There will be more protests against Manchester United’s ownership this season.
Manchester United fans have been protesting against the Glazers ever since the American family inflicted a debt-ridden takeover of the football club in 2005.
The Glazers initially bought a stake in United in 2003, before gradually increasing their ownership, which was largely financed through loans secured against the club’s assets.
Those protests have continued throughout the Glazers’ time at United, and they’ve cost the club more than £1 billion due to debt and interest payments.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, through his Ineos company, became a minority owner in 2024. The British billionaire took control of football operations and now faces scrutiny from fans just like the Glazers.
Fans are unhappy for several reasons including ticket pricing as well as hundreds of redundancies to loyal staff.
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Man Utd fans to protest against Sir Jim Ratcliffe
Manchester United supporters’ group The 1958 has announced a protest against the Glazer family and Sir Jim Ratcliffe ahead of their Premier League opener against Arsenal.
It will be their first protest of the new season, and it won’t be the last as The 1958 promise a new wave of protests for the 2025/26 football campaign.
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The fan collective will march to Old Trafford on 17 August and will carry banners reading, ‘Jim Can’t Fix This’.
Ahead of the protest, The 1958 released a statement which read: “It’s a new season but the same old ownership issues. Twenty years of the Glazers and their debt mountain is 20 years too long. Enough is enough.
“We won’t allow some natural optimism and a couple of shiny new signings to deflect from the bigger off-field picture. Jim Ratcliffe chose to get into bed with the Glazers and in our opinion is helping keep them in charge.
“So on 17th August, we protest not just against the Glazers, but now also against Jim Ratcliffe – a man once seen by many, including ourselves, as a possible saviour, a beacon of hope but now revealed as complicit in the ongoing erosion of everything that makes our club what it is. This is no longer just about ownership; this is about survival – the survival of our identity, our community, and our values.”
Ratcliffe mindful of Glazer abuse
In March, Ratcliffe suggested he would walk away from United if he ever suffered abuse on the level of that directed at the Glazer family.
The anti-Glazer protests were initially against Malcolm Glazer, but his offspring are now the cause of so much hardship at Old Trafford.
“It can be unpleasant,” Ratcliffe told The Times. “And I’ve probably failed on the having fun front.
“I can put up with it for a while. I don’t mind being unpopular because I get that nobody likes seeing Manchester United down where they are, and nobody likes the decisions we’re having to make.
“Eventually, if it reached the extent that the Glazer family have been abused, then I’d have to say, ‘look, that’s enough guys, let somebody else do this’.”