It has been a week of ferocious blood-letting among Manchester United fans. At a mutinous Old Trafford on Sunday, the Glazers and Sir Jim Ratcliffe came under persistent attack as a furious Stretford End called for them to “sell the club and f--- off home”. And that was one of the more savoury chants about the club’s co-owners.

Indeed, there could be more of the same against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Saturday when Michael Carrick, still manager for now, goes in search of only a second Premier League win of a torturous campaign.

From initially hoping Ratcliffe would right the wrongs of the Glazer era at Old Trafford, there are many United fans who now make little distinction between the outspoken British billionaire from Failsworth and the silent Americans from Florida.

The reality, though, is that neither is going anywhere any time soon. And for fans desperately hoping for direction and some kind of window into how future ownership may look after a tumultuous past fortnight, the small print in the club’s recently published accounts, relating to a summer of refinancing historic debt, offers some interesting clues.

On the surface, the accounts for last season tell a familiar story, that of a club still weighed down by an onerous debt burden from the Glazers’ hostile takeover more than two decades ago. Despite aggressive and unpopular – but necessary – moves to reduce operating costs under Ratcliffe, United posted a loss for a seventh consecutive year, with interest payable on long-standing loans swallowing up almost £39m.

Dig a little deeper, though, and the terms of the club’s new $550m (£411m) loans, following a refinancing deal in June, provide the clearest indication yet of when Ratcliffe’s Ineos may make efforts to seek majority control from the Glazers – and how any such move could unlock the financing of a new 100,000-capacity stadium.

At the very least, they illustrate when the club’s existing debt will become easier to refinance and earnings strong enough to support substantially more borrowing. It shows how a new stadium could become a vehicle through which the ownership structure itself is transformed.

Crucially, the terms of the loans – or so-called “senior secured notes” – outline two new concepts.

The future of United

The first concept is a “New Stadium Group”, essentially a separate company set up by Manchester United to own and manage the proposed new ground and associated land, to keep it legally separate from the main club’s assets that lenders can claim against.

Once United officially designates the new stadium as its home ground, that protection could change under the loan agreement.

The second is a “Stadium Event”: money raised by United specifically to fund a new stadium (or redevelop Old Trafford), either through borrowing or equity injection from investors.

What is significant about that? The terms stipulate that a “Stadium Event” would unlock the option to repay the $550m loan notes at face value without an early repayment penalty. But this can only happen on or after June 10, 2029.

A separate secured-term loan of $225m (£168m) can also be repaid at any time, but the clauses work together to encourage all debt relating to the Glazers’ leveraged buyout (LBO) to be cleared alongside stadium financing on or after that June 2029 date.

Given that United’s revolving credit facility (RCF) – which United use to help manage cash flow and has a current drawdown of £200m – is set to expire on Dec 31, 2029, it makes the second half of 2029 “a natural window to pay down or remove the LBO debt and refinance the RCF as part of a Stadium Event”, according to Jamie Bajwa, a former Goldman Sachs equity research analyst and founder of sports finance advisory SPG.

The existing LBO restrictions effectively put a ceiling on how much additional debt United – whose borrowings currently total £689m – can raise as of today.

Bajwa, who is the football finance writer for the United We Stand fanzine and whose newsletter analyses club finances, puts the figure at a maximum of £295m – nowhere near enough to fully fund a stadium project roughly expected to cost between £2bn and £3bn.

But after June 2029 United would, in theory, have much more borrowing flexibility. Bajwa suggests that could be as much as £1.6bn if the existing debt was removed from the club’s books and its leverage increased to five times EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation, something that is essentially a proxy for cash operating profit) for stadium financing.

A new stadium in itself would lead to a substantial increase in EBITDA and transform United’s finances in the long term.

Of course, for Ratcliffe and Ineos – who hold a 28.94 per cent stake in the club – to even contemplate paying off or refinancing the Glazer-induced debt, it would need to make financial sense. And it is hard to make a persuasive case for that without majority ownership.

The “ifs” here are plentiful, just as the questions and unknowns are considerable. Could the Glazers be persuaded to sell their majority stake? And, even if they were, there is a separate question of where the money would come to fund that.

Moreover, will United have put themselves into a position where the financials look a lot healthier by 2029, and will they have a real platform to build from there? Being in the Champions League regularly is critical to that but United are currently flirting with relegation, not the top five, and yet another manager is under huge pressure and fighting to keep his job.

And then what about Ineos itself? The petrochemicals giant has long demonstrated its comfort in holding large debts.

But it is currently under significant financial pressure with net debts of more than £10bn amid rising European energy costs, high UK and EU taxes and what Ratcliffe has criticised as excessive carbon regulations. Would it be in a position to potentially accommodate additional debt saddled on United, assuming of course Ratcliffe and his partners were happy to do that?

Some fans will hope there is another prospective buyer out there with deep pockets waiting in the wings to scoop up a famous English sporting institution, but there has been nothing that points towards that.

For the first time, though, it is possible to plot a more substantive pathway to ownership change and a new stadium, even if the costs involved are still likely to demand equity investment from outside strategic partners and uncertainties abound.

There certainly seems to be a will on Ratcliffe’s part. United borrowed more as part of their summer refinancing, for example, to provide the funding capacity to acquire £63.5m of land adjacent to Old Trafford required for the new stadium.

There are fans who would rather that money had been spent on a left-back this summer. It was also impossible to overlook the feelings of protestors at the Manchester derby last month, and the Stretford End against Bournemouth on Sunday, given chants on both occasions of: “You can stick your new ground up your a---.”

But whether fans favour a new ground or a redeveloped Old Trafford, the stadium question cannot be ignored or forgotten just because United are once more mired in crisis.

The Glazers were long derided for neglecting Old Trafford and an absence of long-term strategic planning, and it has cost the club dearly.

So moves to address decades of inaction on that front are as necessary as they are long overdue and cannot get lost or sidelined amid fan fury and short-term thinking.

“The route to the new Old Trafford is now more intertwined with the financial firepower of Ineos,” said Bajwa. “The terms of the loan notes accommodate Ineos taking a majority position in Manchester United. Ineos could then refinance the LBO debt and house it on their own books rather than the club’s books.

“Should this happen, it would provide the club with much more flexibility in how they finance a new stadium.”