David Beckham and Gary Neville refuse to copy Ryan Reynolds after buying out Man Utd icons

Gary Neville has admitted that his and approach as owners will be different from that of high-spending duo and Rob McElhenney.

The iconic defender-turned-pundit completed a takeover of the side earlier in May alongside Beckham as part of that includes banker and LTA chair Lord Mervyn Davies and businessman Declan Kelly.

Neville, alongside other Class of '92 icons , Phil Neville, and Nicky Butt, arrived at the club in 2014 and held stakes, and were joined by Beckham and billionaire Peter Lim in 2019. However, a new ownership group has bought them out after , though the collective of other ex-Red Devils will still be involved with the club "across technical, football, commercial, recruitment and the SCFC foundation."

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Wrexham were not long ago battling it out against the Ammies in the fourth division after their meteoric rise under the stewardship of Hollywood star Reynolds and fellow actor , but now find themselves Championship-bound. This has infamously come after a heavy injection of cash from their owners, who took over in 2021, though Neville has not promised such purpose or capital supply when it comes to his venture.

"Me and Becks [] decided that we would put money in for the next four or five years, which is a commitment we've all made. There's been quite a lot of money been promised over the next four years," admitted Neville, speaking on , brought to you by Sky Bet.

"[But] we won't change the budget, and to reverse out of the model we already have, you need two or three years. You can't just go from investing to becoming sustainable – you've got players' contracts for three years, and you've generally got a model that you've built which you can't get away from.

"I think it's very different from Wrexham and Birmingham, where you're talking about hundreds of millions going into those clubs, particularly Birmingham. That's not what we're looking to do with Salford."

Both Reynolds and McElhenney completed their takeover of the then-National League side for just £2million four years ago. However, this investment has since snowballed as the ambitious pair sought to raise their club through the English football pyramid, and did so.

They were promoted to League Two in 2023 and League One in 2024, and now, in 2025, they'll grace the Championship after finishing second in an automatic promotion place behind Birmingham City.

The Blues are another club that has seen significant investment from new, determined North American owners. Financier Tom Wagner, co-founder of Knighthead Capital Management, fronted a 2023 takeover for US-based Shelby Companies Limited and now acts as chairman, with icon Tom Brady a co-owner.

While Birmingham broke countless transfer records with their summer spending in 2024, including the £15m signing of striker Jay Stansfield, smashing the previous League One record transfer by roughly £12m, Neville and Beckham's Salford journey will not be one of such extravagance.

"We want it to be a good football project," continued Neville. "The money we spent on our football club, we could have easily bought a League One club. The reason we didn't is that we wanted to build a football club from scratch. We had 100 fans at the time, Salford.

"Every fan that comes to Salford we respect enormously, but they're there because of the things that actually we've done in the last 10 years, which is a great position as owners to be in.

"We can't be accused of lacking spirit or fight or not putting money where our mouth is. We can never be accused of that sulphur because we didn't. We haven't got 10,000 fans that have been there for a long time that have an opinion that's based on the history."

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