Manchester United’s leadership team has been told that Mason Greenwood is coming back to the club.
In a way, it comes as little surprise. For some time now, the feeling has been that United would re-open the door for the 21-year-old.
Even so, the likelihood of Greenwood pulling on a United shirt again remains a difficult reality to absorb.
He has not played for the club since he was arrested in January 2022 after graphic images and audio were released on social media. Charges of attempted rape, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and controlling and coercive behaviour — all related to the same woman, and all of which Greenwood denied — were discontinued in February of this year.
Greenwood’s case has never been tried in court but those images and that audio are impossible to ignore.
On the first day of the season, a group of Manchester United supporters released a statement expressing their concerns about “taking Greenwood back”. It “tells us, as women, that we don’t matter,” it said, “that the 1 in 4 women who experience domestic abuse and/or sexual assault in the UK don’t matter. It tells us that the men who make the club money matter”.
I nodded while reading it, from start to finish.
Inviting Greenwood back into the fold would afford him the opportunity…
