Avram Glazer has reignited frustration around Manchester United by arguing that the club can still attract major commercial income even when results on the pitch fall short. The remark, reported as part of a discussion with investors at Deutsche Bank\u2019s inaugural Sports Investment Conference, has only sharpened scrutiny of the club\u2019s ownership model and its long-running disconnect between sporting standards and business strength.<\/p>\n
Manchester United have now cycled through seven managers in 13 years, with Michael Carrick said to have been close to the exit before a chaotic Champions League comeback briefly changed his outlook. That sequence has done little to dispel the sense that the club has been shaped by confusion rather than clarity since Ferguson\u2019s departure.<\/p>\n
The Glazer family has owned a majority stake since the controversial leveraged buyout in 2005, and fans have long accused them of treating the club as an asset rather than a football institution. Former defender Paul Parker once captured that anger by calling the club \u201cthe highest-profile ATM machine in world football.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glazer\u2019s latest point, conveyed by The Athletic, was that United \u201care not dependent on success on the pitch for commercial power,\u201d and he is understood to have compared the club with the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Yankees. Both are historic names whose value remains immense despite long gaps since their most recent major triumphs.<\/p>\n
But the comparison only goes so far. While Manchester United remain among the game\u2019s strongest commercial operations, their financial standing has been eroded by the rise of rivals whose on-field progress has translated into greater off-field strength. United\u2019s commercial revenue has grown by only 9% over the past decade, far behind the expansion delivered by clubs such as Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur.<\/p>\n
That trend points to the central flaw in Glazer\u2019s argument. United may still be powerful commercially, but their decline on the pitch has allowed others to close the gap, leaving the club less exceptional than it once was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Glazer\u2019s latest claim has revived debate over Manchester United\u2019s commercial strength and on-pitch decline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,2019],"tags":[1162,59],"class_list":["post-22257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-manchester-united-news","tag-analytics","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}