The thesis is barely a sentence long: you are surprised when Manchester United win, not when they lose. That is how Sky Sports chief correspondent Kaveh Solhekol framed the state of English football’s most successful club on Thursday, 24 hours on from a defeat in Lombardy that left Michael Carrick’s side without a win in seven matches across all competitions.
The blame, in Solhekol’s reading, is not Carrick’s alone. It is spread across four names, and it goes back 21 years.
The £2bn that walked out of the club
The Glazer family bought United in 2005 with a leveraged buyout that loaded the purchase price onto the club itself. The arithmetic since then is brutal: being owned by the Glazers has cost Manchester United more than £2bn over the last 21 years in interest, debt repayments, dividends and management fees. The club was effectively debt-free the day before the takeover.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS bought a minority stake in February 2024 and took control of football operations, and 40 per cent of United’s staff have since been made redundant. Results have not followed. Ratcliffe himself is a Monaco tax resident and, under the terms of that status, can spend only 90 days a year in the United Kingdom, a ceiling that limits the hands-on role a minority owner can play at a club of this size.
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Ferguson, 2005, and the horse that nobody stopped
The fourth name on Solhekol’s list is the one United’s support finds hardest. Sir Alex Ferguson had the standing, in the spring of 2005, to lead public opposition to Malcolm Glazer’s bid. He did not. Solhekol’s account traces the decisive breach between the manager and former shareholder John Magnier back to a dispute over breeding rights to the racehorse Rock of Gibraltar, a feud that cleared Magnier’s stake out of the way and opened the door the Glazers walked through.
Twenty-one years on, there is no British equivalent of a Qatari sovereign fund buying United out. The ownership question has effectively frozen.
Carrick missing from Carrington
Carrick himself cut a drained figure after the loss to Como, which included two goals from Nico Paz either side of a Tasos Douvikas strike, before Jacobo Ramon added a fourth and Joshua Zirkzee pulled one back deep into stoppage time.
“I’m really angry but you’ve got to move on and deal with what’s next,” the United head coach told reporters at the Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia.
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“I’d like to think so. I didn’t like what I saw tonight though.”
Some supporters are no longer waiting for better. The sentiment Solhekol relayed from inside the fan base, that it would be good if United were relegated so that the club could start again, is extraordinary coming from supporters of a 20-time English champion, and it is now openly in circulation.
On Thursday morning, Carrick’s car did not arrive at the Carrington training ground at its usual 7.30am slot, with the squad given a scheduled day off after the Champions League trip.
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