ALTHOUGH Manchester United aren't everyone's favourite football club, many football supporters will sympathise with the worries this morning of United fans.

A new, unpopular owner taking over is bound to raise fears for the future. And it is a great shame that football is now all about high finance and no longer about the local tribal loyalties that create the supporters' passion.

However, Manchester United are a global brand. They have been able to buy up the best players in Europe by exploiting markets for their merchandise in the Far East.

It is little wonder, then, that a foreign businessman should want a piece of such profitable action.

United fans' greatest concern must be that Malcolm Glazer doesn't understand that this country's football market has changed enormously since he began his pursuit of the club in 2004. He now has to match the millions that Chelsea's Russian oil owner is pumping in to his club.

Even if Mr Glazer cannot match Roman Abramovitch, it may be a little consolation to United fans that, whoever owns their club, it will continue to exist.

The real sadness of current football finances is that lower league clubs like Darlington, who don't benefit from a global brand, are constantly flirting with administration. Further down the football pyramid, Northern League clubs are on the verge of going out of business altogether. Their precarious struggle is unlamented by the big boys with the big money - and yet those clubs mean as much to their communities as Manchester United does to its.

Less than passionate

WITH some justification, the peripheral areas of One North-East's territory have complained that the regional development agency ignores them in favour of the Tyneside metropolis.

So it was welcome to see the agency hold a sub-regional launch of its Passionate People, Passionate Places at Shildon, where a museum studying the passions close to the hearts of many North-Easterners - the railways - has taken impressive shape.

You might imagine that, feeling starved of interaction with their agency, the civic and business leaders of south Durham would have flocked to such an event.

But they didn't. Some towns were wholly unrepresented.

If we want the regional development agency to engage with us, we have to be prepared to engage with it.