Now we’ll see if talk from United suitors is hot air or cold reality

OveR to you, Jim. Ratcliffe, O’Neill, there is always a Jim where Manchester United are concerned. Through the years there have been a whole lot of Jims who have claimed they can fix it for the club and now they have got their chance.

At last, the Glazers want to sell. Like their compatriots at Liverpool, the body blow that was the collapse of the Super League was too much and they are getting out. A figure in excess of £5billion is quoted, maybe as much as £9bn, but there is a price and it will be revealed — no doubt privately — to any serious bidder. So come on down, you billionaires. Now, it gets real.

That has always been the problem with Manchester United. The club was easy to buy when the club had no intention of selling. Certainly, it was easier to talk about buying. Anyone who fancied creating a headline could buy Manchester United, even Michael Knighton and now David Beckham.

It was like one of those charity auctions where the big prize is, say, the shirt edwin van der Sar was wearing for John Terry’s missed penalty in the Champions League final. ‘Who’s going to start the bidding at a grand?’ asks the master of ceremonies and someone puts his hand up because that is still a lot of money and makes him look big and generous, but he knows it’s going

to go for 10 times that, minimum, and there is no real chance of the bill dropping on his table.

And that’s Manchester United. Anyone can make a populist speech about letting the club go to a real fan — even real fans like Ratcliffe, who are Chelsea season ticket holders — or implore the Glazers to do the decent thing and sell it cheaply, safe in the knowledge that bluff was never going to be called.

O’Neill — now Baron O’Neill of Gatley — once talked up a consortium known as the Red Knights who were very vocal during the first green and gold protests. He predicted a United and Liverpool sale in 2021, too.

He is clearly an astute guy but will he try again, now the club is genuinely available? Maybe his consortium could return as the

Baron Knights. Ratcliffe spoke about buying the club only last month. ‘ Manchester United is owned by the Glazer family and they are the nicest people, proper gentlemen,’ he told a Financial Times event. ‘But they don’t want to sell it. If it had been for sale in the summer then, yes, we would have probably had a go following on from the Chelsea thing, but we can’t sit around hoping one day United will become available.’

Ah, the Chelsea thing. That is when the club was for sale for a protracted period and then, just when the bidding period had closed, Ratcliffe came in. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t get it.

Now we wait to see if his United talk also turns out to be hot air. It must be hard for the club’s suitors, always wanting the one they can have.