A travesty is unfolding at Manchester United with few signs of a brighter future

Manchester United is a dysfunctional, reactionary, football club on its knees, although it’s not finished like some claim. The heartbeat from millions of fans is enough to give it life.

Only weeks ago 150,000 watched the team in two games in Melbourne, Australia. This is a club which rose after the Munich air crash, which survived winding up orders, Old Trafford being bombed by the Luftwaffe, which bounced back from second division football in 1975.

Even under Sir Alex Ferguson, United finished in the lower half of England’s top division. But under that same manager United became not just England’s pre-eminent football force, but its leading commercial exponent whose ideas were copied by Real Madrid and Barcelona and by almost every Premier League rival.

United have lost seven consecutive away games in the league, the worst record since 1936; most recently Saturday’s 4-0 reverse at Brentford when United conceded four goals in 25 desperate minutes.

There are United fans of 30, 40, 50 and 60 years standing who say they have never witnessed anything so bad. England’s biggest club failed to score a single goal in six of those games and conceded 21 times. In four of those games United let in four goals.

How has it come to this? United became so successful under Ferguson that vultures started to circle with financial rather than football priorities. It wasn’t a carcass they circled, but the plumpest, healthiest, most envied, hated, adored and never ignored football club on the planet.

The Glazer family from America prevailed and in 2005 rode waves of protests to take control of a club founded by railway workers in an industrial city. Ferguson waved them in, called them fantastic owners. Maybe they were for him since they