The club backed by Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs et al blazed a trail for investment in non-league football and are set for their biggest game yet
Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds took non-league football into the mainstream with 'Welcome to Wrexham' but they were not the first celebrities to look at the earthy surroundings of the amateur game and think it would make for great television.
It has been over a decade since a group of Manchester United legends took over Salford City with the grand ambition of taking them all the way through the English football pyramid to the Premier League. That motivation also attracted McElhenney – who was fascinated with the concept of promotion and relegation as it does not exist in major US sports – to Wrexham and he and Reynolds are well on their way to achieving that objective as they chase a third successive promotion this season.
But Salford blazed an even longer trail before them and were ruthlessly effective in their goal. With backing from the 'Class of 92' consortium of Gary and Phil Neville, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes plus billionaire Peter Lim, the Ammies (so-called as the club used to be known as Salford Amateurs) won four promotions in five seasons, reaching the English Football League in 2019 with promotion to League Two. They documented their travails in the series 'Class of 92 – Out of Their League' and later 'Class of '92 – Full Time' on .
The EFL was not quite the paradise they had dreamed of, though, and while Wrexham have gone from strength to strength since their 2020 takeover, Salford have stayed still, remaining in League Two and coming dangerously close to relegation last year. More crucially, they slipped out of the wider conversation, losing relevance as they were leapfrogged in the divisions by Wrexham as well as neighbours Stockport County.
But Salford are on the rise again, winning six games in a row to move into contention for promotion to League One to potentially join Wrexham and Stockport. And they are about to get the nation's attention once more as they prepare for the biggest game of their history, Saturday's FA Cup tie against Manchester City, the scourge of their United-supporting owners.
GettyOut of their league
While McElheneny and Reynolds were working with a well-established historic club – the third oldest in the world – which had previously competed in Europe and averaged attendances of 5,000 the year before the takeover, Neville and co. were starting from a far lower base. The season before the takeover by the Class of '92, little more than 100 people would attend Salford games at Moor Lane and it was common for fans to bring their dogs along, with one border collie repeatedly getting in trouble for running on to the pitch.
The club competed in the eighth tier of English football, was run by volunteers and its stadium was falling apart, with toilets barely fit for use. In the first season of 'Out of Their League', the new owners are dismayed by the attitude of the two head coaches, who take holidays during the pre-season campaign, and of many of their players, who turn up late for training. Phil Neville turns up at one session only to learn there are no balls.
But Salford had money like no other club in non-league and were able to attract top-quality players such as striker Gareth Seddon, who left Chester City and dropped down four divisions to join them, and Danny Webber, a former Manchester United youth trainee who had played in the Premier League for Portsmouth and Sheffield United.
AdvertisementGetty 'Getting what they want'
Salford won promotion in their first season under the new ownership as they stormed to the league title and in their next campaign were promoted to the National League North, via the play-offs. They became a professional club at the start of the 2016-17 campaign but missed out on promotion in the play-offs. They were crowned champions the following year and needed just one crack at the National League, earning promotion to the EFL with a rampant 3-0 win over AFC Flyde in the play-off final at Wembley.
But their rise was not seen as a fairy-tale, both within and outside the club. Accrington Stanley owner Andy Holt accused Neville of "stealing a place in the EFL" after buying Aberdeen striker Adam Rooney in 2018 and offering him £4,000 ($4,870) per week. That summer Salford signed four players from League One and had recruited manager Graham Alexander from the same division.
Some of Salford's long-running fans were also angry by the change in identity under the new owners, who revamped the club's badge and controversially changed their shirt colours from tangerine orange to red in an obvious nod to United. Neville and co. were likened to the unpopular Cardiff City owner Vincent Tan, who at a similar time changed the Welsh side's colours from blue to red (they reverted to blue in 2015).
"They might be legends for Manchester United and great players and all the rest of it. But these days these players are hard-nosed businessmen," fan and local reporter Stephen Kingston said in the 'Out of their League' series. "You expect it at a Premier League club when you get some bloody Russian Oligarch in or someone like that. You don't expect it at little Salford City. As far as I'm concerned it's arrogance, it's Premiership arrogance. They are used to getting what they want."
Getty Finding their level
The owners haven't quite got what they wanted since reaching League Two, however. In 2015 Neville targetted reaching the Championship by 2029 while Giggs spoke of playing in the Premier League one day in front of 25,000 fans. Salford's profile made them easily the biggest team in the lower leagues and their early attendances – often exceeding 2,000 – were also among the largest for their level. But that has changed since reaching League Two.
Their average attendance of 2,800 is the third-lowest in the division and they haven't been able to generate much revenue, which is a problem when they have to comply with the league's Salary Cost Management Protocol (SCMP), which prevents clubs spending more than 60 percent of their revenue. Salford's latest accounts show a loss of £4 million ($4.8m).
The club have also struggled to progress off the pitch. Although they have radically transformed their ground, which was reopened in 2017 as the Peninsular Stadium, raising capacity from 1,600 to 5,000, their growth has been well below what the owners wanted. There is an obvious reason for that: United are on their doorstep and although they are technically located in Trafford, they are to many the true club of Salford.
GettySmaller than their neighbours
Football fans in the north west of England are spoilt for choice if they want to watch live football beyond the bright lights of United and City. Despite the prestige of their legendary United players, Salford cannot compete with the history of many of their neighbours. Stockport, Oldham Athletic and Rochdale all attract more fans per week. And unlike McElhenney and Reynolds, they have not been able to attract new fans to the sport.
"Wrexham have got the Hollywood owners, that's great. It works for them, but it doesn't really work for us in the demographic we're in," Nicky Butt, the club's CEO, told in 2023. "We want to be different. We want to be doing it our way, really.
"We knew what we had to do to get the spotlight on Salford. We're not daft. We knew what we had to do: we had to get a documentary, we had to get the hype up, get the fans up and try and move forward with that. We did that and we want to become our own identity. We want to be Salford. We want to be a hard-working, working-class team for the people. We want to be different."
