Ben

Letter To @AndyBurnhamGM Mayor Of Manchester. Dear Mayor Burnham, I am writing to you not only as a football supporter, but as someone who believes deeply in Manchester’s identity, heritage, and future. I urge you in the strongest possible terms to reject the regeneration application put forward by Sir Jim Ratcliffe and the Glazer family. This proposal is not about the people of Manchester, nor about football, nor about genuine regeneration. It is about power, vanity, and profit at the expense of a historic institution that helped put this city on the global map. For nearly 20 years, Manchester United has been systematically hollowed out by the Glazer family. Since their leveraged takeover in 2005, the club has been burdened with over £1 billion in debt, interest payments, fees, and dividends. While rival clubs invested in stadiums, training facilities, local jobs, and community infrastructure, Old Trafford was allowed to decay its roof leaking, facilities falling behind, and safety repeatedly questioned. This neglect was not accidental; it was the predictable outcome of an ownership model designed to extract wealth rather than build value. During this period, the Glazers paid themselves hundreds of millions of pounds in dividends while the club’s competitiveness, reputation, and relationship with supporters steadily eroded. This is not regeneration. This is extraction. Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS now present themselves as saviours, yet their actions raise serious concerns. This project increasingly appears to be a vanity-led redevelopment, using Manchester United’s cultural and emotional capital to secure planning permissions, public goodwill, and long-term commercial upside without clear guarantees that the club, its supporters, or the local community will truly benefit. Manchester United is not a property asset. It is not a branding exercise. It is not a financial instrument. It is a civic institution, woven into the social, cultural, and economic fabric of this city. The club’s name is synonymous with Manchester across every continent. To allow those who have demonstrably damaged it to now reshape large parts of our city in their own image would be a profound failure of stewardship. You have long spoken about protecting Manchester from decisions imposed by distant elites who do not live with the consequences of their actions. This is one of those moments. Approving this project would reward two decades of mismanagement and signal that global financiers can exploit our greatest institutions, then return asking for civic approval when it suits them. Regeneration must be done with the people of Manchester, not to them. It must be rooted in transparency, accountability, and community ownershipnot debt, leverage, and legacy-polishing. Manchester deserves better. Manchester United deserves better. I ask you to stand with supporters, residents, and future generations by rejecting this application and demanding a vision for regeneration that genuinely serves the city and protects its soul. Yours sincerely, A concerned Manchester United supporter