Gary Neville puts Roy Keane in his place after Keane asks how the Glazers first got involved with Man Utd.
On the latest episode of Stick to Football, Roy Keane tried to dig into how the Glazer family first got involved with Manchester United, but Gary Neville seemed a bit hesitant to talk about it.
If you don’t know, the Glazers’ takeover of Manchester United in 2005 has a pretty complicated story. It involves Sir Alex Ferguson, a racehorse named Rock of Gibraltar, and a tough fight with two Irish billionaires.
Ferguson was close friends with John Magnier and JP McManus, who owned a big part of the club. But things got tense when Ferguson ended up in a legal battle with Magnier over the ownership of that famous racehorse.
Their friendship broke down, and in May 2005, Magnier and McManus sold their 28.7% stake in Manchester United to American businessman Malcolm Glazer for about £227 million. This gave Glazer control of the club.
After that, Glazer completed a £790 million takeover deal that saddled the club with a lot of debt — something Gary Neville mentioned on the show.
Neville said, “There’s £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) of debt in that football club, so they are limited in some ways.” He added, “They’ve spent a fortune on players, just behind Man City in the last 15 years — around £1.4 billion ($1.86 billion). But a lot of that money isn’t really theirs.”
Then Roy Keane brought up the big question many people wonder about. “How did the Glazers get involved in the first place?” he asked.
Neville responded, “We know that, Roy. The Glazers have to sell now. It’s time.”
Keane wasn’t ready to drop it. “There’s a horse involved in this, you know? No one wants to talk about the horse. Can we talk about the horse? The horse is key.”
With Manchester United struggling on the field after a quiet summer in the transfer market, Neville urged the Glazers to sell the club.
“They’ve basically handed over the football side to INEOS,” Neville said. “They’ve had three tough years, and it looks like this year will be hard as well.”
He went on, “The Glazers are very popular in Tampa, Florida. They go to NFL games, but they’ve hardly visited Old Trafford in over 20 years. They need to sell now — enough’s enough.”
Neville added, “The club is in debt, they haven’t spent anything on the stadium, and now they’re trying to borrow £2 billion for a stadium without a clear plan. They’ve had over a decade of football failures, handed the running of the club to someone else, and not taken responsibility.”
“It’s time for them to sell the whole club. The fans have had enough. They need to go now.”