Back in 2002, approximately 1800 United season tickets were in the names of fans who had passed away.

Handed down like heirlooms, the inheritor tended not to inform United of their bereavement, as it meant giving up their guaranteed entry into an Old Trafford that didn’t have to tout people to join a waiting list.

Demand for season tickets was such that you had to wait not only for someone to die, but for that person’s family to come clean and tell the club as much.

Fast forward to summer 2007, and 2 years of Glazer ownership.

This week, season tickets went on general sale to the public, first come, first served.

Demand has been slashed by successive massive price hikes and an Automatic Cup Scheme edict.

Winning the league hasn’t saved Gill’s proclamation of an 18000 waiting list looking extremely silly. Yet he still thinks the Glazer ownership is good for United.

Even the seemingly football and tradition motivated decision not to allow Heinze to move to Liverpool gives Gill, in his mind at least, scope to praise the Glazers.

Had United been a plc, he says, maybe Heinze would have had to have gone, horrible though it would’ve been, as all decisions would’ve had to have been made with shareholder interests at heart. With the Glazers on board, he says, ‘we don’t need to sell’.

Now, it will seem to anyone whose tracked transfers through the plc years that all have been Sir Alex Ferguson’s decision, some regrettable, some welcomed. None were because of the need to pander to shareholders however.

Maybe shareholders would just have been happy with the £20-30m extra TV money David, which, had you not had to use it to pay huge debt interest, may have meant a freezing or dropping of season ticket prices, as has happened at other clubs.

In fact, maybe they’d be even happier at £62m staying in the bank account each year rather than going on loan charges.

All this could well be why United never did sell to their main domestic rivals, despite Gill’s doomsday Heinze scenario. It’s not like Heinze won’t be going somewhere anyway, is it David? Or is £6.8m from Liverpool not financially the same as £6.8m from Juventus, or Madrid?
‘We don’t need to sell’ would also seem to be at odds with the ‘£1 in, £1 out’ policy of recent transfer windows.

Even the fees for this summer’s signings are so long-term structured that the money in from Richardson and no doubt others will mean another cash flow neutral summer.

For all the extra sponsorship revenue, extra seats, and prize money, the season ticket hikes mean many match going Reds can’t afford to go anymore.

Winning the league isn’t the same if we can’t afford to be there David.

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