The Ammies, for whom Neville is a co-owner, have dispensed with the services of boss Gary Bowyer leading to Neville’s Sky Sports colleague Carragher to poke fun
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Gary Neville watches Salford win at Wembley days before sacking manager
Gary Neville’s on-air Sky Sports partner Jamie Carragher has taken the chance to poke fun at his colleague and Salford City co-owner.
Neville is one of a clutch of former Manchester United players who co-owns the League Two club, along with the likes of Paul Scholes and David Beckham. On Tuesday it was confirmed the Ammies had sacked manager Gary Bowyer, just 12 months into a two-year deal.
The departure means Salford are now searching for a fourth manager in the space of barely 18 months. Writing on Twitter shortly after the news was announced, Carragher could not resist having a tongue-in-cheek dig at his fellow pundit.
Carragher wrote: ” @GNev2 puts more people out of work than Boris Johnson.”
Prior to dispensing with the services of Bowyer, Salford had hired and fired Richie Wellens in the space of just five months. Before that Graham Alexander was unceremoniously given the chop in October 2020 – a decision Neville later said that he regretted.
He said: “Last season, Graham Alexander should never have left this club. He should never have left, I should never have made that decision that I made. It goes against everything that I believe in and that’s what owning a football club does to you, it takes you to that place where you do things that you don’t believe you ever would do.”
The 2021-22 campaign was only Salford’s third-ever season in the EFL but they once again missed out on the League Two play-offs. They finished 10th in the final table – seven adrift of the eventual play-off places – and that has ultimately cost Bowyer and assistant coach Billy Barr their jobs.
Michael Appleton, the former Lincoln City boss, is the favourite the land the vacancy. He left the Imps at the end of the season after three years in charge. He has close links to the club’s high-profile owners as he was a year behind them in the youth system at Old Trafford.
Neville, the most vocal of the club’s co-owners, recently defended the club’s policy in the wake of figures revealing their parent company were haemorrhaging an average of £91,000-per-week.
He said: “We’ve invested enormous amounts of money in the last seven or eight years. But it’s all myself, David, Ryan, Paul, Nicky, Phil and Peter (Lim, Singaporean business magnate). Peter owns 50 per cent, we own 50 per cent. We’ve put lots of money in ourselves. We’ve chosen to do that. I’m not against owner funding. We put it in at the start of the season. The club is obviously robust in that sense.
“We only spend the money that we have. It is a lot of money to lose but we’ve come up from step eight and had to spend millions and millions of pounds on this stadium. And we knew that was going to happen at the very beginning. We do one day long for sustainability at the club. But we’re trying to build a fanbase in a city that’s not had a Football League club ever. It’s new to us.”
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