Green and Gold Is Needed Only Because Of United Love of Gold.

Green and Gold adorned Old Trafford on Sunday; making the whole stadium look less like a cross city derby, and more Australia at the MCG.

But these colours aren’t misplaced national pride, but a protest at foreigner ownership. The Glazer family have taken on a debt higher than a small Asian nation, and with it interest repayments of £45million a year. Bonds issued to clear much of this debt will not mature until 2017, leaving the club needing 7 years of maintained, uninterrupted success just to stay afloat. No mean feat, especially considering Sir Alex Ferguson is 68.

 It’s not the first time such protests have taken place but it was the biggest game that it has been show cased in. Park-Ji-Sung playing, at 21:45 Korean time, made for a television audience of close to half a billion, many of whom Asian fans wondering if the scarves were the new away colours, and where they could get hold of them.

It is powerful protest, gathering momentum with each day, as the Red Knights group looks to raise the capital to ‘buy back the club.’ But buy back for whom exactly?

Whilst such crippling debt generates some level of sympathy, it’s hard to extend it too far to United fans. When Martin Edwards floated the club on the stock exchange in 1990, there were no fan protests, no changes of scarf colour; just joy that the value of the club rocketed, and they could move towards conquering, somewhat ironically, the American market.

Such a move attracted the current, despised, American owners. They saw, perfectly legitimately, that Old Trafford was for sale to those with the right amount of money and convincing power. Buy enough shares of any company that’s floated and the company can be yours, no matter the amount that existed before.

The harshest of all realities for the Green and Gold brigade, is that the Glazer take over wouldn’t have been possible with a fans protest. When John Magnier and JP McManus sold their 28.7% share of the club to the Glazers it removed the biggest shareholder from the path of the now owners.

McManus and Magnier had decided to sell following a very public dispute with Sir Alex Ferguson. The fans made their allegiances clear, and with that, their views about the horse racing magnates. Deciding they simply didn’t need the abuse, the partners sold, leaving Glazer as the majority shareholder. The fans were instrumental in creating a clear path for the very man they burned effigies of not one year later.

Put simply, Manchester United have played the business game and lost. There was no protest when they were winning, just howls of derision when they were taken over. The rules of business were clear at the start; the Glazers have broken no law other than buying what was for sale. Should the Red Knights be successful, the fans would do well to remember how well looking to the future has served them on the pitch, and see how going for the short term gain has crippled them off it.