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Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
Sport
Isaac Johnson

Five things Gary Neville has told Sir Jim Ratcliffe he must do if he buys Manchester United

Even if the Glazers leave Manchester United, other issues that need sorting won’t and Sir Jim Ratcliffe will be aware of this.

While confirming the billionaire’s interest in a long-term purchase of the club he supports, his spokesperson outlined that improvements to Old Trafford would be on the agenda. This is one of five issues Neville highlighted back in March when detailing what needs to change for United to become title challengers once again.

As he has frequently underlined, the former defender’s preference would be to see the Glazers go. However, whether they do or not, four more problems need addressing.

READ MORE: Sir Jim Ratcliffe confirms he wants to buy United

Neville called on the prevention of dividends being taken out of the club. Speaking on The Overlap, he said: “They’ve [the owners] got to stop taking the dividends out of the club if they want to reset the culture.

“Because when the owners are pulling money out of the club at the expense of the fans, at the expense of the project, at the expense of a successful team, it’s a bad message from the very top.”

He continued: “Number two, they’ve got to pay off that debt, and they can do that by selling £500million in shares to the fans, not take it out of the club and pay off that debt. They can then rebuild that stadium with £1billion and it does probably need knocking down, to be fair. It doesn’t need renovating, it needs a new stadium.”

Neville outlined that he believes United need a new training complex and that hundreds of millions should also be pumped into a “sporting project”. He said: “They then need to build a new training ground.

“Me and Roy (Keane) were part of the squad when we moved 22 years ago. We’ve now got a training ground that’s behind Tottenham and the other training grounds. They need to between £100m and £150m a year into a proper sporting project, along with those four things.”

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