Gary Neville will not be getting carried away following Salford takeover

Gary Neville insists he will not allow himself to get too carried away with Salford’s potential as part of a new ownership group, because he knows all too well how “bloody hard” League Two is.

The club announced on Thursday that Neville and his former Manchester United team-mate David Beckham were members of a new ownership consortium.

Beckham has already spoken about dreaming big to ultimately reach the Premier League, and comparisons have already been drawn between the new set-up at Salford and Wrexham under the ownership of Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, who have achieved three successive promotions to reach the Championship.

Neville though says everyone connected to the new ownership is being realistic about how tough the challenge ahead will be.

“I don’t want to get too carried away because I know how bloody hard League Two is,” he told the PA news agency.

“We have stabilised in League Two – and that’s probably being economical with the truth.

“I am not going to sit here and say ‘we’re going to be in the Champions League in the next 10 years’, or ‘we’re going to be in the Premier League’. We have to make sure we pay all our attention to League Two and the brilliant league that that is.

“I don’t want to talk too much about ambition at this point. There is an ambition. There is a real determined group of people who’ve come in, but we have to keep our feet on the ground.”

Beckham first invested in Salford in January 2019, joining former ‘Class of 92’ team-mates Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Nicky Butt as a shareholder.

Gary Neville bought out the stake of former co-owner Peter Lim last August.

The club confirmed on Thursday that Phil Neville, Scholes, Giggs and Butt were no longer shareholders but would still be contributing to the club in other roles as before, with Scholes working on recruitment and Giggs having a role on the football side and on the club’s foundation board.

The new ownership group was formed with participation from the advisory and investment firm Consello, whose founder and chief executive Declan Kelly will be a co-chair on the Salford board along with Lord Mervyn Davies, chair of Consello’s advisory board.

Neville became the latest big name to link up with Consello in March last year, with former NFL quarterback Tom Brady among a group of sports stars working with the firm.

Wrexham’s increased overseas appeal since their Hollywood takeover helped them achieve revenue of £26.7million in the 2023-24 period, up 155 per cent on the previous year.

Beckham and Neville have already stressed that the Wrexham blueprint cannot be followed to the letter at Salford, but generating commercial revenue to drive investment in the team will clearly be a priority.

“We’ve found it difficult with the sort of budgets that we’ve had in the last five years (so) we’ve got to ask about how we do things differently next season to ensure that the money that we’re spending on the first team and in other parts of the club are spent in the best way,” he said.

“We want this club to be sustainable in a four or five-year period, which means we have to grow revenues while still being accessible to fans, that’s the most important thing.”

Beckham’s celebrity appeal is likely to assist with raising the club’s profile, with Neville admitting the former England captain was likely to be “more involved than he has been” since joining his Class of 92 team-mates as a shareholder in January 2019. However, he insisted that did not yet extend to a conversation about Salford going up against Inter Miami, the Major League Soccer club he co-owns.

“I’ve not spoken to him about a US tour or playing against Inter Miami, I really haven’t – that’s something that really hasn’t been a priority. In the last few months, we’ve been prioritising making sure Salford City have the next four or five years looked after.”