Bitter rivals united in disgust. That is greedy Glazers’ t wisted legacy
AT least Ed Woodward apologised. And at least he turned up to the fans’ forum on Friday to hear what Manchester United supporters had to say about him and the club’s craven involvement in the European Super League. None of it was complimentary but Woodward was there to listen to it. Which is more than can be said for Joel Glazer or any of the family that own England’s most famous club.
There will not be any fans inside Old Trafford today when United take on Liverpool in the Premier League but there will be plenty outside. It is to be hoped, of course, that the planned demonstration against the Glazer regime and everything it stands for passes off without violence or disorder but it is about time the club started to recognise the anger fans feel and to do something about it.
Experience tells us that won’t happen. The Glazers aren’ t interested in the fans. They don’t care. So today’s demonstration is important but it needs to be backed up by real reform of a broken system that allowed our game to be hijacked by owners like the Glazers in the first place. English football needs an independent regulator and it needs more safeguards. It is time fans and the history of their clubs got some protection.
THIS is a big weekend for the club that dominated English football in the Nineties and 2000s. If United lose to Liverpool today, then Manchester City, the team who once existed in their shadow, will be crowned champions again with four games of the season to spare and United will spend another summer toasting the ghosts of yesteryear.
On Thursday there is the second leg of a Europa League semi-final against Roma, which brings with it expectation of progress to the final and the possibility of a first trophy for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who has cleared up some of t he mess bequeathed him by Jose Mourinho. But there is little he can do about the men who call the shots.
The demonstration outside Old Trafford today, which is expected to attract thousands of supporters, is not just a sign of renewed anger towards owners who have taken an estimated £ 200 million from the club in dividends since they loaded £540m of borrowings on what had been a debt-free club when they launched their takeover in 2005.
It is not just a demonstration designed to focus minds once more on the fact that the Glazers’ takeover has cost the club more than £1.5bn in interest, fees, refinancing penalties and other dead money in the last 16 years. The Glazers have milked United like a cash-cow and watched on as the team have slid towards mediocrity on the pitch. If United win the Europa League, it will be a boost for Solskjaer and a sign of some progress but it may also serve to concentrate minds on the fact that United are still not competing for the biggest trophies in the game.
Most of all, the demonstration outside Old Trafford will be an acknowledgment that United’s struggles on the field are now secondary to the battle they face to rid themselves of their owners. The Glazers are tainting everything at Old Trafford. United’s rich history is being subsumed by the Glazers’ greed. The willingness of the billionaire owners of our leading clubs to join the ESL and destroy the rest of the English game crystallised a lot of things in the minds of football fans in this country.
It was a seminal moment that showed they were prepared to sacrifice not only the rest of the English game but also the history of their own clubs in the pursuit of more money. ‘We are disgusted, embarrassed and angry at the owner’s actions in relation to the planning, formation and announcement of the European Super League,’ the letter read out to Woodward by the Manchester United Fans’ Forum said.
‘It was an attack on fans and on clubs across the whole of football and we have simply had enough... We should not need to explain to anyone involved in the ownership or running of Manchester United why the European Cup is an integral part of our club’s history and how this proposal has betrayed it.’
Woodward has announced his intention to leave Old Trafford at the end of the season but supporters can see even more clearly now that United will never be whole and will never be healed until the Glazers have relinquished their hold on England’s biggest club. They have taken too much and given too little.
United fans have made their feelings plain many times before. Some were so disillusioned with the Glazers’ takeover that they formed their own breakaway club, FC United of Manchester, in response to it in 2005. The club now compete in the Northern Premier League, the seventh tier of the English football pyramid.
UNITED fans also mobilised through the Green and Gold campaign, which reached its height in 2010, but t hen f aded away. Through it all, the Glazers have remained sequestered in Florida, largely impervious to the criticism. Until 2013, they were shielded from some of the opposition by the continued achievements of the team under Sir Alex Ferguson.
The problem they face now is that the ugliness of ESL misadventure has mobilised the whole of the English game against them and their fellow billionaire owners. Demonstrations like today’s will not bring the Glazers down by themselves but they will serve as a reminder to the Government of all that is wrong with the English game.
The Glazers and the other billionaire owners who have hijacked our leading clubs crossed the Rubicon when they joined the ESL. Part of their twisted legacy towards our game is that today’s match between English football’s two greatest clubs and most bitter rivals has brought their fans together in a show of disgust. No wonder they are saying enough is enough.