Former Manchester United players from the age before megabucks salaries are ‘struggling’ after a donation was withdrawn from a charity supporting them, a trustee has said.
Jim Elms told Metro that ‘we’ve not been able to help out any of the lads’ since a £40,000-a-year donation was scrapped under cost-cutting measures overseen by Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS.
The Association of Former Manchester United Players (AFMUP) is now pinning its hopes on a dinner honouring treble-winner Andy Cole which Sir Alex Ferguson is due to attend.
The charity, which supports almost 300 ex-players from before the lucrative Premier League era, ‘has not got the means’ to help the players and their families, Mr Elms said.
Ratcliffe, the club’s billionaire co-owner, has swung the axe on costs across the board, including making around 250 redundancies last summer, ending Sir Alex’s £2 million-a-year ambassador role and scrapping ticket discounts for youngsters and over-65s.
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The cut to the 40-year-old charity’s budget emerged at the end of last year after the association learnt it had become part of the cost-cutting drive.
Manchester United maintains that it is working with the AFMUP to make the forthcoming charity dinner a success.
Mr Elms said: ‘We are keeping going for the moment, we have a do at the end of this month and then we’ll have to check again at the end of that. A few people have helped us out, but it’s not been brilliant by any means.
‘It’s been very difficult, it’s not been good at all, we’ve had no help from United at all. They stopped our money when they owed us £40,000 and they only paid £20,000.
‘That was 18 months ago, so it’s been very difficult for us really.
‘The hardest part is not being able to help the people who we have been helping, the ex-players from the days when there wasn’t a lot of money in the game.’
The 84-year-old, from Stockport, played for the Reds’ youth team and reserves between 1957 and 1960.
‘In my day the top money was £20,’ he said.
‘It’s a different world now.
‘We meet a lot of ex-players now who are in their 70s and are struggling.
‘They need help and we have not got the means to help them at the moment. We’ve not been able to help out any of the lads.
‘It’s the simple things like one of them has died and can we help with the funeral expenses, it’s the different things like that which we’re not able to help with.’
The trustees are fighting to save a charity that was established in 1985 with Sir Matt Busby as its first patron and has enjoyed the continued support of Sir Alex and other club legends.
Among the players who the AFMUP is in touch with are Bryan Robson, Denis Law, Denis Irwin and David May.
Dozens of wider causes including Age Concern, the Alzheimer’s Society and Wythenshawe Hospital have been supported by the charity.
Mr Elms explained that while no other sources of funding had been found, the association still had recourse to its own means and the £125-a-head charity event may help to keep it alive.
The dinner hosted by the association is headlined by Andy Cole and will also feature former club captain Neville and be attended by other Reds legends past and present.
‘We are having a do on the 24th of this month which we have got 270 people coming to,’ Mr Elms said.
‘Sir Alex is coming and Gary Neville is doing a question and answer session and Andrew Cole is speaking, so we’ll see how we’ll go.
‘We’re pinning our hopes on this new function and hoping that we might get another sponsor from somewhere.
‘We’ll struggle on for now.’
Mr Elms made a plea for sponsors via the Man Utd The Religion YouTube channel at the time the news of the donation axe emerged, saying ‘this has just come out the blue, we can’t understand it.’
In November, a Man United source told The Sun that the club ‘greatly appreciated’ the work of the AFMUP.
The person said: ‘We are no longer able to make charitable donations to AFMUP while the club is making significant losses.
‘Our focus is on putting the club back on a sustainable financial footing so that we are in a position to invest in our priorities of achieving success on the pitch, and renewing our infrastructure.’
Trailing the dinner, the club said all profits will go to AFMUP and the charities it supports, with tickets available to all fans.
Special prices for tables and VIP meet-and-greet packages are available.
It is understood that payment for former players’ funerals has historically come from a separate benevolent fund, not from the AFMUP itself, and this fund still exists.
More information about the dinner is available via the club here
Do you have a story you would like to share? Contact josh.layton@metro.co.uk