People across the world look to Manchester for footballing greatness.
10 of the last 15 seasons have seen the Premier League title return to our city. When you go abroad, after you tell someone you're from Manchester, the first question is always ‘ United or City?’. Without fail.
With the Reds and Blues regulars in the Champions League, every other week our fans, our teams and our city's name is represented across Europe, and fans from other teams from around the world are welcomed to Manchester in return, as hundred of millions watch our stadiums on TV every week. We’ve got the National Football Museum, the biggest club stadium in the country, and no city in England can rival us for footballing heritage.
Importantly, that includes the bedrock of our Football League clubs, too, with five proud EFL clubs in Greater Manchester as well as Bury and another eight clubs in the top three tiers of non-league including Stockport and Altrincham of the National League and a host of others including FC United of Manchester.
However, of those 13 others, at least five have had major ownership issues in the last decade, leading them to the brink of existence, with Bury infamously losing their EFL status because of their mismanagement.
For all the good United and City do, football in Manchester is under serious threat.
Not too long ago, Bolton and Wigan were regulars in the Premier League. Now they've both stared liquidation right in the face and are trying to rebuild two divisions lower. Bolton's recent takeover was the subject of a much-criticised countdown clock on Sky Sports as the deadline for their winding up went down to the last minutes and seconds. When the same clock hit zero, it confirmed that Bury had not survived the EFL cut-off to save their membership and the club was effectively killed in an instance. They have not played a game since.
2013 FA Cup winners Wigan were in administration last season, and relegated to League One as a result. They were on the verge of following Bury's fate, just as Derby County are this year, but were eventually saved at the last minute.
Oldham Athletic are marooned at the bottom of League Two, with only a miracle saving them from becoming the first former-Premier League club from dropping into non-league. Since controversial owner Abdallah Lemsagam bought the club four years ago this week, they've been relegated from League One to the foot of the EFL, and have been embroiled in a number of scandals and off-field issues that looks set to put an end to their 127 years-EFL membership.
Down the road at Rochdale, an attempted hostile takeover in the summer was averted, but the same company have now mounted legal action against the club who must rally again to fight off the threat. In South Manchester, Stockport went all the way down to the sixth tier at the nadir of their ownership issues, but are on their way back and will hopefully earn promotion back to the EFL this season after an 11-year absence that put their very existence to the test.
Further afield, Macclesfield are another club who have gone out of business and had to reform, multiple levels below the Football League. Is it a coincidence that so many clubs in or near Manchester are constantly battling to simply stay in existence?
One common factor with these case studies is that most ownership issues have come from custodians either spending beyond their means, or committing to running clubs without the financial means to do so. Stadiums become separated from the clubs, multiple companies become involved, and as the financial issues dominate, the on-pitch fortunes always suffer and it's fans who pay the price.
On one hand, having United and City down the road doesn't help. The two giants shouldn't be criticised for spending what they generate, and if there is a choice of watching Cristiano Ronaldo or Kevin De Bruyne... or the worst club in League Two battling relegation every season, there's no contest. It's also a fact that nowadays, United and City no longer need their local EFL clubs, either, when they have networks of more suitable partner clubs around the world instead.
As the Premier League continues to spend billions on players and commercial deals every year, the gap between them and the rest of the football pyramid grows. The recent European Super League and Project Big Picture plans would further alienate clubs like United and City from the EFL, and that gives owners two choices: to remain sustainable but resigned to life in the lower tiers, or to gamble and spend big to gain promotion, hoping that potential success will pay off later down the line. Most often, it doesn't.
Again, it's the fans who suffer when it inevitably doesn't work.
On Saturday, as the billion-pound industry that is the Premier League takes a week off, at least 60 fans will make the five-mile journey by foot from Rochdale's Spotland Stadium to Oldham's Boundary Park for a crucial League Two fixture for both sides. Dale need the points to move clear of the bottom two, Oldham need a miracle to claw back that seven-point gap to safety.
The walk, with fans of both sides taking part, is an annual tradition for Dale fans, but this year will take place under the banner of 'Fans Together' as Dale Trust Chair Colin Cavanagh tells MEN Sport.
He said: "We’ve had a connection between the Oldham supporters groups and we’ve got a lot of sympathy for what Oldham fans are going through.
"There’s a bit of solidarity online, they’ve seen what we’ve been going through and vice versa, so we decided to join forces under the title ‘Fans Together’ and raise the profile of issues both teams are going through.
"I don’t think the decline of league clubs is particularly unique to Greater Manchester. It’s easy to point the finger at City and United, but I don’t see it as an issue whatsoever. These clubs have spent more money than they’ve got and it all comes down to that.
"Football should be such an easy game to manage, you know how much money will come into your club in the next 12 months and you make sure you don’t spend more than that. At Rochdale we’re grounded, we’re ambitious but have no delusions of grandeur. If we start spending half a million to a million pounds we haven’t got, there’s no-one down the road willing to pay that off for us. If we’re a million pounds in debt we’ll never pay it off."
While Rochdale are hopeful this latest legal action will be staved off allowing the club to move forward as a fan-owned business, the long-term prospects of other local rivals isn't so rosy.
Oldham are up for sale, with owner Lemsagam finally admitting it's in the club's best interests for him to sell, but he doesn't own Boundary Park, and looks likely to be selling a non-league club in the near future. Simply finding a new owner won't immediately solve the club's many issues.
Bury and Stockport fans know how Oldham supporters will be feeling, with proud EFL clubs getting destroyed by unsuitable owners. Bolton and Wigan fans will also attest that often, it gets worse before it gets better.
So what can be done?
For a start, supporters groups across the country are calling for the Government's recent Fan Led Review to be implemented, of which one of the main recommendations is to place more stringent tests on assessing potential owners from taking over these historical institutions.
Another solution could be to listen to United legend Gary Neville, who is co-owner of a local success story in Salford City along with billionaire Peter Lim. Yes, Salford have spent a lot of money to get promotion to the EFL, and a lot of money to try and get out of League Two, but Neville and his co-owners have also invested in the club and the surrounding community, and appear stable financially.
Neville has been vocal about making the tests put upon prospective owners more rigorous in light of various clubs going into or flirting with administration, and he recently called for club stadiums to be treated in a similar manner to listed buildings, preventing them from being separated from their clubs. He has advocated for football clubs to be regulated differently to normal businesses, given their values to communities, and has denounced plans like the Super League and Big Picture - as well as the involvement of clubs like United and City - in no uncertain terms.
While Neville doesn't represent all fans' views, he is one of the most high profile names calling for structural and procedural changes to the way football is run, in order to save clubs like Derby and Bolton and Wigan and Stockport and Oldham and Rochdale, and to stop another Bury from happening.
If Stockport's decade-long demise wasn’t a wake-up call ten years ago, Bury's instant explusion in 2019 certainly should have been. The near-misses of Bolton and Wigan seemed to be met with shrugs, so maybe Derby's current worries will be the big name needed for a shock factor to kick the football authorities into action to safeguard the future of the game outside the Premier League.
When those Oldham and Rochdale fans arrive at Boundary Park on Saturday, they will know they are both playing for far more than three points - their current ownership issues should be a reminder of the issues facing Manchester's local clubs.
Greater Manchester leads the world for its football heritage, from the very top of the pyramid to grassroots and every stage in between. As United and City post hundred of millions of pounds a year in revenue, maybe it's not a coincidence that the smaller community clubs are slowly dying.
They need help, and they need change.
