The lower leagues are where the true test of a football manager’s mettle lies. The place where money is scarce. Where you beg, borrow or steal and look longingly at those in the Premier League’s gilded cage who barely acknowledge you exist.
The Class of ’92 entered this world with great confidence when they bought Salford City in 2014 and took the Northern Premier League North club to League Two (a four-division promotion) within five years. When they reached League Two, Paul Scholes bluntly declared his ambition. “I know there is a long way to go, but the goal has to be to reach the Premier League at some point.”
The club has been in the same division ever since and, to put it mildly, is struggling in a way that Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs could not have imagined when they first hatched this plan on a train in 2012, at a time when Giggs He was contemplating retirement. .
Everything seemed rosy for a while, with six millionaires (the Neville brothers, Scholes, David Beckham and Nicky Butt) and one billionaire, Singaporean tycoon Peter Lim, the project’s main financier, driving things forward. But little by little the panorama has been changing. Gary Neville stepped down as chief executive in 2022, passing the role to Butt. Lim retired in August, leaving uncertainty over whether he will repay the £21m in loans he had made to the club. Last week, Butt stepped down as chief executive and declared his desire to return to coaching, although clearly not on the Salford City bench.
Salford City have been stuck in League Two for the past five seasons since rising four divisions in the first four years under their new owners.
(LR) Gary Neville, Nicky Butt and, more recently, Pete Lim have all left their positions at the club.
Karl Robinson’s side (left) have made a slow start to the new campaign and are 18th after 11 games.
The club is looking for new investments and it seems that it urgently needs them. ‘Project 92 Ltd’, which effectively runs the club, is currently losing between £80,000 and £100,000 a week, and has suffered losses of £23m over 10 years. But it looks a tough sell, with local league attendance averaging 2,800 this season and the club currently in 18th place, having finished last season nine points off the bottom of the EFL.
The Class of ’92 is still part of the picture. Scholes, head of recruitment, is around a lot and Giggs has been director of football for several seasons, although this only became known in March, eight months after domestic abuse charges against him were dropped.
Supporters say they see much less of Gary Neville at the club’s Peninsula stadium on match days. But they’ve seen Roy Keane in games, even though he doesn’t actually have any owners. “It’s just that he’s a football junkie,” Danny Shepherd of Salford City’s One Up Front podcast tells me.
Lim’s departure after 10 years is the event that raises the biggest questions about the future of the club, given the amount of money he has invested. Kieran Maguire, a respected football financial analyst at the University of Liverpool, points out that the club is paying £128 in wages for every £120 they generate.
“You wonder what the natural place is for the club, in terms of fans, facilities and infrastructure, if it is not subsidized, without Peter Lim taking over,” he tells me. Fans are pessimistic about finding new investors. ‘People are afraid to play outside the League again. “It would be a devastating blow,” says Shepherd.
Paul Scholes remains involved with the club and acts as Salford City’s head of recruitment.
The Ammies suffered their fourth defeat of the season in October when they lost 2-1 to Grimsby Town.
The connection with United continues to bring material benefits to Salford. The club will earn income by hosting some United Under-21 matches this season and training at United’s historic facility on Littleton Road. The club’s accounts for 2022-23 show the club charged Buzz 16, owners of Neville’s The Overlap podcast, £255,000.
The Wrexham model, introduced when Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney and razzmatazz replaced outdated football knowledge as a route to winning games, uses the star power of those owners and the cinematic imagination of those owners to make money. Major American sponsors are eager for the chance to bathe in that profile.
Beckham is not a filmmaker and barely exudes personality, although he is the one who has that kind of appeal if someone had thought of turning his Salford co-ownership into a similar kind of creative property. Beckham’s 88.4 million Instagram followers even eclipse Reynolds’ 54 million, which is why Reynolds wanted him, like football royalty, in the first series of his hit documentary series Welcome to Wrexham.
Birmingham City minority shareholder Tom Brady had poached Beckham to join him at St Andrew’s when Wrexham played there last month. Will Brady or Reynolds return the favor with an appearance at Peninsula Stadium anytime soon? Don’t hold your breath.
He will find great compromise in Salford City. When the club suspended its match program this season, podcast host Shepherd stepped in to launch an excellent fanzine, Old Dead Tree, named after a line from The Pogues’ Salford anthem, Dirty Old Town, which ran out the team.
David Beckham was a surprise guest of Birmingham City owner Tom Brady at St Andrew’s last month.
The interim CEO, following Butt’s departure, is the club’s chief financial officer, Jonathan Jackson, respected in football for a decade as chief executive of Wigan Athletic. Managers experienced in the roles Neville and Butt have filled could do those jobs better.
But it all stems from success on the field and the Class of ’92, who have worked their way through eight managers in nine years, none of whom have lasted more than two years since 2018, are still searching for that formula. Football beyond United is relentlessly difficult. “Welcome to our world,” most lower league managers would probably say.
Sharp’s sad alienation of Goodison
Thanks for the many responses regarding the sad split of Everton great Graeme Sharp. Some people tell me they hold Sharp responsible for Everton’s statement in January last year that it was “unsafe” for him and other managers to attend Goodison games.
It is my understanding that the club’s security liaison team did not find any threat of physical harm, although they did have evidence of a plan to surround the directors in a confined space and voice complaints against the club’s custody. Would any security team consider this a “safe” environment? What terribly fragile evidence to ostracize a legend.
Former striker Graeme Sharp remains one of Everton’s best players in their history.
Premier League antics in grassroots football
The youth football season, back in full swing, brings its usual joys, including the sight, during preparations for a free kick last Saturday, of two young players talking to each other behind their hands, Premier League style . My grandson, prowling around, detected their cunning plan. “They are going to whip him,” he declared. The shot came to nothing and the game was stopped while the referee tied the boot lace of one of our team, who was struggling with it. We lost 4-3. But that wasn’t the point.
This is a legend
The removal of Sir Alex Ferguson from Manchester United’s payroll when his ambassadorship contract ends next year divides opinion. It is surprising that Graeme Souness, for whom matches at Old Trafford were a form of war, questioned this decision more strongly than any of Ferguson’s former players.
Manchester United legend Bryan Robson raised £120,000 for the city’s young people by reaching the summit of Kilimanjaro with a team of 24 climbers he led.
For me, the greatest ambassador of that club is Bryan Robson, who speaks calmly in favor of United, without ego or personal importance, despite being a giant and a superstar of his time.
On Monday, Robson reached the summit of Kilimanjaro with a team of 24 climbers he was leading, to raise £120,000 for young people across Manchester, on behalf of the Manchester United Foundation. That’s what a legend is.