Former Manchester United captain turned pundit Gary Neville has been the most outspoken ex-player regarding the Glazers and the takeover process.
Neville was, until recently, chief executive of Salford City and still remains a co-owner of the club. This has fuelled his passion to talk about the situation in the United boardroom.
In a recent live edition of The Overlap, Jamie Carragher pushed Neville to choose his preferred bidder out of Sheikh Jassim and Sir Jim Ratcliffe but the 48-year-old declined and declared they both had their positive and negatives.
While Carragher accused him of 'bottling it', Neville has not been afraid to speak out over the takeover process. MEN Sport has put together everything he has said in the last few months about the United sale.
ALSO READ: What Xavi has said about Sheikh Jassim
June 12
"Honestly, I think everyone has got the point whereby what the Glazers do, they erode every little last bit of energy out of everything that they do. The fans have had enough, they want them out and I think to be fair – it’s sad, really, that it’s come to that but that’s exactly how I think everybody feels. They know nothing about Manchester or the north west of England and the tradition of football in this part. They have not embedded themselves in the local culture."
May 31
"Plainly obvious the Glazer family aren’t going to announce anything on the ownership until the season is closed! They’ve been spinning it out unprofessionally for weeks and months now," he posted to Twitter. "They know fan protests would have been more significant than they already have if matches were still being played and the end result of the sale process is unpopular. Basically any family members staying in would be deemed unacceptable by all fans. Is this why they’re holding off?"
May 23
"The reason I’ve not said Manchester United right now is there’s going to be a lot of turbulence in Manchester in the next four to six weeks," Neville told Sky Sports when asked for his Premier League title race prediction for next season. "Obviously the Glazers are at some point going to make a decision if they get their act together - it’s pathetic, what they’re doing.
"At some point the new owners are going to come in and they’re going to need to get their feet under the table. To actually think they’re going to challenge in their first season, it could happen, but I think there’s going to be so much turbulence in terms of the recruitment and what’s happening."
May 21
"I look at East Manchester and think about the prosperity Abu Dhabi [ownership of City] has brought there," he told The Times. "That needs [to be] applauded. What I would say is whoever the owners are, state funding, US private equity, there should be a clear owners’ test and clear regulation to make sure they stay in the boundaries.
"City have serious allegations against them. 115 breaches of [Premier League financial] rules. I think we have to wait and see what happens but there is no doubt it would taint their success if they were found guilty. Football clubs in some ways should be run like not-for-profit businesses. I know that sounds crazy but you almost want all the money you’ve made to go back into the facilities, the team and the youth development.
"That’s why I feel less threatened by, let’s say, Abu Dhabi’s owners in terms of how they operate, compared to a Glazer family or an FSG [Fenway Sports Group, the Liverpool owner] or a Todd Boehly [the Chelsea co-owner], because I think they do come in quite purely with the ambition to make money, to basically extract from the club as much money as they can in the end. I get it but I don’t see football as an ROI [return on investment] based, yield-based business. I see football as something far more emotive, that involves passion and community and people. The three bidders at the moment: we’ve got Jim Ratcliffe, which is private money; Qatar, which is private money; and US equity. I’m against that. The club would just be run for a profit again.
"We would see dividends, we would see extraction, we would see cost-cutting, we would see commercial exploitation which may be unhealthy for the club. The Glazers just have to leave, so if Jim Ratcliffe or Qatar came in without the Glazers, I’d be supportive of it on the condition of what they were pledging with respect to their manifesto to the club."
May 13
Speaking to CBS Sports, Neville said: "I've not heard the pledges that have been made by any of the bids. At the moment, there's the Jim Ratcliffe bid, the Qatari bid and a number of US investment funds.
"I don't want private equity into an English football club, I'll be really clear. I don't think it works. I think football is about emotion. Believe it or not, in Manchester, I have a partnership with a US private equity fund and in other sectors of life, I love international investment.
"But I think in football clubs, you can't go into it purely because you want to see a return. When it comes to the current bids, at this moment in time, I think Jim Ratcliffe's bid has its merits, the Qatari bid has its own merits. My main concern at this moment in time is that the Glazer family sell and that they remove themselves from the club. They'll make a lot of money, well done for that. They've proved to be very astute business people but now it's time to hand over control because the club has deteriorated under their ownership."
May 7
He tweeted: "United so poor in this game (away at West Ham). Erik ten Hag seeing more of the players in these situations is a positive. Allows him to sort out who he wants on the bus. The real disgrace are the Glazers. Are they waiting for the last game at Old Trafford to pass??? It would be typical of them. Weak and shirking accountability and responsibility to the end! Members of staff on and off the pitch are in an uncertain position waiting for new owners! Let alone recruitment and what budget there is going to be! This should have been done! Classless to the end!"
April 15
Amid rumours the Carlyle Group were entering the takeover process, Neville tweeted: "No thank you! This doesn't work for United! The Glazer PR machine keeps leaking this type of minority partnership out there bi-weekly whilst stressing it’s a confidential process. Full Sale Only.
April 13
He told the Daily Mail after Old Trafford was not named in the Euro 2028 bid: "The Glazer family have, for years, been warned about a lack of investment in Old Trafford. "They have overseen a decline for 20 years in which it has gone from being one of the best stadiums in the world to one that can't even get into the top 10 in the UK and Ireland. This is an all-time low. "That it is not in the best ten to host a tournament is a joke. There has been no investment. It is a rusty stadium. This is a dereliction of duty. It is shameful."
April 11
He tweeted: "They’re making it up as they go along! Shoddy way to run a sale process. They need to get out by end of May to allow the new owner a fighting chance to impact the next transfer window and get moving! Taking it to a 3rd round is just classless. The market has obviously not given them the answer they want! It’s like they’ve made a pact to each other that they won’t go for less than £1bn each family member (five of them). If they stay in after all this it will be toxic!"
April 6
At an Overlap live show, Neville explained the issues he sees with Ratcliffe and Sheikh Jassim's bids: "I don’t want the American money at all. Jim is only buying 69 per cent of the club so he’s still going to have the debt in the club of £500m and he’s still going to have the New York Stock Exchange of 31 per cent. That’s my concern with that one, that we’ve got a stock exchange in America, so that is a negative. However, Jim’s a local guy, been a United fan and to be fair would do a really good job for the club.
"The Qataris would come in and build a new stadium straight away, they’ll wipe out all the shareholders, they will never take dividends or debt but obviously people have to live with the fact that they might be a state-owned connection, which people don’t like as well. So there’s no perfect answer here."
A Manchester Evening News special souvenir edition - Fergie's First - charts United's 1992/93 title-winning campaign and you can get your hands on one here
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