Went in with a bit of a bias on the Anfield Wrap shows on the Manc protests after reading here first. It was right that the guy mentioning Harry Maguire as scraps was wrong. But there were some other good discussion points.
I think the problem is really that some of the views of their fans are at odds with the general collective 'let's look after the game' sentiment which they are trying to promote. Ridding Manchester United of the Glazers so they can go back to being the biggest spenders in the league hardly screams fairness to me or an improvement for the game overall but that is ultimately what they want if £80m on Harry Maguire is 'scraps'.
The only thing they can ever bring up beyond spending more on transfers without the debt and incumbent ownership appears to be that Old Trafford has fallen into disrepair and needs some improvement as does the local area - which seems fair enough but that's usually about where it ends in terms of finding something else other than transfer budgets to talk about.
He did mention grass roots football and I agree with him and that could be something that could be raised as something all clubs could do collectively but there was little in the way of how this could take place. I would think a negotiation of a percentage of the TV rights deal for the Premier League could be something that could take money directly coming into the game and distributing it could be a good idea.
Honestly, it's a shame that so much has been taken out of the club, but they've still outspent us since Ferguson left, they've just done terribly with it.
I think both points can co-exist. Man United having the Glazers in charge is bad but having no debt, and being able to dwarf everyone in the league bar perhaps City even more so than they currently do isn't really a much better situation for football generally. They've 'earned' their money at least through success and rampant commercialisation but what they essentially want is to reduce the current competitiveness and leverage their status as a football club and their revenues to eliminate even more of the competition.
Said a lot that after my mate got back from the protests and we were talking about it, he mentioned that they "might get the wallet out a bit more this summer" - which really seems to me to be the crux of it. It's more frustration over a lack of league titles and champions league for most of the fans (and attributing that to a lack of transfer/wages spend) than anything else.
Not for all of them of course, it is right that there have been protests throughout the 16 years but I'm not really a fan of being asked to stand shoulder to shoulder with them now that the Super League has been kyboshed. I sympathise with their plight, and back their protests for the most part for themselves, but unless we have a list of demands that fans throughout the Premier League are protesting for together then I'm really not comfortable with the likes of Neville saying we're all on the same page, because we aren't.
Bit of a ramble there and haven't really gone anywhere. It's multi faceted and very complicated isn't it? But I'd like to see more about ticket prices, grass roots football, keeping the Premier League competitive, preventing badge/name changes, moving clubs from the vicinity they were created in (among many others in a similar vein) over whether Man United can spend more than the £800m they've spent since Fergie fucked them off.
