Three Man Utd transfer failings prove things won't change until Glazers are gone

20 October 2023 , 07:08

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Three Man Utd transfer failings prove things won't change until Glazers are gone

Supporters of a few elite clubs are probably in the same boat but if and when a Manchester United fan watches the current England team, he or she must wonder.

Wonder how come established stellar talent that has been recently on the market has not ended up at Old Trafford. Arguably, the three outstanding performers in England’s 3-1 victory over Italy at Wembley on Tuesday switched clubs in the summer - Harry Kane to Bayern Munich, Jude Bellingham to Real Madrid and Declan Rice to Arsenal.

At some stage, each of those players might have been mentioned in the same sentence as Manchester United but no-one within the game - and very few looking in from the outside - believed any of them would end up playing for Erik ten Hag. As a teenager, Bellingham had already snubbed United, who, bizarrely, never seemed an option for Kane while Rice never considered Old Trafford a possible destination.

Now, had United been seriously interested in any of those three - as they should have been - they would have found serious competition in the form of the massive clubs Kane, Bellingham and Rice would eventually join. Don’t forget, Manchester City were probably interested in those players but were also never realistic purchasers.

But United’s struggle to recruit firmly-established blue-chip talent has now become a calling card of this ownership's regime. And is that going to change if the Glazers actually sign off a chapter of this farcical sale process and ratify Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s £1.4billion bid for 25 percent of the club? No, it is not.

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Firstly, there is little in Ratcliffe’s sporting portfolio to inspire any great confidence in his ownership. Cycling’s Team Sky, for example, have gone from all-conquering to also-rans as Ineos Grenadiers.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe is looking to buy a 25 percent stake in Manchester United (PA)

Secondly, a 25 percent stake will not, presumably, guarantee you automatic ratification for the spending you think is necessary. And in United’s case, that will be a lot. Anyway, it now seems likely that the Ratcliffe deal - if it happens at all - will not be completed any time soon.

Who would have thought that? It is a farce. The suggestion the Glazers were willing to sell came when a ‘strategic review’ was announced last November. Have the fans been told of the findings of the strategic review? Of course not.

At the last fans’ forum, chief executive Richard Arnold basically told them he could tell them nothing. That is the way it is at Old Trafford, the drip-drip of nothingness at a stadium that leaks. Perhaps the Ratcliffe deal will get done sooner than we think, perhaps he will take a firm grip of so-called football operations.

But let’s face it, until there is a complete change of ownership, this painful struggle to remain amongst football’s elite performers ON the pitch (because they do actually remain that way off it) will go on. And the game’s greatest players will continue to ignore one of the game’s greatest institutions.

Andy Dunn