Inside the ‘poisonous’ fall-out between Man United and the Class of ’92: Why stars like Lisandro Martinez are livid with Paul Scholes, why Nicky Butt nonetheless holds a grudge and the way the entire thing was pushed by a spat over a resort

The day after David Moyes was sacked as manager of Manchester United in the spring of 2014, the barrier to the club’s Carrington training ground lifted and Paul Scholes drove in for the first time since he had finished playing.

Three days later, as United beat Norwich 4-0 at home with Ryan Giggs as interim manager, supporters saw a vision of a club they could buy into. Giggs in the lead role – wearing a club blazer – with Scholes, Nicky Butt and Phil Neville standing by his side in tracksuits.

This is how Sir Alex Ferguson had always envisaged it. An English version of Ajax or Bayern Munich, where ex-players formed the backbone in the dugout or the boardroom. Cultures and standards handed down from one generation to the next.

As we know now, it was not to be. That brief peek at the promised land lasted four games. And now, almost 12 years on, the distance between United and some of its most famous sons has become so vast and at times so bitter that Scholes and Butt recently spoke on their increasingly notorious podcast about issues getting match tickets.

‘You will see players who played 50 games in the directors’ box and you wonder who has invited them,’ said Scholes, who admitted to using a tout. ‘Maybe they got their agents to ring up and ask.’

At United there is some irritation. They say that if two such decorated icons – with more than 1,100 appearances between them – wish to attend a game, they only have to pick up the phone. Indeed, as United crashed out of the FA Cup to Brighton recently, they were pictured sitting next to Ferguson in the posh seats.

Nevertheless, the truth is that divisions have developed over time between United and the group known as the Class of ’92 that have severely compromised a relationship that once felt as though it would last for ever.

‘It’s been like a separation, if not quite a divorce,’ one Old Trafford source tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘At times it’s been civil. Occasionally it’s been toxic. It’s flip-flopped.’

What has become a very public problem has had clear signposts. The building by the Class of ’92 of a hotel on land opposite Old Trafford was viewed with such displeasure by the club that staff were for a while forbidden from stepping inside. The current United dressing room continue to resent what they view as persistent criticism from the likes of Roy Keane and Gary Neville on TV and this has now come to a head with Butt and Scholes swapping jibes with defender Lisandro Martinez either side of Saturday’s Manchester derby victory.

The desire of former chief executive Ed Woodward to move on from the Ferguson era is also thought to have historically played a part. Woodward did have at least one meeting with Neville in a bid to get along better. ‘It was a bit like Trump and Putin,’ laughs a top source. ‘Conversation but not quite a deal.’

Equally the nature of the schism is not that simply characterised because each relationship is very different.

Gary Neville, for example, has at times been seen as chief media agitator in the backlash against United’s majority shareholders, the Glazer family, to the degree that the club once talked to Sky Sports about his on-air comments. Now, though, he is on the task force assembled to build a new Old Trafford and believes his relationship with United to be back on track.

‘He is incredibly influential in so many ways and the club needed him onside so have worked hard at the relationship,’ says a source close to the project. ‘Not by trying to censor him but by dialogue and finding practical ways to rebuild the relationship. At times it’s been like moving chess pieces. But it’s now on the up.’

Butt, meanwhile, worked for the club for nine years before leaving bitterly after a fall-out with former technical director John Murtough in 2021. The view inside the club is that he is yet to get over it.

Phil Neville and David Beckham have interests elsewhere while Scholes is tolerated rather fondly at executive level but viewed increasingly dimly by a first-team squad tired of his TV and podcast persona as the grumpiest man in Manchester.

‘We tell the players it’s not pre-meditated, just a guy with a reactive opinion,’ says a source close to the squad. ‘But they just aren’t having him.’

As for Giggs, United are torn. Assistant manager under Louis van Gaal between 2014 and 2016, the great Dutch coach had highlighted the Welshman as his preferred successor only for the club to appoint Jose Mourinho.

‘Louis rated Ryan incredibly highly,’ says a friend of the former Barcelona and Netherlands manager. ‘He thought he had all the tools and had great hopes for him.’

Now, almost a decade on, with Giggs’ reputation stained by allegations of domestic violence – of which he was acquitted in court – United are trying to find the best way forward. ‘That one is so difficult,’ says a top club source. ‘It’s hard to know what to do. But there’s no beef. He’s been in the directors’ box.’

For his part, Giggs has felt a coldness from his one and only club for quite some time. He once told an ally that in his post-playing days he received a warmer top level welcome at Manchester City than he ever did at Old Trafford.

Nothing stands quite like a permanent reminder of enduring differences between United and an iconic group of players than the building occupying a tiny slither of land between the Bridgewater Canal and Old Trafford’s east car parks.

Hotel Football was built in 2015 and was the brainchild of Gary Neville and Giggs. United objected to the plans and lost. Bitter because they knew they should have thought of the idea first, United executives have watched the Class of ’92 take matchday money straight out of their pockets.

 ‘It hurt because it was symptomatic of what we were at the time,’ recalls a former senior operative at United. ‘We were stuck in the past and dithering while they took an opportunity from under our noses to turn a miniscule strip of land into a huge commercial opportunity. On matchdays, they were suddenly offering corporate packages to compete with our own.

‘It was a mess and what made it worse was that if you sat at your desk at work you had no choice but to look at it through the window. We were told in no uncertain terms we couldn’t even go there for coffee on our break.’

As United deteriorated on the field, so the club’s links to its past fell away. Some viewed it as a deliberate ploy by Woodward and his successor Richard Arnold to move the club on from the days of Ferguson. Others as a mere consequence of criticism offered by Neville, Scholes and other United alumni in the media. ‘You can’t expect to slag us off on TV on a Sunday and everyone to love you on a Monday,’ says an ex-club source.

Staff who worked at United prior to the Ineos investment of almost two years ago tell now of a clear move back in the day to disregard the Class of ’92 when it came to finding ex-players to fulfil commercial opportunities and attend fan events. It goes without saying that none of them are club ambassadors.

‘Oh yeah, we knew we weren’t allowed to use them,’ says our source. ‘They were our most famous players but for a while it was almost as though they had been airbrushed out.’ It is only relatively recently that a missive went round telling staff that such opportunities were finally back on the table. ‘Yes, there has been a thaw,’ adds our source. ‘And there is a relief felt about it. They are b****y legends after all.’

During the really bad days – ‘the toxic times’ as one staffer describes it – there were moments of light. One former employee tells of Neville leaving a family party to help the commercial team out ‘on the quiet’ after another former player had pulled out of an event. Another recalls how some of the Class of ’92 did Zoom calls to isolated academy players during lockdown.

At United there has never been a feeling that Neville, Scholes, Butt and the others wished the club to fail. They are less sure in this regard when it comes to another former captain, Sky Sports pundit Keane. 

Nevertheless, there seemed no road back when – after United fans invaded Old Trafford before a lockdown game against Liverpool in 2021 – Neville appeared to sympathise with the rabble rousers’ motives at a time when – unbeknown to him – executive staff were having security tightened at home on the back of the Glazers’ support for the doomed European Super League project.

‘He was very critical of Ed and of the owners,’ reflects someone close to the situation at the time. ‘He was at the peak of his powers and his words were constantly on the back pages. It was hard to have a relationship.

‘Gary is strategic and bright and quite political. We wondered at the time whether he would appear as part of a consortium to buy the club. We did try to find common ground and so did he. There was some back channel dialogue between him and Ed and then there was that meeting. It just didn’t work. I worried for a while about him becoming almost a pariah. Thankfully it hasn’t happened.’

Neville and the rest are often front and centre at Hotel Football on match nights as Class of 92 stars hosts Q&As before games across the road. But with the hotel now part of the Marriott portfolio – until earlier this year a United sponsor – that feeling of conflict has dissipated.

The club also rents out its Littleton Road training facility to Salford City, the League Two side owned by Beckham and Gary Neville. ‘We wouldn’t have done that if we still had a problem with those two,’ reveals a United source. ‘At executive level, our relationship with Gary and the others is more sensible and much better now. In the dressing room, the opposite is sadly true.’

Last season United defender Martinez took TV criticism from Scholes so personally that a clear-the-air meeting between the two was arranged. For reasons unknown, it never took place and perhaps it’s just as well. Scholes claims he passed Martinez his number on social media but his phone never rang.

‘Scholesy just says what he thinks,’ says a source at broadcaster TNT. ‘If he doesn’t like you or rate you, he will just tell you. He’s one of the best blokes in the world. But he just can’t hide what he feels.’

The United dressing room know this and feel it’s unfair. Having listened to what they believe to be a barrage of unrelenting criticism from Scholes on TNT and Neville and Keane on Sky Sports, battle lines have now been drawn. ‘It’s still very difficult indeed,’ says one agent close to the first team.

‘The players feel the weight of what these guys say very deeply. They see all the clips and it really p****s them off. Their view is that these guys know what it’s like to feel the pressure of being a United player so they want some level of understanding from them but feel they don’t get it.

‘Some players think the Class of ’92 actually don’t want them to succeed so their own legacy can be protected. So, yeah, the relationship has been bad. The lads certainly don’t want to be interviewed by them for TV. It’s gone way beyond that.’

No other club has so many of its ex-players on TV and podcast panels. When you are winning it works for you but that is not United’s world right now. The likes of Scholes, Neville and Butt – and indeed former TNT analyst Rio Ferdinand – want their old club to win. That is beyond doubt. They are fans. Butt, for example, took his son to see United beat Newcastle in the 2023 Carabao Cup final.

But along with poor results over many years, they have railed against what they see as a drop in culture and the devaluing of standards they once swore by. ‘I’m sick to death of hearing people at Man United’s academy saying it’s not about winning,’ said Butt recently. ‘It f***ing is about winning.’

United’s managers have coped with the noise by and large. Mourinho resented the criticism the most. Erik ten Hag agreed with some of it. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer reached out privately to his old team-mates to try and settle it down.

As for Ralf Rangnick, the interim coach who preceded Ten Hag, he arrived saying that he was used to the opinions of ex-players in Germany only to realise very quickly that the levels of scrutiny were rather more intense in Manchester. As for the recently departed Ruben Amorim, he claimed not to listen the noise but famously suggested other people above him in the United hierarchy may have been.

Neville and the others are compelling and trenchant pundits and are unlikely to change any time soon. Nobody can accuse them of being fake. For his part, Scholes has stepped away from mainstream media now to focus on his podcast and mainly the care of his autistic son, Aiden.

‘He used to say to me that he felt all he ever did was slag United off and it didn’t make him feel good,’ adds our TNT source. ‘He may have sounded like he was coming off a long run, sharpening his knife on the way to the studio. But that’s not the way it was.

‘He would just watch the game and then talk about it. But it would resonate so much and what he said would always land with such an impact. Everybody he once knew at United has gone so he didn’t have to worry about offending anyone.’

And maybe that’s the crux of the issue. United have moved forwards and, for one reason or another, haven’t taken part of the family with them. Other clubs have done likewise. None of Liverpool’s 2005 Champions League winning team work at Anfield while Jamie Carragher’s observations on Sky Sports have been known to agitate some of Arne Slot’s current group of players.

The United vortex has exerted strong forces, though. One long-term staffer describes it as a ‘compelling, irresistible psychodrama’. It maybe could have been different. After Van Gaal’s sacking in 2016, for example, Woodward sat with Giggs, Butt and Scholes and asked them whether the club should sign Paul Pogba or Toni Kroos. The answer? Both.

Almost a decade on, some solutions have been found in terms of compromise, a change in ownership structure and indeed the passing of time. Others remain out of reach perhaps until United begin to win routinely again.

The Class of ’92 and the others will doubtless have strong views on when exactly that may be and why.