Manchester United supporters blasts Glazers' ownership in club

Manchester United Supporters Trust blames the Glazer's family ownership in the team for their recent lack of championship success.

The Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST) ripped the American owners of the club, claiming the ownership has prevented United from winning more championships in recent years.

The Glazer family, who also owns the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, took over Manchester United in May 2005 and for years Manchester United fans have blamed the Glazers for team struggles.

Former United owner Malcolm Glazer died in May 2014, and now his six children control the team.  Glazers have said they have no plans to sell the club in the near future and want to keep it under family control for the next five years.

But the supporters trust say that the Glazers ownership has caused the team's decline. 

"United should have knocked Liverpool off their European perch too by surpassing their five European Cups. It seems very likely we would have done had it not been for financial austerity imposed by the Glazers' ownership,” a statement from the Supporters Trust says.

United has won five Premier League championships in the past in the past 10 years and reached the Champions League final three times in that span, winning the title in 2008 as well as reaching the final in 2009 and 2011.

"With continued investment that squad should have gone on to dominate Europe for years but the Glazer era squandered that golden chance and although still successful on the pitch it has to go down, in Europe in particular, as a decade of wasted opportunity," MUST says//

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Forbes Magazineestimated that Manchester United leads all soccer teams with a $173 million operating income and are worth $3.1 billion. United spent $238 million last offseason in transfers, including spending $93 million, the highest fee ever paid by a British club, to sign Ángel Di María.

“The purse strings have been loosened with major spending in the last 18 months but again this is not them investing their own money,” MUST said. “They are simply, once again, allowing the club to reinvest its own revenues in the squad just like a normal football club."

This season, Manchester United is fourth in the Premier League standings with 68 points. 

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