Gary Neville has offered advice to the Glazer Family to help Manchester United return to their former glory. United have not only struggled on the pitch recently, but the club's ageing infrastructure has also been highlighted as a growing issue. Both of those factors have led to widespread fan resentment towards the American owners.
Speaking on The Overlap Live, via the Daily Star, Neville addressed how he would tackle the ongoing issues at Old Trafford. "To me, at this moment in time, the first thing that should happen is they should sell the club," he said.
"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.
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"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."
Whilst Neville's words intend to protect the club he played for throughout his career, some of his comments - in particular on investing in the stadium and infrastructure - also indirectly serve as a warning to Chelsea's new owners of how they should approach the running of the football club.
The list of potential new Chelsea owners has been narrowed down to four candidates. Consortia led by Sir Martin Broughton; Todd Boehly; the Ricketts family; and Stephen Pagliuca all have a chance of being the Blues' new owners. They've each been given until April 11 to submit improved bids.
One thing the new owners will need to do is get the fans on side. However, they're unlikely to be able to do that by taking the approach the Glazers have at Old Trafford. Building a family culture at Stamford Bridge and investing in the stadium is only going to help their cause. That in turn should help to provide results on the pitch.
