When Manchester United fans read through Joel Glazer's letter to them on Wednesday afternoon it would have been when they reached the third paragraph that the retching truly began. Pass the sick bucket.
"Although the wounds are raw and I understand that it will take time for the scars to heal, I am personally committed to rebuilding trust with our fans and learning from the message you delivered with such conviction," wrote Glazer in the third line of his charm offensive.
Rebuilding trust? It was a staggering insult to the fans who he has made absolutely no effort to communicate with in the 16 years his family have owned the club.
Trust was never there in the first place and no effort has ever been made to win it. The Glazers have stayed silent since Joel spoke to MUTV in May 2005.
To look back at that interview now is to realise the Glazer family has been breaking promises from the moment they set foot inside Old Trafford.
"We’ve got to keep reminding people that the supporters are the lifeblood of this club and sometimes people forget that. I know I don’t forget that on a daily basis and I will keep reminding people of that," is one quote.
If you think that's laughable, how about this when asked how important communication with fans will be?
"It’s extremely important. Again I keep coming back to it, fans are the lifeblood of the club. People want to know what’s happening, people want to know where things are heading but we will be communicating."
That communication has involved 16 years of silence, riding out mass protests during a period of success and then staying schtum has the club lurched from one shambles to another in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era.
So when Joel Glazer gets one of his stooges to try and inject some feeling into an apology for the fans, it's insulting to the supporters he misled in 2005 and who have stayed loyal to their club despite millions of pounds flowing across the Atlantic in the form of dividends every year. If you own Manchester United then failure really does pay.
While Glazer's partner in greed and capitalist chum John W Henry had gone for the 'hostage video in a funeral home' look for his mea culpa to Liverpool fans, Glazer decided to put his feelings down on paper. It was just as rancid.
From the claim that the family "recognise our responsibility to live up to [United's] great traditions and values" to the promise of better communication to come. Now, where have we heard that before? On the Glazers' current timetable for communicating with fans it's worth setting a reminder for some time in 2029.
Maybe at that point they'd have decided to invest in upgrading facilities at Old Trafford. The most iconic football ground in the country left to decay by owners who barely bother to attend a game. It's more than two years since a member of the Glazer family watched a match at Old Trafford. That was Manchester United vs Barcelona, a match befitting a European Super League. Don't expect them to turn up for Manchester United vs Burnley anytime soon.
It might be the lack of success on the pitch that is the headline of the Glazers' years of failure, but it is Old Trafford that stands as a monument to their complete lack of interest in the match-going supporters who have helped to line their pockets.
As shiny new stadiums have sprung up around the country, Old Trafford has barely had a lick of paint in recent years. The owners might feel they have a club worthy of a European Super League, but in terms of a ground that is welcoming to supporters, they're nowhere near Europe's elite.
During an unmissable Monday Night Football, Gary Neville touched on the state of Old Trafford and while his comments were partially lost in the extraordinary anger around the ESL plans, it is worth revisiting them, because it is a view widely shared.
"These owners at Manchester United have allowed that stadium to rot, it's second rate. They don't paint the steel, it's rusty on the outside of the stadium, there's no experience for fans on matchday at all.
"They've got tens of acres around the actual ground that's land bank that they don't invest in and create a Manchester United World. I've said before that they're scavengers and they just want the big money for themselves, that is it."
If Glazer hoped his letter would quell some of the anger, then it took barely 12 hours for him to be dissuaded of that idea. Before United's training session on Thursday around 20 fans breached security to display banners against the Glazers at Carrington, with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer coming out to speak to them.
Expect that to just be the start. United fans won't fall for the Glazers' nonsense about trust ever again.
