Alert as tycoon plans third bid Stuart Brennan MEN April 12th 2005 Manchester United fans are preparing to stage a demonstration against Malcolm Glazer if the American tycoon makes a third bid to buy the club this week. The Not for Sale group, which is a coalition of the two United fans' groups and the fanzines, are urging supporters to put on a show of force to let the club's board know the strength of feeling still in opposition to Glazer. "We want fans to get down to Old Trafford when they finish work on the day of any bid coming in, with five o'clock a good starting point," says Jules Spencer of the Independent Manchester United Supporters Association. Glazer is expected to present the details of a �800m offer for the club later this week, as revealed by M.E.N. Business on Monday, putting supporters bitterly opposed to any takeover on high alert. Hundreds of United fans staged a similar demo, with very little advance publicity, when Glazer made a bid for the club in February. On that occasion, after a frantic rallying call using supporters' websites, Reds fans assembled in the car park opposite the Sir Matt Busby statue with banners and scarves, and sounded car horns. Any bid is likely to contain a "sweetener" for fans in the shape of cash to buy new players, with one report placing a figure of around �20m With United unlikely to spend money this summer without raising it through sales and releases first, after the purchase of �30m Wayne Rooney, that might appear attractive to some. But fans opposed to the bid have dismissed the sweetener as "a con". There is also informed speculation that ticket price hikes will concentrate on squeezing more money out of the corporate box-holders at Old Trafford. Fears that the tycoon would raise revenue by selling the stadium and leasing it back are also being played down by the Glazer camp. Sean Bones from Shareholders United said: "The fans would end up footing the bill in the long run, and the bitter experience of Leeds United shows that, when you put a club into such huge debt, you end up losing your best players, not buying new ones. "Leeds lost players like Rio Ferdinand, Alan Smith, Paul Robinson and James Milner, and the debt Glazer wants to run up in buying United would be five times that at Elland Road. "The talk of new players is all a con, but I am sure that if Glazer does come up with another bid he will try to use it to win support. Nobody is fooled." The United board feels it is duty-bound to put any bid of 300p a share to shareholders, although it has serious misgivings about a Glazer takeover.
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