Gary Neville has laid out his five-point plan that he thinks Manchester United owners, the Glazers, should follow to get the club back on track.
United are in a transition phase again, with a new long-term manager yet to be appointed, while Ralf Rangnick continues as interim boss. Results on the pitch have been underwhelming to say the least, and their top four hopes are hanging by a thread.
The Glazer family's ownership of the club has endured strong resistance for years from United fans, and Neville called on them to sell the club. However, he also offered a highly detailed plan to "reset" the club and get them back on track.
“In terms of the Glazer family, post the Super League they said they were going to communicate with the club, they said they were going to change things. They’ve not changed anything at this football club,” Neville said on Sky Bet's The Overlap Live Fan Debate.
“My view is there’s a problem right at the very top, there is a massive problem. I think they’ve had 10 years to prove they can be good football operators at Manchester United, beyond Alex Ferguson and David Gill. They’ve proven they can’t do it, they’ve proven they can’t build a successful football club here in Manchester without being propped up by the team Sir Alex Ferguson had and himself being there.
“To me, at this moment in time, the first thing that should happen is they should sell the club. Because of the Super League, because of their 10 years of failure without Sir Alex Ferguson, and the team and the squad he had, I think they should go.
“But if they really want to stay, because you can never force the Glazer family to sell, then they’ve got to do four or five things.
“They’ve got to stop taking the dividends out of the club if they want to reset the culture, because when the owners are pulling money out of the club at the expense of the fans, at the expense of the project, at the expense of a successful team, it’s a bad message from the very top.
“Number two, they’ve got to pay off that debt, and they can do that by selling £500million in shares to the fans, not take it out of the club and pay off that debt. They can then rebuild that stadium with £1billion, and it does probably need knocking down to be fair. It doesn’t need renovating, it needs a new stadium.
“That money can be funded from a 20-year contract by getting a sponsor in at £60-70million a year, call it ‘Something’ Old Trafford, but we have a brand new stadium, and again it resets the culture of Manchester United having the best stadium in the world. That needs to happen.
“They then need to build a new training ground. Me and Roy were part of the squad when we moved 22 years ago. We’ve now got a training ground that’s behind Tottenham and the other training grounds.
“They need to put £100-150million a year into a proper sporting project, along with those four things, and then you can say the Glazer family have reset the culture from the top. They’ve got to do something that resets the culture and the principles of the football club. They’ve not done that for 10 years, they need to do it now because the fans are on the edge again.”
The Overlap is a YouTube channel from Gary Neville in partnership with Sky Bet.
