“Still to this day, 30 years, on I get pointed at in the street, people of a certain age, if they’re over 50, [he puts on a sneering voice] ‘Oh, you’re Michael Knighton, you tried to buy Manchester United, you never had the money’. Oh really? Funny how you end up on the board of directors of Manchester United with no money. I must be Paul Daniels. The magician.”

Michael Knighton is explaining how he nearly bought Manchester United and how, even though he didn’t, he still provided the blueprint that revolutionised football.

It is a Thursday afternoon, and Michael Knighton has spent the day in his studio in Derbyshire. There is a documentary maker filming him. His art appears under the name Kongthin Pearlmich who, according to the Michael Knighton website, is “an artist, an interior designer, a furniture maker, a painter, a sculptor, a poet, and wilful isolationist-cum-secretive recluse. He has long been a mysterious enigma to the art world at large. He appears to have a pathological distrust of journalists and he does not normally give interviews of any kind”

Happily Michael Knighton is more forthcoming about the time he changed the face of English football, about the day he changed the face of English football. It was the opening day of the 1989-90 season. English football was reaching the end of its darkest decade – the Bradford fire, the Heysel disaster and, four months earlier, the Hillsborough disaster had shaped the image of the game and that image was dark and tragic.

The blueprint

The day was August, 19^th, 1989. A few evenings earlier, Knighton had agreed a deal with Manchester United’s chairman Martin Edwards to buy Edwards’ shares in Manchester United for £10 million, plus another £10 million to redevelop the Stretford End terrace as football, after Hillsborough, was going to change.

Before the game, there was a commotion in the tunnel as photographers gathered around and the crowd expected a new hero to emerge. It wasn’t a new signing, it was the new owner, making what he describes now as a “goodwill gesture”.

Michael Knighton, dressed in full Manchester United kit, was on the pitch to signal that football was going to change. He demonstrated his skill by juggling the ball and then bouncing it on his head before heading for the Stretford End. Once he got there, he fired a ball into the goal and celebrated. The crowd cheered. Martin Edwards had never done anything like this. Robert Maxwell, who had had a bid turned down for the club in 1984, could never do anything like this. Michael Knighton could. But could he buy the club?

He will return to that but when he recalls the day, he recalls it in a way which is in keeping with his image of himself, as simply a football fan, doing what football fans would if they had a bit more money and maybe a bit more self-belief.

“There’s no question that while the fans are smiling, and everyone enjoys on the day, by and large, it was fairly well received by most football fans. Because, Dion, if you’re a football fan, and you’ve got the opportunity to go out at Old Trafford and score three goals in Stretford End, I defy you not to take that opportunity,” Knighton says.

“So I was just fulfilling every school boy’s dream and every parent’s dream if he’s taking his child to watch Manchester United. But look, it caused consternation, Martin Edwards, in his sort of conservative and reserved way, was appalled. Bobby Charlton, I think, virtually had a coronary thrombosis. Because you wouldn’t get Bobby doing this sort of thing. I’m sure Alex was disturbed because it was so unorthodox and so out of sync and character with the identify profile of what you anticipated a football chairman to be.”

Knighton speaks in rich and vivid sentences which explain why he might have been drawn to art and poetry as well as football. Take this from when he is explaining why he was different to football chairmen at the time – “In 1989, that was either your local builder, your local baker, butcher, candlestick maker, made a few bob and bought his local football club. And that character was usually Crombie-clad, cigar-smoking and Rolls Royce-driving-private number-plate-before-everyone-had-one. And he was that sort of character. And, you know, you didn’t see him cavorting with the football on his head on a football pitch. So of course, it was very unorthodox.”

But he was just allowing fans to glimpse this new future and that their club was in safe hands, He was one of them. “My reasoning of going on that pitch was to identify with those fans and say, look, I’m one of you. Yes, I may be in a position to buy this football club, which perhaps none of you are. But I’m really one of you.” 

Who was Michael Knighton?

They might have had their doubts about that but who was Michael Knighton? Knighton was a former teacher who became headmaster and then left teaching to become a property developer. He had been a promising footballer in his youth – an apprentice at Coventry City before an injury ended his career – and his great grandfather Willie Layton was part of a famous Sheffield Wednesday side in the early 1900s. Knighton understood football. As a boy, he would go to the Baseball Ground one week to watch Derby County and then to the City Ground the next to watch Nottingham Forest. On a Wednesday night, he might go to Hillsborough to watch Sheffield Wednesday.

His pedigree as a football fan was ignored from that moment, because Knighton, who was 37 at the time, had drawn the media’s attention to him and when the world saw a showman, they saw someone they thought was too good to be true.

As a PLC, United had to enter a period of due diligence and during this period the scrutiny became intense, driven, Knighton says, by Maxwell’s resentment that Knighton, not Maxwell, had bought the club.

“I was told by some journalists that Maxwell was even writing the copy himself, trying to destroy the image of this young whippersnapper, who is this man, he’s unknown, he’s got no money, he’s an ex-school teacher, he’s an imposter.”

Knighton felt the pressure but not for himself, he explains, but for the team, which was entering a period of crisis under Alex Ferguson which the club would only come out of the following May when they won the FA Cup.

“And I said to Ferguson, ‘Alex, whatever it costs, go out and buy that player’.”

“The negative publicity began to affect the entire club. I was worried about the team, I was worried about the effect it was having,” he says.

Others were having doubts, but not about Knighton’s lack of money but about the deal, he claims.

“Martin Edwards looked like he was going to have a nervous breakdown because he suddenly realised… because, in my naivety, two days after signing the document to buy the club, I said, it’s not worth £10 million, it’s worth 150 million pounds. And this is how I can tell you it’s worth that money. In fact, I think it’s probably worth more than a billion pounds. In my naivety, I did an article, September the 12th, I think in The Financial Times, really telling them everything what I was going to do, it didn’t take a genius to… Martin Edwards is scratching his head saying, ‘Oh, my God, what have I done? If he’s right, I’m going to look like a right idiot. Because he’s saying he’s going to make this club worth a billion pounds, with all his ideas. I’ve just signed away my shares for 10 million quid’.”

In that time, Knighton was also witness to the job Alex Ferguson was trying to do which wasn’t easy at that time.

“People forget, we’re talking about 1989. Alex has been there a couple of years. Alex was hanging on by his fingernails. People forget history. And the winners in history tend to write the history. But I went there in ’89 and all around the ground were banners, ‘ Ta-ra, Fergie, you’re crap’, ‘Ta-ra Fergie, you can do it in Scotland, but you can’t do it here’, ‘Fergie out, Fergie out’ was ringing in my ears. And his job was literally on the line. And anyone who says it wasn’t is not telling the truth, Dion, because it was,” Knighton says.

Knighton said he recognised the job Ferguson was doing and explains how he provided some vital backing.

“But to be fair to Alex Ferguson, what he was doing behind the scenes, he was dismantling the club and putting some excellent infrastructure in place with the schoolboys, the youths. He was building on good foundations from the bottom. And of course, the class of ‘92 proved that he was doing it right because look at the kids that came through – Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Fletcher, the Neville brothers, Paul Scholes, the great Paul Scholes, one of the greatest players I’ve ever seen. They were all coming through. So it wasn’t just Ferguson, he had a brilliant backroom staff team as well, from the youth team upwards,” Knighton says.

“So being an educator in education, being an ex PE teacher, even I could see what he was trying to achieve. So even if my deal had completed, I wouldn’t have sacked Alex Ferguson, I would have retained him. And in fact, I made that commitment at my very first press conference. I said, ‘Look, who am I to challenge a man that broke the mould in Scottish Football? He smashed to smithereens the domination of Celtic and Rangers, with an unfashionable Aberdeen’. And he’d worked miracles there. So he didn’t need to prove anything to me, that this man can manage. Ok, it didn’t work out for him at St Mirren. But look, he was a thoroughbred on the managerial side. But it didn’t work for him in the first two or three years.”

But Knighton was ready to back him and he recalls conversations, which again may be recalled differently by others.

“What he needed was money. He needed money to go and strengthen his team. I’d been there seven days and I had a conversation with then still the chairman Martin Edwards, although I was chairman elect, and Martin says, ‘Oh, Alex wants a word. Can we meet him today?’ And we all toddle off into a side room and Alex talks about the fact that he couldn’t get out any more money to buy Gary Pallister. And he asked Martin to increase his bid. And Martin was very reluctant to do that. Middlesbrough had turned down 1.3 million, which I think Edwards had pushed to about 1.8 million, which, by the way, would have been a British record or thereabouts. And Middlesbrough said no, we want over 2 million. And it was my decision, of course, because I was chairman elect, we’d signed contracts. It was under my jurisdiction to shake the tree at Old Trafford or use my own money. And Alex said [he does a Scottish accent], ‘Michael, we need Gary Pallister’ And I said, Yes, you’re right. We do need him. Now being an ex pro, well, I never got a professional at 16 I ruptured…I was at Coventry City under Noel Cantwell. Had a serious injury so my career didn’t even get off the ground. But I knew a footballer, like your Irish brethren could see a thoroughbred from a million yards and say [he does an Irish accent], ‘Mister, that’s going to win the Derby’. And they’re usually right when they’re only 18 months old. Well, let me tell you, I can look at a footballer and say, he’s the real thing. I knew Gary Pallister was the real thing,” he says.

“Because as a student of the game, fine young player, yes, we need him. I’d done my homework. And I said to Ferguson, ‘Alex, whatever it costs, go out and buy that player. We don’t just need him. We need him like we need a blood transfusion’. And I said you better complete on the deals for Ince as well and Danny Wallace, just get ’em here. And he said, ‘Michael they need over two million’. I said, ‘I don’t care what they need, go and break the British record. Tell them you’ve got the authority of the board. Tell them it’s chairman-elect Michael Knighton and we’re buying him’. And the club spent 2.3 million, peanuts today. But you know that it was a British record.”

*****

But it wasn’t just with Gary Pallister that he says he provided the impetus for change at Old Trafford. Football was changing, Knighton could see that and television was changing too. Knighton says he recognised that when few others did.

“With these commercial initiatives, that I knew could happen, if I could get my hands on Manchester United, I knew that I could turn it into what it is today. I have to say, Dion, no one believed me at all, because when I went to the FA, I went to the Football League, I spoke to a lot of football chairman, I told them about my ideas. I think they thought I was a crazy Walter Mitty fellow because I said in 1989, I said, ‘Look this product, to use a commercial term because football is product, we’re moving rapidly into the digital age’. And of course, the fifth of November 1989 at 6pm [Knighton has an extraordinary recall for dates, perhaps to be expected from a former teacher], satellite TV was launched to no fanfare, to hostility from every terrestrial channel in the world. And everyone said satellite TV will never take off. And let me tell you, I spoke to everybody in football, virtually, and everyone said it will never work, never replace terrestrial television. My blueprint said, well you’re wrong. This is a step change. It’s a new epoch. It’s a new era, it will completely transform the industry. And why you’ve been scratching about with three million and 12 million than you thought you’d reached Nirvana, Nirvana at 44 million. I said in my blueprint 30 years ago – this game to the TV channels, and as a global product, is worth billions. Not millions, it’s worth billions. And we must capitalise on the marketability. So this was all in the blueprint and I said this TV deal should be worth at least half a billion to perhaps up to 2 billion. Now this is 30 years ago, when it was only 44 million. So I soon got the tag of a lunatic, a Walter Mitty figure and someone who must be insane.”

Maxwell’s hammer

The image was advanced by the Maxwell papers, he claims and Knighton’s naivety in 1989 counted against him. “I’m in my 30s. Okay, I’ve been modestly successful in business, an ex-schoolteacher, ex-headmaster, never been in the public spotlight, didn’t understand or realise the whys and wherefores of the media. I didn’t know that a newspaper editor could give you banner headlines which are complete lies and not even bat an eyelid on a national scale. Like I was going to put ASDA on Old Trafford, like I had no money, like I was a complete charlatan and some imposter that had just turned up. Interestingly enough, I had more money than Robert Maxwell in 1989 as the world now knows. But you know, I didn’t have a national newspaper or several.”

The negative press, Knighton says, was “murderous for everyone”. It wasn’t a case that he didn’t have the money. He had and he had already turned down an offer –“a small fortune” –  from Philip Green to sell on the shares he would buy from Edwards, but Knighton felt, with the due diligence taking as long as was legally required, that something had to give. He suggests that Edwards was relieved too, having glimpsed the clarity of Knighton’s vision.

That vision was part of the journey on to the pitch and that vision was why he is so appalled by what football has become.

“My reasoning for going on that pitch was to identify with those fans and say, ‘Look, I’m one of you. Yes, I may be in a position to buy this football club, which perhaps none of you are. But I’m really one of you. And I’m going to need you’. Because my blueprint was all about the fans. I’m going to use a pejorative term, it was about exploiting the fans’ loyalty, but it’s what you do with the extra revenue. That’s what’s important. Because three years on, the reason I left Old Trafford when the breakaway was happening with the Premier League,” he says.

“The reason I left because I didn’t like the noises about what they thought of the other 72 clubs. I knew I could turn Manchester United into a global brand, I could make it rain money. I could make it so we could go out and buy any player in the world. I could make it the greatest football club in the world because we could afford the greatest players. It wasn’t about paying off my overdraft, if I had one. It wasn’t about paying myself 90 million pounds’ worth of dividends over five years, which is what the current owners have done. It wasn’t about leveraging all the assets up to enormous debt levels, which is what the current owners have done. It was nothing about that. I’d made a few bob, I got my bank, I’d convinced my bank to support me with an overdraft worth 25 million as well as my own overdraft. But Maxwell said I have no money.”

With this murderous press affecting everything, Knighton had a meeting with Edwards where a decision was made. He would take a seat on the board, he would hand over his blueprint for the club. “I said I don’t need to own the club but I do need to make a difference,” Knighton says.

“There are certain incidents in history, be they small, or be they large, which you can identify as a tipping point.”

Edwards offered him a seat on the board and shares. “I aborted the bid and became a director, it was never about the money.”

Edwards, he says, was happy about this and Knighton was in a position to make a change. But still the idea that Maxwell put forward that he didn’t have the money lodged in the public consciousness and still it rankles.

“They believed him. But if you’ve got half a brain, just half a brain, not even a full one, think about it. If you are just an imposter and you’ve had a little day out on a Saturday afternoon to juggle the ball and bang it in the Stretford End, and then you’ve beetled off. Well, of course that would rightly attract every criticism under the sun. But hang on, they invited me on to the Board of Directors. You know why? They knew I had the money. They got a letter from the chief executive of the Bank of Scotland, saying not only has he got enough of his own money to buy this club, we’ve just given him a 25 million pound overdraft. He’s got twice what he needs.”

So Knighton took his seat on the board and he watched as the club adopted his blueprint. He left in 1992 because of the Premier League and how it would disrupt the football pyramid. He took over Carlisle United, where he saw football at another level. He insists his time there was successful although others would disagree.

The Glazers have been “a disastrous regime”, he says who should have consulted with the fans. As he says this, he appears to conjure an image of a disgruntled Carlisle fan.

The vision thing

“There is a strong case for fan proper fan representation on boardrooms up and down the country. And anyone who sits at home, some troll in his back bedroom, saying, ‘Ooh, listen to Michael Knighton, look what he did to Carlisle United’. Well, he can go as Eric Cantona said, ‘put your head in the toilets’. I offered to be the first cooperative at Carlisle United. I took a two-page spread in the Cumberland News a few weeks before our very first trip to Wembley, and I said, ‘This is your club, this is your opportunity to take control from me, take possession of my shares, so long as I can apply to be chief executive. I’ll be happy’. A handful of people came forward. So that’s what I say to trolls and critics who say, ‘Ooh listen to him pontificating about fan participation’ as if I’ve just jumped on a bandwagon.”

He acknowledges the mistakes he made and says he doesn’t want to say anything bad about the late John Courtenay who bought the club off him in 2002 and who was remembered fondly by the club and described by the club secretary as “a breath of fresh air” at the time of his death last year. Knighton says he regrets selling the club to him, but that may not be how others see it.

When it comes to Manchester United, he says the club needs more football experience.

Ed Woodward, he says, “is not particularly a football man” but United needed more.

“I’ve nothing against Mr Woodward. I’ve never met the man. I don’t know him. I’m sure he’s a decent human being, he would never be my choice as the deputy chairman… vice chairman, whatever he was, I think it’s been a disastrous regime. Where’s the director of football? Alex Ferguson, Paul Scholes, one of the Neville brothers – where is the director of football? I think the executive team has really been lacking. That is my honest view. I think they’ve been lacking. And they just reflected the Glazer policy, the Glazers have now been exposed as what they are.”

The Super League was exposed too he believes. “There are certain incidents in history, be they small, or be they large, which you can identify as a tipping point. This has been a tipping point where the consequences of having foreign ownership just because, they want the status and the ego that goes with it, but also they just really want to make money. And they want to treat these football clubs as vehicles to make even more money for themselves. This is a tipping point. Fan power, thank goodness has come to the fore.”

To illustrate he takes a metaphor which he doesn’t give up on. “The European Super Leage was strangled at birth, but it shouldn’t have got pregnant in the first place.  They strangled the baby, the fans strangled the baby at birth but, you know, it was artificial insemination of the very worst guide to begin with. I’m afraid it deserved to be strangled at birth. They should never have had intercourse.”

The big regrets in life aren’t over commercial decisions, he says, but he should have bought Manchester United.

“If I bought the club tomorrow, a tad more than 10 million they’d want now, I understand about four and a half billion now. So it’s a tad more. But let me tell you, I’d do exactly the same again. Because football is about entertainment, having a good time in a safe environment and enjoying the greatest sport on the planet. That is what the game is about. Certainly isn’t about big six foreign chairmen owning our clubs, stomping all over our heritage and setting off into the sunset with the billions, which is what’s happened.”

Knighton would have done it differently and he sounds as if he has loved not wisely, but too well. “It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life to let – this sounds incredibly awful to say this – I let my principles win the day.”

And he believes, the club would be in a better place. “Look what I could have done with Manchester United now because I knew where it was heading. I should have completed the deal, you know, I should have done. Of course I should because let me tell you, that club wouldn’t be having the trouble is having today. You wouldn’t have an owner who was absent. You wouldn’t have an absent landlord, an absent owner who never speaks to fans, unless they’re breaking into the ground to postpone games. And you wouldn’t have had an owner that has taken a billion pounds out of that magnificent institution to line their own pockets.” He returns to the subject later in the interview.

“I should have completed and bought the football club. I’d still be chairman today. That’s a fact.”