The 270 million pounds that has been increased has been under their stewardship, the poor performance, the poor recruitment, the debt, the increasing debt, it's all on them.

20 years ago, the best stadium in the country, the best training ground in the country, the best team in the country and were debt free.

Welcome to What's What I Was What It Was, the Football History Podcast. I'm Jonathan Wilson. I'm with Rob Draper. And that was a clip of Gary Neville's interview with Sir Jim Rackcliffe. With Gary Neville expressing the view that I think many people hold, that United 20 years ago had the best team in the country, the best stadium in the country were debt-free, and now they very much don't and they very much not death-free.

So I think the word Garinellover uses neglect, which again, I think a lot of Manchester

Island fans would concur with that.

So what we're looking at today in our second part of this series on the Rocco-Jubalter

incident and its fallout,

is that decline under the glazers, why it happened, who's to blame, and was it inevitable?

The first episode, if you haven't listened to that, please do go back.

We had David Walsh talking incredibly interestingly and incredibly well, loads of detail

about the whole Locker-Jabter issue, which leads to the sale of

J.P. McManus and John Magna's stake in the club and allows the Glazers to take the club over.

So what we're asking really is, has Manchester United's decline been entirely down to a horse, Rob?

Yeah, and it's 20 years since the glazers took over Manchester Knightite. I tell you, I think it's a good time to look at this. And I think sometimes, often the decline in Manchester United is written in terms of the last season or the last two, three seasons. But I think sometimes it's where history is useful, isn't it? take a deep view, a long view of like, well, actually, I think the roots of what's been going on at Manchin United go so deep that anyone who comes in, any manager who comes in, even now you see any owner who comes in and thinks that they're going to make a couple of changes in a sporting director or sign a couple of wingers and turn it around.

I think you can see that that's never going to happen

because the foundations have been so undermined, in my opinion.

But let's try and make the case for that over the next sort of 45 minutes.

Well, I think there's a genuine case you can make.

And this will sign like a hyperbole, but I don't think it is that if you had been trying to run Manchester United into the ground, you could not have done it better than the glazers have done it.

That the incremental, you know, it's a boiling frog analogy, isn't it, that if it had been, I don't know, if it sold Old Trafford and moved onto a park pitch or something. People would have risen up.

It wouldn't have happened.

But this slow, just chipping away at everything made the club great

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