Who is really most to blame for Man Utd's demise? Red Devils' descent into relegation trouble has been coming for years

The beginning of United's decline can be traced all the way back to 2003. In March of that year, Florida-based businessman Malcolm Glazer bought a 2.9 percent stake in the club for £9m through a holding company called Red Football. By late November, he and his family owned a 15% share in the Red Devils.

Malcolm quietly purchased these shares while Sir Alex Ferguson was engaged in a public row with United's majority shareholders, John Magnier and J.P. McManus. Ferguson had initially befriended the Irish business magnates through his love of horseracing, and Magnier gifted the Scottish head coach a half-share in a promising thoroughbred named Rock of Gibraltar.

The horse ran in Ferguson's signature red United colours and became an absolute superstar, winning seven consecutive Group One races. But after its retirement, the Scot believed he was entitled to half of all future breeding fees. Magnier and McManus argued that they only gave Ferguson a share of the horse's race-day prize money, which prompted the United boss to do the unthinkable, and sue the club's primary owners for £10m.

Ferguson eventually settled with Magnier and McManus out of court, but their relationship was ruined, and Glazer capitalised. In May 2005, the Irish investors sold their entire 28.7% stake in United directly to Glazer, who subsequently launched a leveraged buyout to seize 98% control of the club. This opportunistic move leveraged United with hundreds of millions of pounds of debt for the first time in over 70 years.

The day after the formal completion of the takeover, 300 fans converged on Old Trafford to protest against the new owners, which included non-executive directors Avram, Joel and Bryan Glazer, while another group of distraught supporters launched a new club called FC United of Manchester. United went on to win three successive Premier League titles and the Champions League between 2006 and 2009, but the club's debt increased to £716m under the Glazers.

A new wave of protests started after United announced their intention to refinance the debt, and supporters showed their opposition to the Glazers by wearing green and gold - the colours of Newton Heath, which was the club's original name upon its formation in 1878. Ferguson, though, was a master of shielding the team from political distractions, and continued to deliver trophies amid the outside noise.

This allowed him to defend the Glazers, despite United's dwindling spending power in the transfer market, as he famously said in 2012: "They have been great. When the Glazers took over here there was dissatisfaction, so there have always been pockets of supporters who have their views. But I think the majority of real fans will look at it realistically and say it's not affecting the team."

Ferguson's presence essentially masked the underlying instability caused by the Glazers' takeover, while he also had the perfect right-hand man in David Gill, who navigated the club's commercial revenue streams and debt repayments expertly as chief executive.

Everything changed in the summer of 2013, when both decided to leave Old Trafford. Ferguson bowed out with a 13th Premier League crown, with the Red Devils finishing 11 points clear of City to avenge their defeat to the 'noisy neighbours' in the previous season. In his emotional final address to the Old Trafford crowd, Ferguson implored the fans to "stand by" his successor, David Moyes, before concluding: "I've been very fortunate. I have been able to manage some of the greatest players in the country, let alone Manchester United."

Gill was instrumental in bringing many of those players to the club, including two staples of that 2012-13 side, Wayne Rooney and Michael Carrick. He also showed great powers of judgement when vehemently supporting Ferguson in 2005-06 amid claims he had lost his touch, refusing to buy the troublesome Carlos Tevez outright, and helped to negotiate the then-world-record sale of Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid in 2009.

As it turned out, they both timed their exits perfectly. The Glazers were actively shifting authority away from Gill, an experienced football operator, toward executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward and a team of financial executives. Ferguson almost certainly would have clashed with Woodward had he stayed on, because the former investment banker was always going to prioritise the club's commercial interests over everything else.

That last title success was also largely down to the goal-scoring exploits of 2012 signing Robin van Persie and brilliance of Paul Scholes, as the England international came out of retirement to bolster Ferguson's midfield options. The likes of Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic, Patrice Evra and Ryan Giggs were, like Scholes, coming to the end of their top-level careers, and Moyes faced the daunting challenge of stepping up to the top level for the first time after 11 years at Everton.

Moyes did not have the pedigree or experience to take on an overhaul at one of the world's biggest clubs, though he didn't help himself. The Scot first decided to clear out Ferguson's backroom staff, which included respected coaches Mike Phelan and Rene Meulensteen - both of whom could have helped him understand the culture of the club better - and brought in his trusted lieutenants Steve Round, Jimmy Lumsden and Chris Woods from Everton.

United tried to sign the likes of Cesc Fabregas, Toni Kroos and Gareth Bale, but Moyes didn't have nearly the same pulling power as Ferguson, and in the end, had to settle for Marouane Fellaini - another of his Everton associates - as the marquee signing of his first transfer window. The Red Devils would then endure their worst start to a league season since 1989-90, and reports soon emerged that suggested the players were rebelling against Moyes' methods.

After a 2-0 loss to Everton in April, Moyes was sacked, and United fell to their lowest finish of the Premier League era (seventh). The first appointment after Ferguson was the most crucial one to ensure standards didn't drop, and the club botched it. Jose Mourinho has since claimed he was offered the job ahead of Moyes, but turned it down due to his emotional ties to Chelsea. He was the kind of serial winner United needed; Moyes was never going to cut it.

After finishing 22 points behind champions City and falling 16 outside the top four, a huge gap opened up between United and their main rivals. Moyes' successor, Louis van Gaal, tried to bridge it by making the team focus on dominating possession, but that only made them even more laborious and ineffective. The Dutchman lasted just two seasons, signing off with an FA Cup triumph that did nothing to dissuade Woodward and Co from replacing him with Mourinho.

The Portuguese tactician arrived four years too late but still led the club to a Europa League and League Cup double in his first year, and a second-placed Premier League finish in 2017-18. But then the wheels came off in spectacular fashion, and Mourinho was sacked after publicly falling out with several players.

Then came the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer experiment. United bosses hoped that appointing a club legend would unite the players and fans, and it did for a time, with Solskjaer also guiding the team to second in the league while reviving the entertaining counter-attacking style Ferguson favoured. The Norwegian failed to deliver any silverware, though, before losing his job after a horror start to the 2021-22 season.

Ralf Rangnick, the 'godfather' of gegenpressing, was unable to steady the ship as interim boss, and told reporters that United needed "open heart surgery" to become a major force again. Erik ten Hag was trusted to oversee that, but he completely blew a £617m transfer war chest during his two-and-a-half-year stay at Old Trafford.

United had plummeted to 14th by the time Ten Hag was finally relieved of his duties, and the FA Cup and League Cup wins he delivered did nothing to mask his failures. Ruben Amorim was then only given 14 months to clean up Ten Hag's mess, which simply wasn't enough time. He did admirably attempt to stamp out the toxic player culture running rampant at the club and give United a proper playing identity again, only for the hierachy to abandon the project when Amorim pushed back against their interference.

Carrick will be next to join the managerial graveyard; it's just a matter of when the trigger is pulled. Just like Solskjaer, he lifted the mood at Old Trafford to begin with, taking the club back into the Champions League, but the rot is so deep that it can never be masked for long.

United have spent nearly £100m on manager compensation in the post-Ferguson era, and over £2 billion on player transfers. Those numbers have greatly contributed to the club's overall debt rising above the billion pound mark, too, while the Glazers have been pocketing around £22m per season in dividends since 2015.

If the recruitment side had been handled properly, the financials would not have come under such intense scrutiny, but it hasn't. A grand total of 78 new players have rocked up at Old Trafford over the last 13 years, and it could easily be argued that only two of them have been an absolute success: Bruno Fernandes and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Van Gaal was responsible for signing Angel Di Maria, Memphis Depay and Morgan Schneiderlin for a combined £110m; Mourinho brought Paul Pogba back to the club for £89m - four years after United had let him go for for nothing - and wasted another £100m in signing Romelu Lukaku and Henrikh Mkhitaryan. He also gave the green light for the swap deal that saw the piano-playing Alexis Sanchez join United from Arsenal, with Mkhitaryan going the other way.

Jadon Sancho, Donny van de Beek and Aaron Wan-Bissaka all came in on Solskjaer's watch, which was the equivalent of burning £150m. So even before we get to Ten Hag, that's seven years of overpaying for big names with oversized egos and average players alike.

Ten Hag does deserve the most blame for United's current malaise, though. He set the club back years by signing misfits like Antony, Lisandro Martinez, Andre Onana, Mason Mount, Rasmus Hojlund, Manuel Ugarte and Joshua Zirkzee. Amorim paid the price for failing to find a fix, and now so is Carrick.

It speaks to Ten Hag's staggering lack of self-awareness that he has accused United of "broken promises" in the last couple of weeks, while claiming he "couldn't have done better".

Amorim is the only manager on the list with a transfer record that looks even slightly favourable. Bryan Mbeumo, Senne Lammens and Matheus Cunha were all decent buys (although the latter is stretching patience to the limit this term). The jury is still very much out on Benjamin Sesko, but if widespread reports are to be believed, Amorim wanted to sign Ollie Watkins over the Slovenian.

The coach not always getting the final say has been a recurring problem at United. Indeed, the most-recent summer additions of Andrey Santos, Carlos Baleba and Youri Tielemans smacked of club signings, not Carrick-ordered ones. When Ferguson was in charge, he had ultimate authority on all incomings and outgoings, but it's been a case of too many voices and muddled decision-making since his exit.

Woodward was an unpopular appointment from the moment he became executive vice-chairman, because he orchestrated the Glazers' buyout of the club in 2005 while working for J.P Morgan. Hostility quickly grew among supporters, too, as Woodward treated the transfer window like a Hollywood red carpet, putting high-marketability ahead of positional needs.

He also routinely handed out massive, long-term contract extensions to underperforming players to protect their asset value on the balance sheet. Trapped on wages no other European clubs would match, Pogba, Sanchez, Sancho and Anthony Martial were among those who ended up leaving on free transfers, while selling clubs and agents squeezed United for well above market value in transfer negotiations.

The Glazers always saw Woodward as the ideal man to run their multi-billion pound asset, though, and appreciated his willingness to take the heat for their ownership decisions. However, there was no coming back from the worst of them, which was the decision to be part of the breakaway European Super League in 2021. After a fierce fan backlash, United withdrew, and Woodward resigned, despite Joel Glazer trying to talk him out of it.

Shortly before Woodward's exit, United attempted to modernise their hierarchy by creating a dedicated football director role. John Murtough filled the post, but he repeated many of Woodward's mistakes; panic buying Antony for £85m - a cool £65m more than scouts had valued him at - and caving to a £72m package for Hojlund, when talks with Atalanta began at a price point around £45m. He also handed Casemiro a lucrative four-year deal worth £350,000 per week, despite the Real Madrid icon arriving at Old Trafford on the wrong side of 30.

In February 2022, Richard Arnold replaced Woodward as CEO, and immediately delegated sporting authority to Murtough. His short tenure was defined by corporate tone deafness and institutional crisis, with his most glaring error coming with the handling of the Mason Greenwood enquiry. Murtough spearheaded a plan to fully reintegrate the forward into the first-team squad after criminal charges were dropped, misjudging public sentiment. He drew up a calculated roadmap which leaked to the press, triggering a societal storm and internal staff mutiny. United then performed a U-turn, but the damage was already done.

Arnold was far too passive when Cristiano Ronaldo's second spell at Old Trafford turned ugly, too, allowing the situation to simmer until it culminated in an unauthorised interview with Piers Morgan, in which the five-time Ballon d'Or let rip on Ten Hag, the academy and the club's dated facilities. He and Murtough were just as bad as Woodward in terms of protecting commercial interests at the expense of football logic, and supporters were glad to see the back of all three of them.

In November 2022, the Glazers announced a strategic review that briefly caused a surge of excitement among the fanbase. "The process is designed to enhance the club's future growth, with the ultimate goal of positioning the club to capitalise on opportunities both on the pitch and commercially," a club statement read. "As part of this process, the board will consider all strategic alternatives, including new investment into the club, a sale, or other transactions involving the company."

It was a drawn-out process that saw two main bidders emerge: INEOS and Qatari banker Sheikh Jassim. The latter reportedly tabled a bid of around £6 billion and claimed he would have cleared United's debt, but the Glazers eventually decided against a full sale. Instead, INEOS, led by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, completed a minority 27% stake acquisition of United in December 2023, officially taking over day-to-day football and operational control two months later.

INEOS vowed to implement a "best-in-class" sporting structure and strip away years of institutional decay, fix recruitment, and return United to the top of English and European football, with a new leadership team put in place that included Sir Dave Brailsford and Jean-Claude Blanc, as well as Man City alumni Omar Berrada (CEO) and Jason Wilcox (technical director), and the highly-coveted Dan Ashworth (sporting director). Amazingly, Ratcliffe and INEOS have since dragged United down even further.

The hierarchy evaluated several replacements for Ten Hag, only then to trigger his one-year extension after United's 2024 FA Cup win. Months later, Ten Hag was sacked at a £10m cost. Amorim was subsquently the first proper INEOS appointment, but the squad was not built for his 3-4-2-1 system, and he was doomed to fail without having full autonomy on playing style and signings. Promoting Carrick from interim to permanent manager also reeked of poor planning.

Ashworth reportedly disagreed with the Amorim hire, and INEOS let the former Newcastle chief go just 159 days into his tenure. Brailsford and Blanc, meanwhile, stepped down from the board earlier this year.

United's transfer policy now looks a lot different, but its equally flawed. A three-tiered plan was put in place for attacking, midfield and defensive overhauls, with a focus on Premier League-proven players. The first phase went smoothly enough, as the team finished third last term, but the second has been a disaster. The defence was the most pressing issue for Carrick, and INEOS completely neglected it, which is why they're now in relegation peril.

Ratcliffe is well on his way to being as hated as the Glazer family, and not just because of how bleak things are on the football side. He has regularly spoken out about the need to make "unpopular" decisions, and followed through by making 322 non-playing staff redundant, cutting free lunches at Carrington and Old Trafford, slashing Ferguson's ambassadorial salary, and hiking ticket prices.

None of the money saved by those measures compares with how much United would have saved by getting the salaries of Marcus Rashford, Mount, Zirkzee and Martinez of the books in the summer. Now, fans are pressuring the Glazers and Ratcliffe to sell up, with a mass protest against the owners staged before the team's 1-0 derby defeat at home to City in September. Ratcliffe sat in the director's box with Avram Glazer, who made a very rare appearance at Old Trafford, and looked suitably uncomfortable.

If he's true to his word, the INEOS chairman won't be sticking around for much longer. He told the BBC in March last year: "If I draw a bit of the ire, I can put up with that. But I'm no different to the average person. It's not nice, particularly for friends and family. They can't really come to a match, the Glazers. They've retreated into the shadows a bit now, so I'm getting all the stick. We bought in and I haven't seen them since. It's, 'thank you, Jim, you're doing a really good job'.

"At the moment, I don't have security, I don't have to walk around like that. But it would defeat the object, wouldn't it? You couldn't tolerate it at that level, it just wouldn't be fun."

No one at United is having "fun" anymore. In some ways, relegation feels like the natural next step for a club that has lacked proper direction for so long. Perhaps it will take that, and the financial and commercial hit that comes with exiting the Premier League, for the Glazers to finally listen to the fans they've only ever treated with indifference.

Gary Neville has been a constant critic of the Glazers, too, and the former captain spoke for all of the supporters with his latest impassioned plea to the American family. "There's £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) of debt in that football club, they're hamstrung in some ways," the United icon said on 'Stick to Football' on Disney+. "They've spent an absolute fortune on players, just under Man City in the last 15 years. £1.4bn ($1.86bn) on players, they're second in the spending, but a lot of it's the never-never.

"They have to sell now, they have to sell, I'm sorry the time has come. They have subcontracted the football department out to INEOS, they are trying to run the football department, they have had three years of struggling and it looks like this year is going to be a struggle.

"The Glazer family over in America, in Tampa, they're very popular over there, they go to every game, apparently, I hear, they go to all the NFL games, they've hardly been to Old Trafford in 20-odd years."

INEOS and the Glazers have also invited more vitriol with the proposal to build a new 100,000 seat stadium. United have yet to explain how the £2 billion project will be funded, and Neville views it as another example of the owners completely failing to read the room.

"My point is, they have to sell now, enough is enough, the club is in debt, you've not spent a penny on the [current] stadium, you're now trying to borrow £2bn for a stadium you don't know how you're going to borrow," he added. "You've got a failure of 13, 14 years on the football side, you've subbed it out to somebody else, which is ridiculous, and not took responsibility. It is now at a point where they have to sell.

"Enough is enough, they have to sell the whole the club. The fans have had enough. They have to go now."

INEOS could reportedly increase their stake or complete a full buyout of United in the second half of 2029, but that's too far away. As majority owners, the Glazers can force Ratcliffe and INEOS to sell up, so long as they receive an offer for the entire club that they deem acceptable. That would be the dream scenario.

United are on the edge of ruin, and the darkness won't lift until the Glazers are gone. The club's lifeblood has been drained by owners who amount to nothing more than absentee landlords and do not care to understand the club's soul. Neville is right: enough is enough.