How much is enough?
It is a question for the Glazer family as they weigh up offers for Manchester United. It is also a question facing supporters as they decide which bid is best for their club.
Manchester billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, the owner of chemical giants Ineos and lifelong United supporter, is pitted against Qatari Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al Thani, chairman of Qatari Bank QIB.
He too is a supporter of the Red Devils, and comes with hefty financial clout.
Forbes magazine puts his net worth north of £1bn, but as part of Qatar's ruling royal family, it is claimed they have a collective net worth estimated to be around £275bn.
Before even dissecting what both bids would entail and just where any moral compass might be pointing, the starting point for the majority of United supporters is seeing the back of the Glazer family.
Their leveraged buyout of the club for £790m in 2005 was funded on borrowed money, and a significant number of Old Trafford goers feel the family have also been on borrowed time.
The stadium and facilities have slipped far behind the elite standard, the debt stands at £515m and a scattergun transfer policy has been the mockery of other clubs. By last summer, the Glazers had taken more than £1.1bn out of the club since taking over.
"Whatever about the incoming bids, people are just hopeful that the Glazers are actually going. They have been so toxic," says Mark O'Donoghue, secretary of the Tralee branch of Manchester United Supporters Club.
"If they do leave, which I'm not convinced they will do, leaving a debt of £500m is absolutely disgraceful."
It is thought the Glazers are looking for a record deal for the club, figures ranging anywhere from £6m, though the possibility remains that co-chairmen Joel and Avram, despite their huge unpopularity, could buyout siblings and fellow board members Bryan, Edward, Darcie and Kevin.
"There's talk that Joel and Avram might want to separate from the rest of the family and stay on. It’s a cash cow for them."
US hedge fund Elliott Management, who owned AC Milan up until last year, lodged a proposal which could involve taking a stake or providing debt financing, but it seems the most likely candidates to buy out the Glazers should they decide to sell are a Manchester billionaire and a Qatari banker.
That the bid was delivered via his Nine Two Foundation, named after the year he started following the club/and or a nod to the Class of 92, is an added bonus to his bountiful reserves of cash.
"I would prefer the Qatari bid," says Eddie Gibbons, secretary of the Manchester United Kevin Moran supporters group.
"They have spelled out what they intend to do. They have said there will be no debt on the club, they will either restructure the stadium or pull it down and build a multi-billion state of the art stadium.
"That looks exciting to me."
Gibbons has been travelling to Old Trafford every year since 1969 and in an ideal world, Ratcliffe would be the ideal choice.
Their (Qatar) money is off the face of the earth…they can do so much more
His reservations are the fact that he hasn’t, publicly at least, made his plans as transparent (the 70-year-old has bid for 69% - the amount owned by the Glazers – but could seek to buyout the remainder on the New York Stock Exchange) and he references the fear of debt being heaped on the club, despite the fact it is believed that Ratcliffe has been working with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to ensure that any deal would be debt-free.
Ultimately, it’s a bottom line call which seems to have swayed many towards the Qataris. Neville indicated that a straw poll among 300 supporters he met before the Leicester City match was split roughly 70:30 in favour of Al Thani.
Gibbons says the general feeling from his fellow supporters is along the same lines.
"Their money is off the face of the earth…they can do so much more."
The suggestion that Ratcliffe lacks the financial clout to compete is a little wide of the mark however.
According to the Forbes 2022 billionaires list, he is worth around £13.48bn, a figure that makes him the 111th richest person in the world.
If the Premier League table was compiled by ownership wealth, Ratcliffe would be third and chasing down Sheikh Mansour-backed Manchester City (£14.6bn). The gap to Newcastle is more of a chasm, with the Magpies (£320bn) many times wealthier than City courtesy of their Saudi backing.
Yet they are the outlier at the moment. Stan Kroenke is third on the wealth list, £6bn adrift of City.
Crystal Palace occupy a Champions League spot (£6.31bn), Aston Villa and Crystal Palace are top-six, while free-spending Chelsea, who have splashed £600m under the new ownership of American Todd Boehly, barely make the top-10.
Forbes put Boehly’s wealth at £3.6n, a quarter of the figure attributed to Ratcliffe.
Working perhaps in Ratcliffe’s favour are the ethical concerns raised over Al Thani’s bid.
"I would not stand by Liverpool, my football club, if they were taken over by Qatar," Alyson Rudd declared in the Sunday Times last week, as tempting as it might be to unleash considerable funds for Jurgen Klopp to bolster midfield and central defence given the humbling at the hands of Real Madrid.
It's oil money, let’s be honest about it, but I’d have no reservations about that
Peter Frankental, Amnesty International UK’s economic affairs director, says a Qatari buyout of Manchester United "is likely to be part of a wider programme of Qatari sportswashing, where the glamour of football is used to refashion the country’s image regardless of serious and systematic human rights abuses."
Gibbons however has no such qualms, especially with neighbours and rivals City tapping into Abu Dhabi’s vast petro-fortune.
"It’s oil money, let’s be honest about it, but I’d have no reservations about that."
Not that the local bidder comes without his own baggage.
Ratcliffe, who also owns cycling team Ineos Grenadiers, Ligue 1 side Nice, FC Lausanne-Sport, a Swiss Super League club, and a third of the Mercedes Formula 1 team, will field questions about whether Ineos use sport acquisitions to greenwash their image as an operator of polluting industries.
Back on the positive side of the ledger, he has shown his passion/frustration with the Ed Woodward years, which will be good news for the hardcore followers, but maybe less so for midfielder Fred.
Back in 2019, in an interview with the Sunday Times, he gave the club both barrels.
"[United] haven't got the manager selection right, haven't bought well. They have been the dumb money, which you see with players like Fred."
While owning different clubs is not an issue operating in the Premier League - the owners of rivals Man City own another 10 football teams around the world - it’s more of an obstacle rather than a barrier in the Champions League.
Al Thani, having bought Paris Saint-Germain in 2011 through Qatar Sports Investment (QSI), would in theory at least, be bunched by the rule that states no two clubs participating in a UEFA competition may be directly or indirectly controlled by the same ownership group.
However, a glance at what happened in 2017 regarding Red Bull’s ownership of Leipzig and Salzburg resulted in UEFA stating, after some minor and cosmetic changes, that there was "insufficient evidence" that the clubs had a shared ownership.
Even if the authorities decided to follow through on their own rules, it is being reported that Al Thani is confident of sealing the deal without QSI involvement or dipping into the country’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA).
