However, after their FA Cup loss, New Manchester United returned to the National League and immediately showed powerful attacking strength. They tore the visiting Hereford side apart at home, declaring their dominance in the National League with a resounding 5-0 victory and washing away the disappointment of their FA Cup defeat.
Meanwhile, in the third round of the FA Trophy on the 29th, New Manchester United defeated their opponents away from home once again and successfully advanced to the fourth round.
Afterward, New Manchester United travelled away to challenge second-placed Boston United. This was a crucial battle that would affect the season's rankings.
(To be continued.)