Manchester United want to buy popular golf club

Manchester United want to buy a golf course to kickstart their revolution under new part-ownership.

Golf courses in the south Manchester area have suddenly become of significant interest to the Red Devils after INEOS billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe acquired a 25 per-cent stake in the famed club last month.

The Daily Mail reports that United have already held preliminary talks to buy High Legh Park Golf Club in Knutsford, which includes an 18-hole Championship course, a nine-hole layout and a floodlit driving range.

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United view golf courses as ideal potential sites to build a new world class training complex, having outgrown their current Carrington facility.

It is widely accepted that United’s Carrington base has fallen behind the training grounds of their top Premier League rivals under the stewardship of the Glazers, their maligned American owners.

But now, with Ratcliffe and co. taking charge of footballing operations at Old Trafford, a golf club with 100 acres of buildable land could be turned into a new state-of-the-art training complex.

Reports claim United have not yet agreed a deal with High Legh Park, which opened in 1998 and is based in the heart of the Cheshire countryside.

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But the Mark James-designed course has been identified as one of a number of possible contenders as a new training facility, partly because of its proximity to a number of players’ homes in the area.

The venue was bought by American Golf for £2.7million in 2021 but was put up for sale last year.

It is also noted that Leicester City’s former infrastructure director Mags Mernagh now works for United, having helped design the Midlands team’s new training ground.

Leicester’s £100m training facility spans 185 acres and was built on the site of the former Park Hill Golf Club.

Nine holes of the club’s 18-hole course have been retained for players to utilise after that facility opened in December 2020.

Ben Parsons joined bunkered as a Content Producer in 2023 and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.