Glazers told they made biggest Man Utd mistake 12 years ago - 'It's a joke!'

Former Manchester United chief executive Peter Kenyon has joked that the Glazer family “should be shot” for presiding over more than a decade of failure at Old Trafford.

Kenyon, 71, who spent six years on the United board when they were the Premier League ’s dominant force both on and off the pitch, feels that the club’s decline was inevitable when the Glazers allowed Sir Alex Ferguson and CEO David Gill to quit at the same time in 2013 without having a succession plan in place.

Kenyon, speaking on the Business of Sport podcast, said: “The downfall of United was the success of United in that they didn’t have a succession plan. You don’t let the two people who have influenced the club for many years, the manager and the CEO, to leave at the same time. It’s a joke. You should be shot for that.

“What business would let their two key employees walk out of the door on the same day? You don’t even know where the plug sockets are to plug stuff in! Don’t get me on that. It really annoys me.”

United’s fans have waged continued protests against the Glazer ownership of the club since Malcolm Glazer completed a leveraged buy-out at Old Trafford in 2005.

Glazer bequeathed the club to his five children when he died in 2014 - and they have continued to build debt and bank dividends to a point where they have stripped more than £2billion from the Old Trafford coffers.

The American family banked another £1.2billion when they sold a 27 percent stake in United to Sir Jim Ratcliffe last year - but the club are still more than £1billion in the red and are limited by Premier League PSR considerations from bankrolling Manager Ruben Amorim to spend big in the transfer market.

Now Ratcliffe is coming under fire from supporters after it was announced that around 200 employees are being made redundant, taking the total of jobs lost to 450 inside a year.