Manchester United fans protested against club owners the Glazer family and Sir Jim Ratcliffe at Old Trafford on Sunday after a 3-0 Premier League loss to Bournemouth.
The home defeat dropped Manchester United to 16th in the Premier League table, yet supporters did not turn on manager Michael Carrick. Instead, fans directed their anger at the players and, above all, at the ownership group, including Avram Glazer and Ratcliffe.
Writing about the crisis at Old Trafford alongside the legal battle facing neighbours Manchester City, sports columnist Oliver Holt said these are "dark days for Manchesterism in football". Holt argued that supporters of both clubs are "saddled with despicable owners who have twisted their great clubs out of shape", turning United into a "cash-cow" and City into a "plaything for a petro-state".
Holt noted that when a club suffers poor results and falls down the table, the manager normally acts as the lightning conductor for fan dissent and chants demanding their exit. He cited past cases of hostility aimed at managers, including a 1993 Southampton fanzine cover that told then-boss Ian Branfoot, "We hope you die soon," and planes flying "WengerOut" banners over stadiums during Arsene Wenger's later years at Arsenal.
At Old Trafford on Sunday, however, supporters spared Carrick, the former Manchester United and England midfielder who spent 12 years at the club as a player. Fans aimed their chants at the owners because they hold the hierarchy responsible for the decline of the 20-time English champions on and off the pitch.
Manchester United debt and stadium protests
Anger at Old Trafford focuses on the financial burden placed on the club since the American Glazer family bought Manchester United in a leveraged takeover in 2005, before British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe acquired a minority stake in 2024. The debt placed on the club after the 2005 buyout has grown to more than £1.15 billion.
That debt has cost Manchester United £852 million in interest payments overall. In the last financial year, the interest payment reached £37 million, an increase from £34 million the previous year.
Holt wrote that United have been hijacked by "corporate leeches" whose model financial experts describe as the "aggressive utilisation of debt financing secured against high-value, cash-generative assets to fund acquisition and expansion".
Supporters also accuse the club of declaring war on its season-ticket holders to bring in more tourists and day-trippers spending money at Old Trafford. During Sunday's match, stadium updates about plans for a new ground were met with derision from fans who view the project and future ticket prices as a way to replace loyal regulars with "shinier, happier people with bigger wallets", rejecting the owners' assurances about how much fans mean to the club after years of banner protests.
Manchester City charges and Abu Dhabi ownership
While Manchester United fans have long opposed their owners, Holt wrote that Manchester City supporters are still coming to terms with the finding that their hierarchy was guilty of "cheating on an industrial scale between 2009 and 2018". He suggested that many City fans remain in denial about what the emirate of Abu Dhabi has done to their club, though that may change once the legal process concludes.
Manchester City were bought in 2008 by the Abu Dhabi United Group, led by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Holt noted that fan denial in east Manchester is understandable because Abu Dhabi has pumped money into City rather than taking it out, delivering an unprecedented four consecutive English league titles earlier in this decade.
Even so, Holt argued that City have become one of the world's most high-profile and effective sportswashing projects, as Abu Dhabi used the football and trophies of manager Pep Guardiola to wash away the reputation of a repressive regime.
Figures in Abu Dhabi have briefed that they hold "irrefutable evidence" in their pursuit of justice from the Premier League and are said to be "bullish" about winning their appeal. Holt added that because the United Arab Emirates wields immense wealth, power and influence, no one can be certain what the appeal findings will be.
Premier League spending rules and state investment
Holt dismissed an aggressive public relations campaign by City's owners and their "Abu Dhabi acolytes" presenting the modern club as a "champion of the oppressed in the Premier League" fighting the tyranny of an imagined "red cartel". While defenders frame the dispute like "Harry Potter versus the Dark Lord", Holt wrote that City sought dominance rather than altruism, achieving a four-title run never before seen in English football history.
Addressing claims that the Premier League's Squad Cost Ratio controls act as a dictator's yoke keeping smaller clubs down, Holt argued that scrapping those rules would give Aston Villa, Everton or Tottenham Hotspur no chance of winning the league. Instead, an imagined "red cartel" would be replaced by a real "nation state cartel".
Without spending limits, Holt warned, Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City or Saudi Arabia-backed Newcastle United would win the Premier League every season through public investment funds that no rival could match, finishing the competition as a spectacle.
Reputation damage at Manchester City and Manchester United
Holt pointed out that Manchester City under Abu Dhabi are part of the football establishment, having tried to join the European Super League and repeatedly stripped ambitious mid-table clubs such as Everton and Aston Villa of their best players over the past 20 years.
Having been found guilty of achieving that dominance by cheating and ranking, by some metrics, as "the biggest cheats in the history of English football", Abu Dhabi have cost the club they serve as custodians its most valuable asset, Holt wrote. He argued that rival fans will not forget and that the "stain of 'cheats'" will not easily wash away.
Holt concluded that modern English football has saddled both Manchester United and Manchester City with owners who have twisted and tortured the two clubs out of shape until their own supporters no longer recognise what they have become.
