Manchester United not for sale? Chief executive David Gill could not be more wrong

By Jim White Published: 7:00AM GMT 05 March 2010

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Of the tip of his head: Manchester United arch senior manager David Gill at the Soccerex European Forum in Manchester Photo: REUTERS

The arch executive"s matter carried echoes of the fight cry of the black-clad hordes who initial resisted the Americans" takeover in 2005. "Not for sale," they chanted. They were wrong afterwards and Gill is wrong now.

United are unequivocally most for sale. Like George Bernard Shaw"s exchange with an top membrane dining messenger who primarily voiced shock at his idea that her favours were for hire, accessibility has been established. Now all that needs to be negotiated is the price.

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Bizarrely, Gill claims not to see this. He believes that the Glazer family are "in it for the prolonged haul". Given that the usually transport they have ever been remotely meddlesome in is the one that concludes with them creation off with sacks of unmarked notes, if the length could be foreshortened afterwards so most the better. For those for whom it is the solitary motive, distinction is all the some-more relished if it can be fast realised.

If, as they claim, the Red Knights wish to lapse the bar to their correct owners the fans the usually thing they can do is come up with the cash.

Everything else due season-ticket boycotts, a worldwide cornering of the marketplace in immature and yellow acrylic, spray-painting each wall in Manchester with anti-Glazer wall scrawl is secondary. Because if the Glazers paid any mind to vocal, energetic and ardent opposition, they would have left a prolonged time ago.

This is what the conflict for the essence of Manchester United has come down to: money. Which, since that they are the bar who initial breached the opening in between custom and football, competence be reckoned easily appropriate.

Not that Gill has nonetheless entirely concurred that certainty. He hinted in a open review at the SoccerEx discussion in Manchester this week, that may be it was time for the Glazers to come out of the broom closet and speak up their government approach, get the fans onside, capacitate everybody to "move on".

Certainly the family have been all the time outflanked by the shining open family debate mounted by the Manchester United Supporters Trust.

MUST not long ago intent Blue State Digital, the internet marketeers at the back of President Barack Obama"s choosing plan who this week sent personalised emails to thousands of United fans. So successfully did this pull courtesy to the means that some-more members came brazen in five days than had finished in the prior 10 years of MUST"s existence.

Faced with such well-drilled opposition, does Gill unequivocally think that putting Joel and Avram Glazer on Jonathan Ross"s lounge will have a difference?

Besides, the family"s role was advertised in all the item in the small imitation of the new down payment issue. It is this: to remove as most money as they can from their property.

Everything else the chronological role of the club, the monetary business of the fans, resources such as the precision belligerent comes delegate to that aim.

There is zero they can contend that changes that fact, no series of appearances on Alan Carr"s lounge divulgence their prime part of of Girls Aloud can costume it.

But where Gill unequivocally unprotected himself was in his snarl that the Red Knights" monetary indication of a large physique of investors was implausible. Swiftly forgetful the actuality that when United were a open singular association they had some-more than 35,000 owners, he insisted that all successful clubs are guided by one owner:

Manchester City by the Mansours, Chelsea by Roman Abramovich, Aston Villa by Randy Lerner. And it is true, similar to Liverpool, underneath the Glazers United do have a singular absolute voice to that they are answerable: debt. The obligatory needed to compensate off the seductiveness incurred in the Glazers" buy-out drives all at the club.

It is to absolved United of such leg irons that the Red Knights or someone of their likewise encouraged ilk has to succeed.

There is a wider prerequisite here. If they fail, the consequences, as the need to fill the ever-gaping beak of debt insists United mangle from the common negotiate of the Premier League and aspire to their own approach in the remunerative universe of new media rights, will be felt opposite English football.

Right right away Gill could not be some-more wrong: all at United is for sale.