United´s Gill ´comfortable´ with debt

Despite the club’s net debts of approximately 370 million pounds, Manchester United chief executive David Gill is not worried.

Last season’s English Premier League runners-up also have an annual interest of 45 million pounds, but Gill maintained he was ‘comfortable’ with the club’s financial situation.

Speaking at a House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport committee inquiry into football governance, Gill stated the whopping debts were not affecting the club in the short-term.

“We know it’s there but it doesn’t impact what we do,” Gill said.

He admitted that an absence of the club’s annual interest figure ‘would be better’, but that development at the club had not been stymied.

“There has been no impact in terms of our transfers,” he said.

Gill claimed that under the controversial American owners, the Glazer family, revenue had risen from 40 million pounds in 2006 to over 100 million pounds and that the club was a ‘profitable business’.

He also claimed the Glazer family were always seeking to ‘try to grow our revenues, invest in the business, so that we can continue to be successful’.

Gill’s comments are sure to infuriate fans of the club, who have been peacefully protesting about the club’s ownership since the American family bought the club in 2005.

Anti-Glazer banners and songs are regulars at Old Trafford. Fans disenfranchised by the American’s debt-loaded purchase set up a rebel club in the form of FC United of Manchester in 2005, who now play in the Northern Premier League and progressed to the second round of the FA Cup this season.