The great Man Utd debate: How much blame should Sir Alex Ferguson really take for the Red Devils' shocking decline?

Gary Lineker asked the very same question two months ago when United were dumped out of the FA Cup by Fulham, contrasting Liverpool’s incredible first season following Jurgen Klopp's departure with the Red Devils’ disastrous decade-plus since Ferguson's retirement. Lineker’s argument, which was ridiculed by the likes of Rio Ferdinand, focused on Ferguson's squad-building and the fact many of United's core players were already over the hill when he stepped down. Others have also pointed to Ferguson’s ill-advised decision to anoint David Moyes as his successor, but Ferguson's role in the Glazer takeover, even if unintentional at the time, casts a far bigger and darker shadow.

Although he had no idea at the time that his actions would lead to the Glazers' arrival, Ferguson ended up provoking the takeover due to the bitter row he sparked with the club’s then-majority shareholders, the Irish horseracing tycoons JP McManus and John Magnier. Horseracing was, and still is Ferguson’s greatest passion outside of football, and it led to him befriending the two billionaires, who own the Coolmore Stud. Ferguson persuaded the pair to buy shares in United in the good times, and the billionaires gifted the Scot one of their horses, Rock of Gibraltar.

The friendship soured, however, when Ferguson presumed that he had the stud rights to the horse, which were worth tens of millions of pounds, something McManus and Magnier vehemently disagreed with. Ferguson sued the pair and the dispute was settled out of court, with the manager receiving £2.5m ($3.3m) if he agreed to drop his claims over the horse. But McManus and Magnier got their revenge and cranked up the numbers of shares they had in the club, only to sell them to Malcolm Glazer soon after at a profit of £100m. ($132m)

Ferguson had ignored warnings about taking on the powerful Irish duo, but it still might sound like a stretch to blame him for causing the takeover. However, many of the United fans who opposed the takeover most fiercely blame him for not halting it. United activist Andy Walsh urged Ferguson to resign as manager in a last-ditch effort to stop the takeover, an offer the Scot declined.

"The slightest indication from him that he’d quit if the takeover went through and the whole thing would have been dead in the water,” John Paul O’Neill, another takeover opponent who ended up founding rebel club FC United of Manchester alongside Walsh, told The Athletic. "He knows it and we know it. The Glazers are his legacy."

Once the Glazers had ownership of the club, there was never a peep of opposition from Ferguson, largely because the Americans let him continue to run the team as he liked. He said in 2012: "I am comfortable with the Glazer situation. They have been great. They have always backed me whenever I have asked them. I have never faced any opposition. They have always been as sensible as they can be in terms of financing the club. They have to invest in the team to maintain the value of their asset."

Ferguson was not entiely telling the truth, though, as there was a marked reduction in United's transfer budget after the takeover. The manager spent little in the first two years, his only major signings being Edwin van der Sar, Park Ji-sung and Michael Carrick. He was admittedly given a bigger war-chest in the summer of 2007, adding Nani, Owen Hargreaves, Anderson and Carlos Tevez (on loan), which helped the team win the Premier League and Champions League a year later. But overall, the purse strings were tight.

Just take the fact that the club received £80m ($106m) from the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo in 2009 but only spent £22m ($29m), with Antonio Valencia and Michael Owen - on a free transfer - their biggest signings. It is to Ferguson’s credit that he still managed to have sustained success amid the austerity.

United surrendered the title in 2010 to Chelsea by a single point, but won it back a year later despite their biggest signings the previous summer being Javier Hernandez and Bebe. In 2013, meanwhile, Ferguson got one massive, star signing in Robin van Persie in what some interpreted as a parting gift to ensure he left having wrestled the title back from Manchester City, which his side duly did.

The irony is that a year after Ferguson left, the Glazers began to loosen the purse strings. Louis van Gaal was allowed to spend £165m ($219m) in his first summer and £135m ($179m) in his second on the likes of Champions League winners Angel di Maria and Bastian Schweinsteiger. Jose Mourinho was then able to spend £320m ($424m) in his first two summers, including making Paul Pogba the most expensive player in the world. Erik ten Hag most recently splashed out £600m ($796m) in three years.

But without Ferguson's knowledge and expertise and without a proper sporting director, United made countless blunders in the transfer market, often prioritising star names on big wages who were coming towards the end of their careers. The club also had a scattergun approach to hiring coaches, veering from one style to another with each appointment. Ferguson probably cannot be held responsible for the way the club has been mis-managed since his departure.

Or can he? Ferguson was such a powerful figure, in charge of every aspect of the club from transfers, youth development and even communications (United only launched a Twitter account after he had left) that the club failed to modernise during his long era. And because Ferguson had done things that way, the club’s hierarchy expected that all the managers that followed him would be able to do the same. Ferguson left, however, just as the other clubs that had trailed United were modernising, hiring sporting directors and data analysts.

The neglect continued long after Ferguson left. United only hired their first sporting director in 2021, the ill-equipped John Murtough. By contrast, City had had Txiki Begiristain, one of the key figureheads in Barcelona’s golden era, in the same post since 2012. Liverpool, meanwhile, have had a sporting director since 2010. United do not currently have one in place after the Dan Ashworth debacle, and Ratcliffe recently said data analysis “doesn’t really exist here. We’re still in the last century on data analysis here.”

It can, of course, be argued that all that is United’s fault, not Ferguson’s. The club have had 12 years to get with the times since he left and they have not done so. Yes, he made a big mistake by picking Moyes as his successor, probably blinded by the fact that he was also a Glaswegian who had spent more than a decade at one club.

But that was the last major decision Ferguson played a part in. His only role since leaving has been to attend games as an official ambassador, a role that was recently discontinued by Ratcliffe, who stripped him of his £2m salary, and he has watched on in horror as the club he built into a global behemoth has disintegrated.

When Amorim was decrying the fact that United were ceasing to be a big club as players were too ready to accept losing at home to West Ham, it was hard not to think what Ferguson must make of what the Red Devils have become since he left. This is the man who raged against his Aberdeen team after winning the Scottish Cup final, the man who said his greatest achievement was "knocking Liverpool off their perch". When he won the club’s first league title in 26 years, United had eight crowns to Liverpool had 18. By the time he left it was 20 to 18, but now it is back level on 20 each.

In conclusion, it is hard to forget Ferguson’s role in the creation of the Glazer ownership model and his acceptance of it. Just imagine how successful United could have been if they had been able to invest all the money they were making back into the squad rather than on debt payments? United have been paying £60m ($79m) in interest payments each year since 2005; that would have been enough to pay for two Wayne Rooneys at the time, each summer. The Glazers have taken out £166m ($220m) in dividends during their reign; that is an annual transfer budget.

And then consider the other effects on the club. The thousands of long-serving fans who left and have never returned to Old Trafford, the many more supporters who have been priced out by the Glazers' initial price hikes and the increases brought in by Ratcliffe to make up for the financial blunders the club kept on making.

But the fact is that Ferguson made sure United remained a winning machine despite the constraints of the owners. His successors have had far more money to work with, but none have come close to winning a Premier League title or going deep in the Champions League. A culture of mediocrity has set in since he left, eroding the serial-winning environment he created.

United have squandered billions of pounds and hired every profile of coach imaginable, all of whom - aside from Moyes - had tasted plenty of success before. Yet none of them have come close to matching Ferguson's glorious reign, and that is not the responsibility of the fiery Glaswegian who made Manchester United a global phenomenon.