The Glazers in 2025: What these 20 charts reveal about their Manchester United tenure

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This week marks 20 years since the Glazer family acquired a controlling stake in Manchester United, going on to complete one of the most controversial takeovers in football history.

To mark such a significant moment, The Athletic is running a series of articles and podcasts about the takeover and the past two decades to go deep into what happened, the consequences for United and what happens next.

So far we have retold the story of the original takeover and the family who bought United, revealed what the Glazers plan to do next at Manchester United and explained how the Glazers are regarded in their hometown of Tampa, Florida. Now, we examine the numbers behind their 20-year Old Trafford tenure — with the help of 20 graphs.

When the Glazer family took charge in May 2005, Manchester United were, by their own high expectations, underachieving.

Usurped by Arsenal’s Invincibles in 2004 and now by the arrival of oligarchical wealth — and Jose Mourinho — at Chelsea, three third-place finishes in four years marked United’s poorest seasons since the inception of the Premier League in the early 1990s. Eight of the previous 13 years had seen United crowned champions.

The title drought would extend into the Glazers’ first year in charge but the next seven brought five more championships. By the time manager Sir Alex Ferguson took his leave of both United and football in May 2013 he left behind, by some distance, the most dominant club in the land. Since the Premier League was launched 21 years earlier, United had won it 13 times.

They have not come close to winning it since, with their two second-placed finishes from the 10 completed campaigns belying how far off the top they were as runners-up in both 2018 (19 points) and 2021 (eight). Having finished outside the top four just eight times in 37 years up to 2013, United have now done it seven times in the past 12.

This season is, comfortably, the worst of the bunch. At the time of writing, United are 16th, their lowest ebb since they were last relegated in 1974. They have picked up just 39 points from their 36 games.

For all their current malaise, United remain one of the most successful clubs in England over the past 20 years. Their 14 trophies in that time have been topped only by Manchester City (18) and Chelsea (15), and could be added to next Wednesday with victory over Tottenham Hotspur in the Europa League final.

Yet dividing those successes into the Ferguson and post-Ferguson eras is telling. Of those 14 trophies, just two FA Cups, two League Cups and one Europa League have come since his 2013 retirement. Ferguson added nine honours to his already hefty list under eight years of Glazer ownership; only five more have arrived in the 12 years since.

Ferguson was, obviously, a special case, and can lay claim to being the greatest manager in English football history.

Replacing him was never likely to be easy, but a look at the records of those who have tried shows just how difficult United’s decision-makers have found it — and perhaps how fortunate the Glazers were that he remained in place for nearly a decade after they took over.

Those eight years of Ferguson saw United win 70 per cent of Premier League games, a high mark no subsequent manager at the club has come close to. Immediate replacement David Moyes’ 34 league games reaped 17 wins at a rate of 50 per cent, and though Moyes’ six-year contract was cut short before the first season was even done, he’s among a glut of Ferguson successors who managed to win around half their Premier League games. Mourinho, on 54 per cent, has been their best hire by this metric.

At the other end of the scale, Ralf Rangnick’s 24 league games yielded just 10 victories but the worst performer to date, by a distance, has been Ruben Amorim, the current boss. His 25 Premier League matches have delivered just six wins, with only three coming against sides who will still be in the top division come August.

Inextricably linked to those fleeting victories has been United’s awful form at Old Trafford this season. They have 21 home points but even if they take that to 24 by beating Aston Villa on the campaign’s final day later this month, it would be their joint-worst home season on record (adjusting to three points for a win, they matched this in 1930-31 and 1962-63).

United have declined remarkably on the field over 20 years of Glazer ownership, but off it the picture is more nuanced. Based on 2023-24 figures, club revenues have increased by £502.4million since their arrival, more than quadrupling from £159.4m then to £661.8m. According to the club’s latest earnings report, 2024-25 revenues will be in a similar region.

United remain one of the biggest income generators in world football; only three clubs could boast higher revenues last season. Even with declining home form in an Old Trafford many feel is desperately in need of improvement — to the point they have announced plans for an entirely new stadium — United’s £137.1m in matchday income remains the highest in English football.

Yet that ignores growth elsewhere. Behind neighbours City, United were the second-highest earners in England last season but will be overtaken by Liverpool in this one, and possibly Arsenal as well.

Continental rivals have gained ground and gone past them, too. In the year before the Glazers arrived, United’s turnover was second only to Real Madrid, and they’d been football’s highest revenue-earners for at least eight seasons before that. In 2023-24 United sat fourth, they have been fifth in two of the past three seasons and may drop even lower this time.

On a macro level, the Glazers’ time in English football has coincided with the Premier League growing far beyond its peers in other nations. Prize money payments to the 20 Premier League clubs have increased by 509 per cent since the takeover, from £467.7million in 2004-05 to £2.848bn last season.

How much that can be viewed as an achievement unattributable to United — or their owners — is difficult to say. For all their existing domestic strife (or perhaps even because of it), United remain a huge draw the world over. A Premier League without them would, at least financially, be a less attractive one.

Even so, United have also benefited from a rising financial tide mitigating their on-field decline. Clubs finishing bottom of the Premier League now get over £100million for doing so, whereas Chelsea received £31m for winning the title in that final pre-Glazers season.

The last time United won the league in 2013, they received £60.8million in central distributions from the Premier League. Even if they were to finish 17th in this one, they’ll still gobble up over £130m in domestic TV money.

Just as domestic prize money has shot up over their 20 years, so the wealth on offer abroad has ballooned. United have missed out on qualifying for European football just once under the Glazers; in return, they’ve earned €871million in UEFA prize money, the eighth highest among clubs in that time. That span includes them winning the Champions League in 2008 (prize money: €42.9m) and reaching its final in 2009 (€38.3m) and 2011 (€55.5m).

United have earned more since 2015 (€504.7million, not including whatever they get this season) than in the decade from 2005-06 to 2014-15 (€366.6m), despite only getting to the Champions League quarter-finals once in that time.

Even so, 10 other clubs have earned more than them since 2015. Moreover, United benefited from UEFA handing out chunks of prize money on a historical performance basis.

The ‘coefficient’ element of the prize pot (since absorbed into a ‘value pillar’ under the new format of UEFA competitions) was introduced in 2018-19 and rewarded clubs according to their UEFA coefficient ranking. In United’s two Europa League seasons when the pot existed, they earned the most of any club in that competition, and were in the top eight for such distributions in their four Champions League campaigns between 2018 and 2024.

One area where the Glazers have often been praised is in boosting commercial revenues and, on the face of it, it’s easy to see why. United’s commercial income was £44.7million in 2005 and is now over £300m.

Huge sponsorship deals have been inked over the last two decades, including a $559million front-of-shirt agreement with Chevrolet from 2014 to 2021, bringing in world record front-of-shirt revenue at the time.

Big deals have continued to flow, not least the renewal of a longstanding Adidas partnership that generated £90.1million for United in 2023-24. But where once the club stood atop the commercial mountain domestically, now they’ve been surpassed, and have fallen further behind continental rivals. Last season, for the first time in the Premier League era and probably ever, Liverpool’s commercial revenues were higher than United’s.

United’s strategy under the Glazers has been to hoover up as many partnerships as possible, generating new sponsorship categories as they went. Whether that was the best ploy is debatable, particularly as results on the field have waned.

As Edward Freedman, once United’s managing director of merchandising, told The Athletic earlier this week, “The whole charisma, the whole glory of Manchester United, seems to have gone.”

There is growing evidence that the strategy is no longer reaping financial benefits relative to their rivals.

While United’s revenue has quadrupled under the Glazers, the increase in the club’s wage bill has been even greater.

In 2004-05, United spent £77.0million on wages across the club (or £84.0m if we adjust the 11-month period to a full year), a figure which had hit £364.7m by the end of the 2023-24 season. It has likely dropped this term given the absence of Champions League football but at United, as elsewhere, rising revenues have been largely subsumed by wages.

In yet more proof of Ferguson’s skill, United’s league finish was better than their Premier League wage bill ranking in seven of his eight years in charge under the Glazers. In the other one, a second-place finish matched them having the second-biggest wage bill.

In the 11 full seasons since he retired, despite spending heavily on salaries — the club’s wage bill was the Premier League’s highest in 2013-14, 2015-16, 2017-18, 2018-19 and again in 2021-22 — United have performed at or above expectations only three times. What’s more, their under-performances have been sizeable, finishing four or more places lower than their wage bill ranking on six different occasions.

We can soon make that seven. Far from improving under the eye of new minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, 2024-25 will see United finish further behind expectation than ever before. Where the club’s wage bill for this season will land isn’t certain, but it obviously won’t be anywhere near the 16th spot they currently occupy in the league table.

No Premier League club has ever finished more than 13 positions worse than their wage bill ranking, and it’s unlikely United will this season either (their wage bill is likely now the fourth- or fifth-highest), but they’re firmly on course to complete one of the most underperforming seasons since the competition was founded in 1992.

As player wages have zoomed up over the past 20 years, United’s workforce under the Glazers has increased substantially. After making cuts in their first few years, the club’s football and administrative staff numbers have increased from 505 people in 2005 to 1,140 in 2024.

As part of the drive to improve commercial revenues, the Glazers opened offices in London and Hong Kong, expanding the scope of United’s operations. That in turn lifted the club’s head count; by the end of last season, United’s 811 administrative staff was a league high, with only Liverpool’s 782 coming anywhere close.

Ratcliffe’s overseeing of two rounds of redundancies since his Old Trafford arrival in February 2024 has been undertaken with those figures in mind, though whether United can continue to operate as one of the world’s biggest clubs after 450 jobs were cut remains to be seen.

United, like most other English clubs, don’t disclose player wages, but some old UEFA reports did. From those, it was discerned that their non-playing wage bill was around £115million in 2022-23 — more than the total salaries at four different Premier League clubs last season.

For all the financial narrative around the Glazers being dominated by questions of debt (a matter we’ll get to very soon), United have still been one of the biggest spending clubs in the world.

Across the past 20 seasons, they have spent £2.557billion on new players, including five separate seasons in which their spend surpassed £200m. That includes £274.5m this season — a new record for United. Such up-to-date figures aren’t as forthcoming elsewhere but even when looking at the 19 full seasons since the takeover, their gross transfer spend is surpassed among English sides only by Chelsea (£3.333bn) and Manchester City (£2.660bn).

United’s most expensive buy over the last 20 years, in their history even, was Paul Pogba, re-signed from Juventus for £89million in August 2016 having been allowed to leave for nothing as a free agent four years earlier.

Pogba helped win the Europa League and League Cup in his first season back at United but nothing more, and left — again for free, again for Juventus — in 2022. That, however, was part of a trend: the Glazers’ second most expensive signing, Antony, is currently doing more on loan at Real Betis than he’s managed to date at Old Trafford, while other arrivals such as Jadon Sancho and Angel Di Maria commanded massive fees but provided minimal return.

United’s net spend over the 19 seasons to the end of 2023-24 sits at £1.652billion, again only topped by Chelsea and City. The gap to those two is rather a lot smaller than on a gross basis, though; each of those clubs has proven adept at generating significant sums by selling players.

United, on the contrary, have been consistently awful sellers. Across the Glazer era, the club have generated £689.1m in player sales, a figure which sounds even more miserly when you consider that over a tenth of it came from Cristiano Ronaldo’s 2009 move to Real Madrid.

Their £344.2million profit on player sales to the end of last season is bettered by nine other English sides and several more on the continent —  including, crucially, all of their domestic ‘Big Six’ rivals.

A direct consequence of United’s transfer strategy is that they now owe more in transfer instalments than almost any other club. By the end of June 2024, United’s net transfer debt (transfer fees due on players sold, less those owed on players bought) was £271.6million, with only Tottenham (£279.3m) owing more. By December 31, United’s net transfer debt had tipped over £300m.

The Premier League is routinely the biggest spending league in world football, so most of its clubs are in a net debt position on transfer fees. The size of that debt has risen significantly over the years, too, in line with the ballooning of what players cost in general.

Tellingly, though, United’s transfer debt now forms a significant proportion of annual revenues — in other words, the ability of the club to meet their transfer liabilities is more squeezed than ever before. Last season, that £272million transfer debt translated to 41 per cent of turnover, a long way from the net £4.7m that was due to United at the end of the Glazers’ first season in charge.

United have continued to spend like a Champions League club, parting with over £220million on new players in each of the past three seasons despite only playing in UEFA’s premier competition once in that time — getting knocked out after finishing bottom of their group. Their transfer spending has been a primary driver behind the club’s increasingly squeezed cash position.

Infamously, the Glazers’ arrival in Manchester saw a club who had been debt-free since 1931 loaded up with at least £550million in borrowings, a move which conferred no discernible advantage to United and instead just enabled the family to buy the club.

By the end of their first full season, United’s debt was £603.9million. While numbers have bounced around since (not least because the debt is now primarily held in U.S. dollars and subject to currency fluctuations), United are still over half a billion pounds in debt.

This peaked at £773.3million in 2010, after which the owners paid off £232.6m in payment-in-kind (PIK) loans that came attached with high interest rates. The liability dropped further from there but has since rebounded and, at last check, was back up to £731.5m by the end of 2024.

At that point, United were £210million into a £300m revolving credit facility first taken out to deal with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, but upon which the club has become ever more reliant due to the tightening cash position. Twenty years on from the takeover, there’s no sign of United returning to the debt-free days of old.

With debt comes the cost of servicing it and, in truth, the locus of United fans’ ire all those years ago.

In loading up the club with debt, the Glazers ensured the costs of servicing the loans would be met by United, a situation made possible by their newly-bought business being one of the most cash-generative and profitable football clubs on the planet.

The cash paid out in interest started at a whopping £52.6million and didn’t improve much from there. Including the first six months of 2024-25, United have spent £835m in cash on interest since the takeover, just about all of it on loans only brought on board to facilitate the Glazers buying the club.

The annual interest payments peaked at a jaw-dropping £167.6million in 2011, a byproduct of those PIK loans being paid off. For a while within the past decade, they plateaued at around the £20m mark, but rising rates saw that sum pretty much double last season, while the first six months of this one saw a further £18.8m disappear out of the door.

That the debt continues to be both so high and inflict such costs on the club, even after Ratcliffe’s purchase of a stake last year brought with it hundreds of millions in equity injections, is a damning indictment of United’s current financial state.

On August 10, 2012, the Glazers floated United on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the first in several share sales that have generated hundreds of millions in income for the American family. The NYSE launch saw shares close at $14 apiece, below the $16-$20 target range but still enough to value United at $2.3billion.

The float saw only Class A shares sold, with the family holding onto Class B shares that conferred 10 times the voting rights. Despite giving up scarcely any power, the Glazers banked around £70million from the flotation, 50 per cent of the proceeds. The other half went into the club to pay down debt.

Nearly 13 years on, the share price still hovers around the same mark as it did on launch day; last week, they closed at $14.30. In the intervening period, they’ve gone as high as $26.84 (February 2023) and as low as $10.51 (July 2022). Across the time the club has been on the NYSE, there has been seemingly little correlation between on-pitch events and the share price.

Those £835million cash interest payments are far from the only takeover-related payments to have flowed out of United since 2005. Alongside the interest, the club have paid £168.7m in dividends over that time, as well as (at least) £27.4m in management and consultancy fees and a further £24.6m in net loan repayments.

Beyond that, £148.6million has been paid out to directors and key management since the summer of 2005. How much of the latter can be attributed directly to the Glazers is unclear, and there has also been £25.1m in positive exchange rate movements (brought about because of the U.S. dollar debt) and £21.6m in cash interest received. Yet even accounting for those, and discounting the amounts paid to directors and key management, leaves the total cash to have flowed out of United as a result of the takeover at over £1bn.

One caveat to that figure concerns the paying off of those PIK loans in late 2010. United received £249.1million from a share issue then, which primarily went toward reducing the debt burden. Other than the club’s share of the proceeds from the NYSE launch two years later, that was the only owner-funding United had received under the Glazers until Ratcliffe arrived and injected £238.5m across the past year.

Including the 2010 share issue against the takeover-related costs naturally reduces both the net impact to date on United’s coffers (albeit would still leave outgoings at over £750million) and the amount the family has reaped from their association with the club.

The latter is not so easy to do, though, given the source of funds for that share issue, much like the tranche of takeover funding that didn’t come via debt loaded onto United, has never been made clear. Sceptics in 2010 wondered how the Glazers could suddenly afford to pay off such a huge sum of debt; the suggestion, neither confirmed nor disproven, was that the PIKs were paid off via leveraging elsewhere in the family’s portfolio.

Whatever the source of those funds (and whatever of their own money was spent on buying shares in the first place), the benefits flowing the other way have long since usurped them.

Add them all up and we get to a total benefit to the Glazers since acquiring the club of £1.358billion — £1.202bn in share sales, £128.7m in dividends and £27.4m in management and consultancy fees.

Twenty years on and, even with Ratcliffe now in situ, that takeover of 2005 continues to cast one of football’s longest shadows. The Glazers’ holding in United now sits a smidge below 50 per cent but, even after Ratcliffe’s deal generated £737million in proceeds for the family, they still retain over two-thirds of the voting rights in the club.

United today are a club in a very different position to the one they bought, both on and off the field. Even by the most basic measure of profitability, United’s financial power has been greatly diminished.

In May 2005, the Glazers acquired a club that was just about to post its 15th consecutive pre-tax profit; 2023-24 marked a half-decade of losses, with the club’s deficit totalling £357.7million in that time.

Ratcliffe was granted control over footballing operations, and his remit has evidently widened beyond that. Yet the family that first caused uproar in Manchester two decades ago shows little sign of taking their leave from one of football’s grandest institutions.

(Photos: Jason Behnken, Alamy Live News/AP Photo; design: Dan Goldfarb) 

This news was originally published on this post .

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