Pierre Blampied

🚨 Roy Keane doesn’t hold back on the Glazers and the state of Manchester United: “People say I’ve made a career out of criticisms. Fine. Call me miserable, call me bitter. I couldn’t care less. I’m not going to sit on television and tell supporters everything is wonderful when the club is falling apart. And I’m sick of people pretending this started with the last manager. A manager comes in promising standards. Two years later he’s gone. Another arrives with a new plan. He’s gone too. And we spend months arguing about formations while the same problems survive every appointment. Meanwhile, the people who have overseen this mess are still there. When I played for United, you were expected to win. The manager had authority. The dressing room knew the standards. Everybody understood what the club was trying to do. Now tell me, what exactly is Manchester United trying to do? Don’t give me a bloody presentation about a three-year plan. Tell me what happens on the pitch. Tell me why players arrive looking like they’ve got everything to prove and leave looking like they’ve forgotten why they came. Tell me why every new manager seems to inherit the same problems with different names on the shirts. People say, ‘But Roy, they’ve spent money.’ Of course they’ve spent money. That’s what makes it worse. Spend hundreds of millions without a plan and you build nothing. And let’s talk about the Glazers. This club was saddled with debt because of how they bought it. Years of interest payments, dividends, all of it. Money that could have helped the club went into servicing that arrangement. And I’m supposed to clap because Manchester United can still announce another commercial partnership? It’s disgraceful. Yes, INEOS now run the football side. They have their own decisions to answer for, believe me. But the Glazers haven’t disappeared. They still hold the controlling stake. You can’t oversee years of decline and pretend it has nothing to do with you. Look at this Fermin Lopez story. United are reportedly asking about him. Fine. But put yourself in the boy’s position. He’s at Barcelona. He wants to play the biggest matches and win the biggest trophies. Somebody tells him Manchester United are interested. What’s the sales pitch? ‘Come here, son. Beautiful history. Great supporters. And if things go wrong, we’ll sack the manager and start the whole thing again.’ You’d be embarrassed saying it out loud. I’m not saying Fermin has rejected United. I don’t know what he’s thinking. That’s the point. Manchester United should be a club where the football argument makes itself. Instead, supporters see a top player linked and their first reaction is, ‘Why would he come?’ Think about how far you’ve fallen when your own fans struggle to answer that question. And I feel sorry for the kids. A father tells his son about Ferguson, Robson, Cantona, Scholes and Rooney. About what that badge demanded. Then the boy watches another season of excuses and another manager blamed for old problems. What do you tell him? Be patient for another 10 years? Supporters have spent their money, travelled everywhere and watched the people at the top escape accountability. I’m not telling anybody to abuse people. But protests, organised pressure, demanding proper accountability? Absolutely. Because if the supporters don’t keep asking difficult questions, who will? And sometimes I wonder whether the people running this club have become so comfortable with the revenue coming in that finishing nowhere near the top no longer frightens them enough. That should terrify every United supporter. Manchester United wasn’t built so that people could own a valuable business and occasionally remember there’s a football match on Saturday. It’s a football club. Start treating it like one. And if you can’t, get out of the way and let somebody who actually understands what it means take responsibility.”