Phil Neville urges potential Manchester United investors to avoid following

Phil Neville has urged any potential Manchester United investor to stay in line with the club’s history in order to enjoy a successful reign. 

Manchester United’s current owners — the Glazer family — are in the process of selling the club through investment banking firm The Raine Group after 18 years of running the Old Trafford club. 

Friday’s soft deadline saw Qatari Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al Thani and Sir Jim Ratcliffe, one of Britain’s richest men, declare their interest in becoming the next owners of Manchester United, while there could also be other parties in the reckoning who are yet to go public with their bids. 

Neville, who played for Manchester United’s first team between 1994 and 2005, does not believe his former side need to follow Chelsea’s recent approach under Todd Boehly–Clearlake Capital. 

Boehly sacked head coach Thomas Tuchel in September and has spent over £550million on new players across two transfer windows.

Speaking exclusively to The Athletic, Neville, 46, said: “I feel as if Man United are getting themselves on track on the pitch. It feels like there’s an identity forming. 

“(Erik ten Hag) has had to make some big decisions and he’s made them well. I think the identity on the pitch has taken a lot of pressure away from the selling of the club off the pitch. 

“The ground needs redeveloping, the training ground needs redeveloping, the infrastructure of the club needs major investment. And the team needs investment. And it’s a big piece of work there for someone.

“Fundamentally you have to keep what’s great about Manchester United. Manchester United’s history is the most important thing to that football club. If you ignore that history you’ll not have success, as has been proven in the last 10, 15 years. 

“You go away from the history of what makes that club tick — young players, young development players, style of football, type of player, profile of player. It’s never been a club that’s really gone for the ‘galactico’. 

“The football has always been the most important thing. Now what I think Manchester United have is they have football at the front of everybody’s mind. Football, if it works on the pitch, we’ll sell more tickets. Not sell more tickets to then work on the pitch. Because the balance was all wrong.

“What happens with foreign investment is that because they’re not from this area, they don’t understand what’s needed culturally. And the culture is the most important thing.

“You see it at Chelsea at the moment. They come in, rip everyone out, rip it all up, and then what happens is you lose at home to Southampton and the manager is probably going to be under pressure when it’s impossible to win. It’s literally impossible to win under those circumstances. They’ve given him a five-year contract. They want stability. With stability means you need to give him time, to bed-in.

“Man United have the right people in charge…