How the Class of 92’s Salford dream turned into a nightmare with £23million losses, desperate need for investment after losing a billionaire backer and on the brink of a ‘crushing’ relegation, writes IAN HERBERT

The lower leagues are where the real test of a football manager’s mettle lies. The place where money is tight. Where you beg, borrow or steal and look longingly at those in the gilded cage of the Premier League who barely acknowledge you exist.

The Class of ’92 entered this world with a lot of confidence when they bought Salford City in 2014, taking the club from the Northern Premier League North to League Two in the space of five years – a climb of four divisions. When they reached League Two, Paul Scholes baldly stated the ambition. ‘I know it’s still a long way off, but the goal has to be the Premier League one day.’

The club have been in the same division ever since and are, to say the least, struggling in ways that Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs could not have imagined when they first hatched this plan on the train in 2012, at a time when Giggs was considering quitting to retire. .

Things looked rosy for a while, with six millionaires – the Neville brothers, Scholes, David Beckham and Nicky Butt – and one billionaire, Singaporean tycoon Peter Lim, the project’s chief banker, driving things along. But little by little the landscape has changed. Gary Neville stepped down as CEO in 2022, handing the reins to Butt. Lim resigned in August, creating uncertainty over whether he will write off the £21 million in loans he provided to the club. Last week Butt left the CEO role and indicated he wanted to return to coaching, but apparently not in the Salford City dugout.

The club is looking for new investments and seems to desperately need them. ‘Project 92 Ltd’, which effectively runs the club, is currently losing £80,000 to £100,000 a week and has made losses of £23 million in ten years. But it appears to be a tough sell, with an average home league attendance of 2,800 this season and the club currently 18th, having finished nine points behind in the EFL last season.

The Class of ’92 is still part of the picture. Scholes – head of recruitment – ​​is around a lot and Giggs has been director of football for several seasons, although this only became known in March, eight months after domestic violence charges against him were dropped.

Supporters say they see much less of Gary Neville around the club’s Peninsula Stadium on matchdays. But they’ve seen Roy Keane at games, even though he doesn’t actually own anything. “That’s just him being a football addict,” says Danny Shepherd of Salford City podcast One Up Front.

Lim’s departure after ten years is the development that raises the biggest questions about the future of the club, given the amount of money he has invested. Kieran Maguire, respected football finance analyst from Liverpool University, points out that the club pays out £128 in wages for every £120 they generate.

“It makes you wonder what the natural place is for the club, in terms of fanbase, facilities, infrastructure, if it’s not subsidized, without Peter Lim to pick up the slack,” he tells me. Fans are pessimistic about the search for new investors. ‘People are afraid of going back to non-League. That would be a crushing blow,” Shepherd said.

The United connection continues to deliver material benefits to Salford. The club will generate income this season from hosting some United Under 21s matches and training them at United’s historic Littleton Road facility. The club’s 2022-2023 accounts show the club charged Buzz 16, owners of Neville’s The Overlap podcast, £255,000.

The Wrexham model, introduced when Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney and razzmatazz replaced old-school football knowledge as a route to winning games, uses star power and the owners’ imagination to rake in the money. Big-ticket American sponsors are giddy when they get the chance to bathe in that profile.

Beckham is not a filmmaker and hardly exudes personality, although he is the one with that kind of appeal if only someone had thought of turning his co-ownership in Salford into a similar kind of creative asset. Beckham’s 88.4 million Instagram followers even dwarf Reynolds’ 54 million, which is probably why Reynolds wanted him as football’s queen in series one of his hit Welcome to Wrexham docu-series.

Birmingham City minority shareholder Tom Brady had poached Beckham to join him at St Andrew’s when Wrexham played there last month. Will Brady or Reynolds return the favor with a money-spinning performance at Peninsula Stadium soon? Don’t hold your breath.

At Salford City you will find enormous commitment. When the club dropped their matchday program this season, podcast presenter Shepherd stepped in to launch an excellent fanzine, Old Dead Tree, named after a line from The Pogues’ Salford song, Dirty Old Town, which the team ran to .

The interim CEO, following Butt’s departure, is the club’s chief financial officer Jonathan Jackson, who has been respected in the sport for a decade as CEO of Wigan Athletic. Experienced administrators in the positions Neville and Butt have held may be able to fulfill those duties better.

But everything comes from success on the field and the Class of ’92, which has worked its way through eight managers in nine years, none of whom have lasted more than two years since 2018, is still searching for that formula. Football away from United is tough all the time. “Welcome to our world,” most lower-league managers would probably say.

Sharp’s sad Goodison alienation

Thanks for the many comments about the sad estrangement of Everton great Graeme Sharp. A few people tell me they hold Sharp responsible for Everton’s statement last January that it was ‘unsafe’ for him and other directors to attend Goodison matches.

I understand that the club’s security team found no threats that would cause physical harm, but did have evidence of a plan to surround directors in a confined area and raise complaints against the club’s management. Would a security team consider that a ‘safe’ environment? What terribly weak evidence to banish a legend.

Premier League antics at grassroots level

The junior football season, back in full swing, brings with it its usual joys, including the sight, during preparations for a free kick last Saturday, of two young players talking to each other from behind their hands, in the style of the Premier League. My grandson, who was hanging out nearby, discovered their devious plan. “They’re going to throw it in,” he declared. The kick came to nothing and the game was then postponed while the referee tied the shoelace of one of our team, who was struggling with it. We lost 4-3. But that wasn’t the point.

This is what a legend looks like

Differences of opinion have been divided over the removal of Sir Alex Ferguson from Manchester United’s payroll when his ambassadorial contract expires next year. Surprising that Graeme Souness, for whom matches at Old Trafford were a form of warfare, had questioned this decision more strongly than any former Ferguson player.

For me, the ultimate ambassador for that club is Bryan Robson, who quietly stands up for United, without ego or self-interest, despite being a giant and superstar of his time.

On Monday, Robson reached the summit of Kilimanjaro with a team of 24 climbers he led to raise £120,000 for young people across Manchester on behalf of the Manchester United Foundation. This is what a legend looks like.