Remember the days when Manchester United was the most financially successful football club in the world and debt free? Along came the Glazer family in 2005 and had to borrow millions of pounds to take the club from public to private ownership, thus plunging the club into debt from which it has not recovered.

Now it appears that it has become too much for the Glazers who, due to the ever increasingly strict UEFA football fair play finance rules, have now sold some of their shares through the New York stock exchange at approximately £9 per share to reduce overall debt levels.  Those MANU supporters who invested in the club when it was floated on the UK stock exchange in 1991, and for the period until the take over in 2005 will see this as another reason why the Glazers should never have been allowed to take control of the club. These private supporter shareholders were in effect forced to sell their shares for just over £3 per share, after the personal vendettas between some of the major shareholders ended with their selling to the Glazers.

Manchester United was the only flotation, in a raft of others during that period, that was successful, however even if the supporters could get their hands on shares the Glazers will ensure that they maintain preferential voting rights and thus control the club.

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