And so here we are again, at that point as the nights draw in and Manchester United prepare to sack a manager. Autumn: season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and a crisis at Old Trafford. Sunday’s 3-0 home defeat to Bournemouth, coming on the back of last week’s 4-1 reverse against Como, made clear what many had feared from the moment Michael Carrick was given the job on a permanent basis: that he isn’t up to it.
But then, who could be? When you’ve burned through a long list of managers in 13 years, it’s perhaps worth considering whether the manager is really the problem. Could some blame perhaps go to the director of football, Jason Wilcox, or the chief executive, Omar Berrada, the people making the appointments? Or perhaps to Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the cost-cutting tax exile and minority shareholder with responsibility for sporting operations? Or to the Glazer family, who plunged the club into debt with a leveraged buyout in 2005 and have since made calamitous decision after calamitous decision, reducing the most successful club in English league history to a mid-table laughing stock with a roof that leaks symbolically?
It’s worth remembering where all this began. The United story has taken on the aspect of a classical tragedy and, like all good tragedies, it begins with a small, seemingly unconnected moment, amplified by pride, that ends up bringing the whole edifice crashing down.
In 1999, Mull of Kintyre, a horse owned by the Irish millionaire John Magnier, won the Gimcrack Stakes at York. Traditionally, the winning owner would give a speech at the Gimcrack Dinner, but Magnier was a shy man who hated public speaking so he asked his friend, the United manager Alex Ferguson, to give the speech on his behalf. The racing establishment, though, refused: it had to be the owner. To spite them, Magnier named Ferguson as the owner of another horse, Juniper. The following year, Juniper was narrowly beaten in the Gimcrack Stakes. Magnier, though, was determined. So the year after that, he made Ferguson the owner of Rock of Gibraltar, which had won its first three races. Rock of Gibraltar won the Gimcrack easily and Magnier, waving a metaphorical two fingers at the racing authorities, watched Ferguson give the speech.
Magnier was largely making mischief, but he was also happy to do a favor for a friend, to give Ferguson a better experience of racing, and he benefited from the association of the horse with such a famous name. In addition, Ferguson did not get on well with the United chairman, Martin Edwards, and had a sense that football clubs were becoming good investments. Accordingly Magnier and his associate JP McManus bought shares in United. (The full story is explored by the journalist David Walsh here).
It turned out, though, that Rock of Gibraltar was a much better horse than anybody had realized, winning seven Group One races in a row. The stud fees would be worth tens of millions of pounds. Ferguson believed the verbal deal was that he could choose 50% of the prize money won by Rock of Gibraltar (about £800,000) or 50% of the stud fees, which ended up being worth tens of millions. He went for the latter. Magnier’s recollection was rather different: 5% of the prize money or one stud nomination a year.
Ferguson sued and, with his name on the ownership documents, probably would have won had it gone to trial. But then rumors started to spread about some of Ferguson’s financial dealings at United. Paid actors at United’s annual general meeting raised awkward points, then Magnier and McManus sent a list of 99 questions to the United board, which mysteriously found their way into the Daily Mail. United were highly embarrassed. Fans began to demonstrate against Magnier and McManus at race meetings. A settlement was reached, with Ferguson paid £2.5m to drop the action. But the damage was done.
Magnier and McManus had decided to sell their shares in United, and another shareholder was ready and waiting: Malcolm Glazer. Ferguson backed Glazer, who launched his leveraged buyout. Magnier and McManus sold up in 2005 for £260m, a profit of a little under £100m. Had they waited for Ratcliffe, who bought a similar stake in 2024, they would have received roughly £1bn more than that. For Ferguson, a threat had been dealt with.
The problem was that Glazer and his family would prove some of the worst club owners in English history. For 20 years, United have been addled by debt and have made consistently terrible footballing decisions. Ferguson’s team was good enough, and his personality big enough, that United won five league titles and a Champions League after the takeover, but once his genius had gone, there was nothing left.
A mismatched squad built up over seven flawed managerial appointments and a multiplicity of conflicting approaches will not readily be sorted out. Carrick is the latest victim of a crisis 21 years in the making. For the want of a horse a club was lost.
This is an extract from Soccer Desk, a newsletter from the Guardian US. Subscribe for free here.