Gary Neville believes Man City's owners should be 'applauded' for their work in the city and wants Manchester United to avoid a private equity firm.
The club remains up for sale with three bids on the table to buy Manchester United from The Glazer Family. Sir Jim Ratcliffe's offer could see two of the brothers remain at Old Trafford after the takeover is completed.
The offer from Qatar would be a full buyout of United, in a similar vein to Abu Dhabi at Manchester City in 2008. City have enjoyed unprecedented success since then.
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Neville wants United to avoid an American private equity firm which could take money out of the club, after years of the same treatment from the Glazers. He praised Sheikh Mansour's work at Manchester City after a transformative effect on the club.
"I look at East Manchester and think about the prosperity Abu Dhabi [ownership of City] has brought there," told The Times. "That needs [to be] applauded. What I would say is whoever the owners are, state funding, US private equity, there should be a clear owners’ test and clear regulation to make sure they stay in the boundaries.
"City have serious allegations against them. 115 breaches of [Premier League financial] rules. I think we have to wait and see what happens but there is no doubt it would taint their success if they were found guilty.
"Football clubs in some ways should be run like not-for-profit businesses. I know that sounds crazy but you almost want all the money you’ve made to go back into the facilities, the team and the youth development.
"That’s why I feel less threatened by, let’s say, Abu Dhabi’s owners in terms of how they operate, compared to a Glazer family or an FSG [Fenway Sports Group, the Liverpool owner] or a Todd Boehly [the Chelsea co-owner], because I think they do come in quite purely with the ambition to make money, to basically extract from the club as much money as they can in the end.
"I get it but I don’t see football as an ROI [return on investment] based, yield-based business. I see football as something far more emotive, that involves passion and community and people. The three bidders at the moment: we’ve got Jim Ratcliffe, which is private money; Qatar, which is private money; and US equity. I’m against that. The club would just be run for a profit again.
"We would see dividends, we would see extraction, we would see cost-cutting, we would see commercial exploitation which may be unhealthy for the club. The Glazers just have to leave, so if Jim Ratcliffe or Qatar came in without the Glazers, I’d be supportive of it on the condition of what they were pledging with respect to their manifesto to the club."
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