Neville calls on Glazers to sell | ‘There’s something rotten at Man Utd’
Gary Neville has made an impassioned plea for the Glazers to sell Manchester United in the wake of their 4-0 thrashing at Liverpool, adding “there’s something rotten” at the club.
United were dominated by their rivals on a night that interim manager Ralf Rangnick called “humiliating” as their bid to finish in the top four of the Premier League received another blow.
Neville admitted players and managers at the club deserved criticism, but that “repeated failure over a 10-year period”, along with the dividends they continue to take out of the club, means it is time for the Glazers to leave Old Trafford.
Speaking on the Gary Neville Podcast, the former United defender set out his grievances against the American family that has owned the club since 2005 in the wake of a defeat to Liverpool that he described as a “shambles”.
Stop taking money out of the club
It would be easy to launch into the players and I’ve done that enough, because they have to take responsibility.
You can sometimes point towards the managers that Manchester United have had this season, but you have to start looking above when you see repeated failure over a 10-year period.
They (the Glazers) are taking dividends out of the football club. No good business, when the core activity of that business is failing miserably, when the cash has been depleted over the last three years to the levels that it has, continue to take money out.
Yes, maybe when the club’s rich, it’s winning, there’s hundreds of millions in the bank, the sponsorship contracts are coming in, there isn’t Covid and the stadium’s absolutely amazing, you might say, ‘OK, the owners can take a dividend’. Not today.
Out of respect, don’t take money out of a business when the core activity of the business is failing, when the stadium needs hundreds of millions spending on it, when the training ground needs money spending on it, when the team needs money spending on it, when they need a manager who’s paid a handsome wage to compete with [Jurgen] Klopp, [Pep] Guardiola and [Thomas] Tuchel – don’t you take money out of that club. These do and that’s why they must go.
I’m a capitalist, I’m an entrepreneur, I’ve got businesses, I understand the theory of borrowing and lending money, and taking money out of a football club. But not when the business is on its knees.
The culture is set from the very top. There’s something rotten. This has been 10 years of poor decision-making, of repeated failure, of lack of investment into the stadium. They’ve invested into the football team, I’ll give them that, but not with their own money.
Rangnick totally defeated by these players
This Manchester United team disappoint you on a consistent basis. Their performance levels are as bad as I’ve seen in my life, and that’s from the very start of the season to the end. They’ve won games and they’re on the points they’re on, and I don’t know how because there is absolutely nothing to hang onto, other than individual moments and players who sometimes turn up.
There is nothing here. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer did a pretty decent job for the previous two or three years, Ralf Rangnick knows how to set up a football team, but they’ve both been totally defeated by this group of players.
You’ve watched those Manchester United players all season, blaming each other, blaming the manager, not clapping the fans. You’ve seen the owners not turn up. The culture of every club is set at the top.
The players out there [against Liverpool] were an absolute shambles. That first half, I couldn’t be any more damning. I’m never going to say they’re not fit to wear the shirt, it’s too emotional. They’re good players, some of those lads. But the players have let themselves down, they’ve let the fans down.
Tuesday night was a low. Even the worst Liverpool team we played against, we never got a game as easy as that.
Carragher: Even worst Liverpool sides didn’t stoop that low
Speaking on the Gary Neville Podcast, Jamie Carragher admitted he was part of some Liverpool sides that took beatings from Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United, but said he and his team-mates never “stooped that low”.
“I did feel it would end up being about 4-0,” said the former Liverpool defender. “Where Manchester United are right now, that was me in a Liverpool shirt, trying to challenge Manchester United when they were top dogs. They had the manager, they had the squad, they had everything covered and we were just trying to hang onto their coattails. But I don’t think we ever stooped that low.
“We lost one time 4-0 at Old Trafford, but we had a man sent off after one minute. We got some doings off Manchester United – they were better than us – but we still had something about us, a personality, a character. We still won trophies in unbelievable circumstances when we weren’t one of the best teams.
“I couldn’t imagine this Manchester United team doing something out of the ordinary, like an Istanbul, or winning an FA Cup when they shouldn’t. We always still felt we had the ability to do something in a game and you knew there’d be a bit of fight.”
Speaking to Neville, Carragher added: “This Manchester United, yes they’re awful, but this is one of the most expensively assembled squads in the history of the game.
“If you were playing now for that Manchester United team – I’m not even talking about [Ryan] Giggs or [Paul] Scholes – you wouldn’t allow that to happen. I wouldn’t allow that to happen.”