Why the nuetrals should be supporting this Man United campaign
The campaign to oust the Glazer family as owners of Manchester United was tempered last week when the Red Knights, the investor group aiming to buy back United from its American overlords, admitted that they were unwilling to meet the £1.5bn valuation of the club. The news came as a blow to the fans who care about the long-term future of the club and who want a new ownership model that accommodates the supporters and their views, but talk of the Red Knights having suffered a permanent setback is premature.
Critics of the anti-Glazer movement are calling for United’s fans to forget about ridding Old Trafford of its current owners. After all, the Florida-based businessmen have repeatedly said that the club is not for sale and, to back that up, last year they reportedly turned down a bid from a Middle East consortium. The critics, some of them on FootballFanCast, think that United’s supporters should reserve their concern for events on the pitch, especially as the Red Devils’ hopes of an unprecedented fourth Premier League title in a row were dashed by Chelsea last season. However, United’s second-place finish owed far more to a lack of investment in new players the previous summer by the Glazers than it did to any possibility that the fans’ protests against the owners transpired to unsettle the team.
It is far too early, then, to be talking about winding down the campaign. For a start, the Red Knights have not shelved their plans for a bid indefinitely, as they made clear in a statement on 2 June. The Manchester United Supporters Trust also remains steadfast in its support for the Red Knights. MUST continues to believe that the wealthy investors, who are led by the Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill, sincerely wish to achieve ownership of the club and that their determination to do so has not waned.
An article in the Manchester Evening News on 1 June predicted the Red Knights’ decision but reacted to it with optimism. It said that the group “refuse to pay over the odds, even if that effectively rules out their hopes of a quick sale. Instead – with financing in place – they would rather play the waiting game and see the pressure increase on the Glazers before making a bid in the region of £1.2bn.” With the local media and the supporters still behind the Red Knights, and confident of success eventually, the anti-Glazer campaign still has much further to run.
In the meantime, a little backing from fans of other clubs would not go amiss. And yet, the wearing of green and gold colours by disgruntled fans has been mocked by opposition supporters. Chants of “Are you Norwich in disguise?” have become commonplace whenever United are playing poorly. It is understandable terrace humour, of course, but it betrays the overriding lack of understanding that other sets of supporters seem to have both for United’s ownership situation and the reasons why the Red Knights are seeking to change it.
Why should supporters of other clubs care that United fans want the Glazers out? Well, because other clubs are vulnerable to the same circumstances that allowed the American tycoons to take control five years ago. Back then, the fans did not have a large enough stake in the club to stop the takeover. United were bought with borrowed money and the astronomical debts incurred by the club’s owners through their share purchase will largely have to be paid back from revenue generated by the club. So the club’s income is there to service the debts of the owners and not to be invested back into the team. The same situation applies at Liverpool, and other clubs could follow. The likelihood of a takeover at Arsenal continues to grow, for example.
The two most successful English football teams in history – with thirty-six league titles and eight European Cups between them – have been saddled with the debts of men with no geographical, familial, or emotional ties to the clubs. Read that sentence again. Abhorrent, isn’t it?
Under the Red Knights, Manchester United fans would not run the club outright but they would have a say in its affairs and also own enough shares to ensure against a repeat of the Glazer takeover. This would safeguard the future of United and, as an ownership model that could spread to other clubs, it would go a long way to preserving the wellbeing of English football in general. It would mean an end to the era of the absentee owner who runs a club purely as a business and who has no affinity with the team’s local area or its people. Fans of all clubs should want that.
Written By William Abbs
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