No merchant, however sentimental, can afford to ignore three years of losses amounting to £300m. If Manchester United has truly been consuming more than it produces, a reduction in wages, staff and other costs is not heartlessness but the correction of a mispriced enterprise. To bind future spending to the resources actually generated by the club is, in my language, a return to something like a functioning market. But if those who oversaw the waste do not bear their share of the sacrifice, can anyone seriously claim that the incentives are just or economically sound?