Dead hand of the immovable Glazers keeps strangling Manchester United | Jonathan Liew

bIn February, the NFL players union conducted its second annual survey of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and let’s just say it didn’t make pleasant reading. Tampa Bay players reported that the locker room was “not clean, constantly smelled and had an ongoing bug problem.” The sauna was described as “dirty and/or moldy”. This came just a decade after a MRSA outbreak infected three Buccaneers players, two of whom never played again.

In addition, players complained about having to pay $90 for childcare on game days (most teams offer this for free), while paying $1,750 per season for the privilege of having their own hotel room and sitting in the back on away trips. from the plane while club staff traveled first class. Most of the blame for this state of affairs was placed squarely on the team’s owner, who according to the survey ranked 29th out of 32 NFL franchise owners, and who bore the name of the Glazer family.

Keep in mind that this is how the Glazers – some of the richest people in the world – treat their most valuable employees, the ones who put their bodies on the line and make the spectacle, people they know and meet. How do you think they regard the fans of Manchester United, a bunch of ordinary people on the other side of the ocean who they will never meet in their lives? Perhaps we got a strong indication of that on Sunday afternoon when the heavens opened and, in large part, so did the roof of Old Trafford.

As a piece of pathetic fallacy, it was almost too perfect, too clichéd, too obvious. And yet much of the subsequent commentary focused on the rain-soaked humiliation of Erik ten Hag, huddled in his tan suit. Or Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s embarrassment on the day he hosted Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and Labor leader Keir Starmer in an attempt to argue for a publicly funded redevelopment of the Old Trafford area.

Ratcliffe has understandably attracted the most attention since acquiring a minority stake in the club late last year. Star hires include Omar Berrada and Jason Wilcox, as well as Dan Ashworth’s pursuit. There have been strict internal emails about working from home and the cleanliness of club offices. There has been talk of transfer targets and new coaches, an assertive media presence, lots of friendly interviews and briefings.

Ratcliffe’s 27.7% stake – which will rise to 28.9% by the end of this year – gives him some influence over football matters, as well as a few seats on the board. But the deluge at Old Trafford was a timely reminder of where the power at United still resides, where it has resided for the past twenty years and where it may well reside for the next twenty years. For all the talk of revolution and reinvention, this is a club still working firmly under the dead hand of the Glazers.

In a way, the Ineos deal has entrenched them even more firmly: giving them a convenient form of public cover, a lightning rod for the club’s many shortcomings and a huge injection of capital that might otherwise have to come out of their own pockets. They are under no obligation to sell any more shares and if they want to transfer the club to a new buyer in the future, it will be Ratcliffe who will have to forfeit his stake to make this happen.

Why are the Glazers so keen to retain control of a club in which they seem so reluctant to invest their money or time and where they are downright despised? There’s a buzz phrase in macroeconomics known as ‘the asset economy’, which basically says that in Anglo-capitalist societies the main determinant of social class and life chances is no longer your job, but what you already own. As wages stagnate while asset prices continue to rise, a growing social and political divide has emerged between those who work to survive and those who can simply live off the inflationary returns of their existing assets.

“Nothing has changed since I left,” commented Cristiano Ronaldo about his return to Manchester United in 2021. “The swimming pool, the jacuzzi, even the gym. I thought I would see new technology and new infrastructure. I saw things I saw when I was 20.” Former CEO David Gill remembers that Old Trafford’s roof leaked a decade ago, but because the club were champions no one noticed.

According to football finance blog Swiss Ramble, United have spent less than Fulham, Leicester and barely more than Brighton on infrastructure development over the past decade. Meanwhile, against a backdrop of chronic underinvestment and net debt of around £773m, the Glazer family has made around £1.3bn from share sales and dividend payments since taking over at United. This is how the asset economy works: the asset itself becomes your paycheck and everyone who needs it essentially works for you.

It’s easy to see why Ratcliffe’s no-takeover has generated such feverish optimism in United circles. It offers the illusion of control in an uncontrollable landscape, the illusion of simplicity in a mind-bogglingly complex situation, the illusion of innovation when in reality very little has changed. You can’t get the Glazers out. You cannot see or contact them. You can’t afford to buy their shares, and even if you could, you can’t force them to sell. And you cannot overthrow the culture of parasitic rentier capitalism that allows them to operate, or explode the regulatory structures that make it legal.

But us can frothing about the arrival of Wilcox and Graham Potter, and fixating on internal email traffic levels, like all these things. Perhaps, given the deluge of negative publicity this week, we’ll even be treated to a ceremonial repair of the roof of Old Trafford. I think of photo ops, I think of North West. Tonight I’m thinking of Quinton Fortune in hi-vis with a golden hammer in his hand.

Meanwhile, the turnstiles keep clicking and the assets keep sweating. After all, at a club as lucrative and popular as United you never have to repair the roof because the sun always shines.

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