Women's Sport Week 2017: 'Shocking' that Man Utd do not have women's team

I think it is shocking that in 2017 a club the size of Manchester United does not have a women's team, and what is even worse is they will not properly explain their position.

Look around the world and every other major football club has a women's team, or plans for one. Two of the biggest, men's Champions League finalists Real Madrid and Juventus, are about to set up theirs.
Most of those teams are fully integrated with the rest of the club and being backed financially too - a few miles from Old Trafford, for example, Manchester City's commitment to their women's side is clear.
Southampton are the only other Premier League side not to have an affiliated women's team, although they have just announced a new under-21 team for next season, giving a pathway for the young female players in their girls' sides - something United's girls do not have.
Locally, nationally or globally, whichever clubs United compare themselves to, they are allowing themselves to be left behind.
I don't understand why.
When people have talked about this issue in the past, they have focused on how, with the club's vast resources and worldwide profile, a United team would help develop the women's game.
That is still true, but it now works the other way too - United are missing out on an easy way of engaging with their huge female fanbase, in Manchester and further afield, and promoting the importance of women in the make-up of their club.
A women's team would do all of that. The game is growing fast and other clubs have demonstrated they believe it is a big commercial asset, at very little cost.
Why do United think differently?

It's 'under review' - will the situation change?

When the BBC asked United last week about the prospect of them forming a women's team, the club responded by saying: "It is a matter that is under review and a detailed analysis is currently being undertaken."
Taken in isolation, that reply gives the impression it is an issue being actively discussed by the club.
The problem for me with just accepting that is the case and leaving them to get on with it is that United have been saying the same thing for several years now, since 2013.
Whoever asks them about a women's team - and many people from United fans to MPs and national newspapers have done so down the years - United's stock reply is the matter is "under review".
Hearing it repeated again and again makes it feel like a brush-off.
The BBC's request for an interview was turned down but, if I was given the chance to ask United any questions, I would like to know who is actually carrying out this review and analysis.
Who have they been talking to since 2013, what have they found out so far, is there any evidence a review has been happening - and, crucially, when is it likely to end?

Why don't United have a women's team?

United did have a women's team until the Glazers scrapped it in 2005, with a spokesman saying "it was not part of their core business".
I can actually understand why they may have made that decision at the time - United were outside the top two divisions of the old Women's Premier League and the Glazers might not have considered them a good representative of their brand.
Also, the profile of the women's game in the UK was a lot smaller then.
But that was 12 years ago and things are very different now - from the level of professionalism at the top level of the women's game here to the way it is marketed and the commercial opportunities that come with that.
So, if United's decision-makers are purely concerned with financial matters and still basing their views on women's football on what was happening when they ditched their women's team, they are well out of touch.

I also wonder if the demographic of United's board has anything to do with the club's current stance.
Of the 13 members listed on the United website, their average age is almost 50 and only one is female - Darcie Glazer Kassewitz, who is rarely seen at Old Trafford.
United are not the only Premier League club whose board is predominantly male and middle-aged, but maybe their thinking boils down to the fact there is nobody in a position of power at United who believes women's football is important enough to be a proper part of the club. If they think that, why not just say it?
Then there is the question of whether they are also scared of failing on the pitch.
It is only four years since Manchester City obtained a Women's Super League licence. Since then, their investment in their women's team and its integration with the men's facilities and resources, has proved a great success. They won the domestic treble last season, and reached the semi-finals of the Champions League.
City's men's team have finished above United in each of the past four Premier League seasons - could United be frightened that, if they had a women's team, it would be overshadowed by City too?