Do the Glazers and Sir Jim Ratcliffe have to sell for Manchester United to be great again?
Two owners, one majority, no league title in 13 seasons and a balance sheet that owes more than it did in 2005. The numbers say the Glazers should go. They also say that going would change less than Old Trafford hopes.
- 13seasons since the last league title
- £1.187bncash out of the club in interest, dividends, fees and debt repayment, 2005 to 2024
- £689.0 milliontotal borrowings at 30 June 2026
- $21.11closing share price on 3 June 2026
Manchester United sit 16th after eight games, a point above the bottom three and eight games without a win in any competition. On Monday Jason Wilcox, the director of football, and Omar Berrada, the chief executive, were at Carrington weighing whether head coach Michael Carrick should keep his job. He kept it, for one more match at least.
Five months earlier the same coach had taken the same club to third. That swing, third in May to 16th in October under one head coach, is the whole argument in miniature, and after every bad week the banners ask the same question: do the Glazers, and now Sir Jim Ratcliffe, have to sell for United to be great again?
I am going to answer it with the accounts rather than the mood, because nobody disputes their figures. The latest, to 30 June 2026, record the highest revenue in the club's history, a loss, and more debt than the day the Glazers walked in. Hold those three together and the chant becomes a sum.
What is really being asked
Before I can answer the banner I have to split it in two, because it asks two things and pretends they are one. Who do you want gone? The Glazer family companies hold 67.91% of the votes, most of it through Class B shares that count ten times each, and they have handed the football to INEOS, which holds 28.95% of the votes and the keys to the dugout.
When the man behind the goal says sell, he might mean the people who hung the debt on the club in 2005 or the people who picked the last two head coaches. Since February 2024 those have been different people. They have made different mistakes, too.
And then: would selling help, or is it the only way? I will give the first away for nothing, since any owner whose finance bill did not outrun the operating profit would be an improvement. The banners claim something bigger, that United cannot be great again until the owners go, and that is the claim the accounts can actually answer.
Who holds the levers
| Who | What they hold | The number |
|---|---|---|
| The Glazer family companies | 67.91% of the votes from around 49% of the shares, because each Class B share carries 10 votes; and, while they remain the majority holder, a company right to drag INEOS into a full sale. | 67.91% Glazer family companies' share of the votes |
| INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe | 28.95% of the votes, the running of football operations, consent rights while holding at least 15% of the shares, and at least $33.00 a share in any full sale before 20 February 2027. | 28.95% INEOS Services Limited's share of the votes |
| The lenders | $775 million of dollar borrowings ($550 million of senior secured notes and a $225 million term loan), a facility drawn to £110.0 million, and a covenant that EBITDA may not normally fall below £125 million in any 12-month period. | $775 million dollar borrowings at 30 June 2026, after the June 2026 notes refinancing |
| The Premier League | Its approval, which the INEOS deal needed, and the sanction still to come for Manchester City, which could reorder the market Manchester United would be sold into. | more than £900 million the amount by which the commission found Manchester City's schemes were designed to artificially inflate revenues and reduce costs, 2009/10 to 2017/18 |
| The head coach and the players | The lever that moves the table fastest: 12 of 17 won last spring, one league win in eight this autumn. | winning 12 of 17 matches Carrick's record after taking over in January 2026 |
The case for selling now: the ledger has given its verdict
The Glazer family paid £790m for Manchester United in June 2005 and found £273m of their own money. The rest was borrowed and hung on the club: debts of £604m where there had been £50m.
£1.187bn out, £273m in, and the debt still higher than the day it arrived.
Nobody in the stands voted for that. The club's own board had warned against it two months earlier.
Between 2005 and 2024 the club paid out £1.187bn in cash in interest, dividends, fees and debt repayment, £815m of it interest, money that in BBC Verify's phrase "it is reasonable to argue would not have done so in the absence of the Glazer takeover". The family has put in nothing of its own since the day it arrived.
And the debt has not gone. Twenty-one years on, borrowings stood at £689.0 million at 30 June 2026, more than the £604m the takeover loaded on.
Last year the finance line, £69.6 million, ate the £22.6 million operating profit three times over. That is not a football club's problem. That is a mortgage's.
The share price says what the market thinks. Ratcliffe paid $33.00 a share in 2024; on 3 June 2026 the stock closed at $21.11, then rose 7% after hours on a report that some of the family were debating a sale, and I do not blame the sellers for reading that as the market cheering a Glazer exit. I read it that way too.
That price valued the whole club at $3.64 billion, well short of the £4.3bn the INEOS deal implied.
Then the people. Average monthly headcount went from 1,140 in the 2024 accounts to 808 in the 2026 ones, which is a lot of redundancy letters for a club with record revenue. In 2025 the club wrote to its own supporters' groups that it was "making a significant loss each year totaling over £300m in the past three years".
Ratcliffe said on the BBC in March 2025: "The simple answer is the club runs out of money at Christmas if we don't do those things." A club with record revenue running out of money has a structure problem, not a football one.
The structure has had its chances. Since Sir Alex Ferguson stepped down as manager in 2013 the club has won five trophies to June 2025 and no league title, finished 15th in 2024/25, its lowest since 1974-75, and lost a Carabao Cup tie to fourth-tier Grimsby Town, on which I will declare an interest and say no more. Twenty years is a long enough trial.
The ledger convicts the family: more out than ever went in, debt higher than the day they arrived, a share price that rose on talk of them leaving. On this count I would sign the charge sheet myself.
Where £1.187bn went: cash out of Manchester United, 2005 to 2024
- Debt interest£815m
- Net debt repayment£197m
- Dividends£166m
- Fees to Glazer companies£10m
The case that a sale solves less than it promises
The sellers' case rests on something it never names: a buyer. The Governance Agreement with INEOS says any full sale agreed before 20 February 2027 must pay INEOS's side at least $33.00 a share, and the shares closed at $21.11 on 3 June.
A sale to INEOS changes the name on the debt and nothing in the dugout.
A buyer would pay one minority holder more than half as much again as the market price, before the majority holder names a figure. That is not a market. It is a waiting room with a date on the wall.
Nor is the squad short of money, whatever the banners say. Manchester United spent £183m net on players in summer 2025, the third highest in the world behind Arsenal (£282m) and Liverpool (£268m), in a year with no European football and on record revenue.
Whatever has stopped United being great, it is not money failing to reach the market. It bought a squad that lost 3-0 at home to Bournemouth, and nobody who saw that needs the accounts to explain it.
The comparison the banners reach for is Arsenal. Arsenal's first title in 22 years came in May, after three consecutive seasons as runners-up, one of them by a margin of two points. Nothing in that sequence needed a sale.
Which brings me to the stewardship the club already has, and this is the part that makes me cross. The football has been INEOS's job since February 2024. In that time the club extended Erik ten Hag's contract and sacked him nine games into a season, hired Ruben Amorim, kept him through a 15th-place finish and replaced him with Carrick in January; the 2026 accounts carry £8.2 million of exceptional costs, largely for Amorim's departure and the last of the restructuring.
Ratcliffe said of Amorim in March 2025: "I think he will be there for a long time." Amorim was gone within the year.
That matters because the likeliest buyer of the Glazers' shares is the man already running the football, who holds pre-emptive rights and has paid the family's price once already. A sale to a stranger hands the football to someone who has not yet made INEOS's mistakes, which is not the same as someone who will not make them.
Now the debt, which is real, and which I think is smaller than the noise around it. Set aside the paper loss on the unhedged dollar borrowing, which cost no cash, and look at what United actually handed over in interest last year: £38.9 million, against an average of £42m a year since 2005; on revenue of £677.6 million that is under six pence in the pound.
It is a tax on being Manchester United, and I would resent it too. It is not what lost to Bournemouth.
Nor does selling make it go away, and this is the part the banners never carry. When Ratcliffe bought in, his money went to the family and to the Class A holders who sold to him; the club never saw a penny of it. The $300 million he did put in was earmarked for Old Trafford's bricks, not the dollar debt, which was refinanced up to $775 million in June 2026 regardless.
Whoever buys the Glazers out pays the Glazers. The debt is a second cheque, and I have yet to hear anyone offer to write it.
There is the stadium, too. The club has spent £63.5 million on land for a 100,000-seat ground. A buyer is being asked to fund a stadium with no published cost beside a squad with one league win in eight.
The sellers treat the stadium as the trigger for the Glazers to cash in. It is at least as likely to be the reason nobody has.
And here is the bit I find hardest to say, as someone whose own ledger has the Glazers leaving years ago: the business is healthier than it was twelve months back. An £18.4 million operating loss has become a £22.6 million profit and the wage bill is down to £302.0 million. If you want to convict INEOS of something, you do not do it with the balance sheet; you do it with 16th.
That is the whole of it. The quickest way from 16th back to the top four goes through the training ground at Carrington, through a coach, a director of football and a transfer window; not one of those is sitting in a data room in New York waiting for a bidder. Selling the club settles a bill from 2005, and it does not pick a team for Saturday.
The money reaches the pitch, the buyer already runs the football, and the price has no takers: a sale is a verdict on 2005, not a plan for 2027.
What the headline leaves out
INEOS sells and the Glazers stay
Tag-along rights let the minority follow a Glazer sale; the agreement limits INEOS's sales in ways its public summary does not spell out, and nothing in that summary stops INEOS selling first, crystallising a paper loss of more than a third after nearly three years of cuts and two mid-season sackings.
The Manchester City sanction reprices the league
On 29 September the Premier League announced that an independent commission had found Manchester City guilty of all charges of breaching the League's financial rules between 2009/10 and 2017/18, through schemes it found were designed to artificially inflate revenues and reduce costs, together by more than £900 million. The club had a right of appeal; the sanction is for a separate hearing. City led the table on 25 October with 21 points from eight, and a sanction that takes the leaders out of the race for years changes what a Manchester United ticket is worth; a fine changes nothing.
What survives scrutiny
| Claim | Evidence | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| The Glazers have taken out far more than they put in | £1.187bn cash out of the club in interest, dividends, fees and debt repayment, 2005 to 2024 | Survives. Against £273m of their own money in 2005 and nothing of theirs since, it is not even close. |
| The debt is a 2005 problem that INEOS inherited | £689.0 million total borrowings at 30 June 2026 | Survives, with a footnote. Two decades of servicing it have not got it back below the £604m the takeover loaded on. |
| Manchester United cannot afford to compete for players | £183m net spend United's net transfer spend, summer 2025, third highest in the world | Does not survive. Nobody who spends the third most in the world is being starved. |
| The market will pay the Glazers their price | $21.11 closing share price on 3 June 2026 | Does not survive on the last price we have. More than a third below what Ratcliffe paid, and INEOS must get his price in any full sale agreed before 20 February 2027. |
| Ratcliffe has fixed the finances | £22.6 million operating profit, year to 30 June 2026 | Half survives. The operating line turned round; the bottom line was still a £43.0 million loss. |
| The problem is the coach | winning 12 of 17 matches Carrick's record after taking over in January 2026 | Does not survive as a single cause. The same coach won 12 of 17 in the spring, and nobody forgets how to coach in five months. |
Record revenue, another loss: the 2025/26 accounts in five lines
- Revenue£677.6 million
- Wages£302.0 million
- Net finance costs£69.6 million
- Loss for the year£43.0 million
- Operating profit£22.6 million
Three routes from here
Route one: the family waits for the floor to lapse, then drags everyone to market
After 20 February 2027 the $33.00 guarantee goes, and for as long as the Glazers hold the majority the company's drag right could oblige INEOS to follow them out. It needs a buyer willing to pay a premium over the market value and then stand behind the borrowings and a stadium. None has come forward, and I am not holding my breath.
Route two: INEOS buys the Glazers out and the structure stays
INEOS buys its way from a minority towards control, at or below the price it paid. The club gets the owner the football already answers to and nothing else changes: same notes, same covenant, same coach. This route most resembles the present, and the present is 16th.
Route three: nobody sells and the football gets fixed, or it does not
Carrick has Chelsea on Saturday, Roma on Tuesday and Aston Villa the Sunday after. If £740 million to £760 million of guided revenue arrives with Champions League football and the team still sits in the bottom half, the structure argument strengthens; if the side plays its way back towards Europe, the sale question goes back in the drawer. This squad has done both inside a year.
The supporters at Old Trafford on Sunday backed Carrick and booed the players, and I think they had it about right. The men who loaded the debt did not pick the team that lost 3-0 to Bournemouth; the men who run the football did, and their record since February 2024 is two mid-season sackings, Amorim backed after five league wins in 17 and a third place that lasted a summer, and one of them would be the buyer.
The date for the diary is not a fixture but 20 February 2027, when the floor lapses and the family can finally find out what its stake is worth. Between now and then the football will decide whether United are great again, and the Glazers do not run the football. That is the part the banners miss, and I say that as someone who would happily wave them off.
Sources: Manchester United plc, fiscal 2026 results (SEC exhibit 99.1) (accessed 29 October 2026), Manchester United plc, annual report on Form 20-F, 30 June 2026 (accessed 29 October 2026), Manchester United plc, Ratcliffe agreement, December 2023 (SEC exhibit 99.5) (accessed 29 October 2026), Michael Carrick to remain in charge vs Chelsea (Sky Sports) (accessed 29 October 2026), 20 Years of the Glazers at Manchester United (The Swiss Ramble) (accessed 29 October 2026), Manchester United Finances 2024/25 (The Swiss Ramble) (accessed 29 October 2026), Glazer family members studying Manchester United stake sale (The Star) (accessed 29 October 2026), Sir Jim Ratcliffe speaks on mistakes made and plans for success (Sky Sports) (accessed 29 October 2026), Premier League statement: Manchester City FC (accessed 29 October 2026), Arsenal end 22-year wait for Premier League title (Premier League) (accessed 29 October 2026), Premier League table (Sky Sports) (accessed 29 October 2026), How the Glazer family cost Manchester United £1.2bn (BBC Sport) (accessed 29 October 2026). Evidence as of . The analysis and the verdict are Adrian Dane's own.