Neville demands Glazers sell Manchester United now as £1.2bn debt mounts

Gary Neville has issued his most emphatic demand yet for the Glazer family to relinquish ownership of Manchester United, pointing to £1.2 billion in accumulated debt and more than a decade of sustained decline since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement.

Speaking on the Stick to Football podcast, the former United captain argued that the American owners have forfeited any remaining goodwill by delegating football operations to INEOS — a partnership he described as “subcontracting” — while remaining largely absent from Old Trafford for the better part of 20 years.

“There’s £1.2 billion of debt in that football club, they’re hamstrung in some ways,” Neville said. “They’ve spent an absolute fortune on players, just under Man City in the last 15 years — £1.4 billion on players, they’re second in the spending, but a lot of it’s the never-never.”

Neville acknowledged that the Glazers’ shortcomings were obscured during the Ferguson era, but insisted the structural problems have been fully exposed since the legendary manager stepped down in 2013. United have spent heavily in the transfer market without translating that outlay into sustained success, and INEOS — who purchased a minority stake in the club — are now drawing criticism of their own from supporters.

Yet Neville was clear about where ultimate responsibility lies. “The Glazer family over in America, in Tampa, they’re very popular over there — they go to every NFL game, apparently — they’ve hardly been to Old Trafford in 20-odd years,” he said.

He also questioned the financial logic behind plans for a new stadium to replace Old Trafford, asking where the reported £2 billion required to fund the project would actually come from given the club’s existing debt burden.

“You’ve got a failure of 13, 14 years on the football side, you’ve subbed it out to somebody else, which is ridiculous, and not took responsibility,” Neville concluded. “It is now at a point where they have to sell. Enough is enough, they have to sell the whole club. The fans have had enough. They have to go now.”

Neville has previously acknowledged regretting his silence on the Glazers during his playing days, having reasoned at the time that the club could have fared worse under different ownership. He has since said that Ferguson’s departure was the moment he recognised the owners’ success had been entirely dependent on the manager rather than any structural strength they had built.