Manchester United Is The Latest Thing Elon Musk Says He Wants To Buy

Things are not going especially well for Manchester United at the moment. Following a 4-0 drubbing at the hands of Brentford over the weekend, United finds itself in 20th place in the Premier League. Even worse than a loss of that magnitude, or their current situation in the table (they’re in last), or the fact that they have to take on an angry Liverpool team this upcoming weekend, is the fact that the club seems to be completely directionless in just about every way.

It doesn’t seem to be the fault of recently-appointed manager Erik ten Hag, although some of his personnel decisions and hyper-commitment to a style of play that does not jive with the players he has at his disposal led to him receiving his fair share of criticism through two games. Those players have come under their fair share of criticism, too, as they looked listless last year and seem to fold mightily the second they get punched in the mouth. The team’s most prominent player, Cristiano Ronaldo, has been at the middle of a transfer saga for basically the last month or so. But still, they’re pieces in a puzzle that do not fit and don’t stand much of a chance to fit, while the rot that has made its way deep into the roots of the club in recent years has meant that the players are more a result of a larger issue than the single largest issue themselves. While not blameless — they could stand to run more — the current squad is the result of years and years of the club being poorly managed.

Instead, much of the blame has been laid at the feet of the Glazer family, the American owners of the team who have been excoriated for years for the myriad of ways they choose to run one of the biggest clubs — if you’d like to read some of why that’s happened, this piece and this piece get into it a bit. The Glazers double as the owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and while the team has won a pair of Super Bowls under their stewardship, they aren’t exactly revered for their willingness to spend big to keep Tampa Bay at the forefront of the sport. Still, it is nothing like their situation in Manchester, where fans have quite literally broke into the stadium in an effort to express how little they regard the family that is famous for never showing their faces at Old Trafford (which, by the way, is on the verge of needing a monster renovation).

People have been calling on the Glazers to sell for years and give control of United to people who actually are interested in doing what it takes to keep up with clubs that are better run, something they have resisted at every twist and turn. There has never been any sort of indication that there is even a potential buyer who can meet whatever price the Glazers would need to even sit down at the table. Despite that, Elon Musk decided to get a joke off on Tuesday night and tweeted that he’s gonna buy them.

This is probably not going to happen.