Put a poll out there and ask all United fans whether they'd accept vastly reduced transfer spending for 3 seasons for a refurbished OT and we all know how that would look. It is a problem though that does need to be solved, and I've always felt (rightly or wrongly) that selling stadium rights is the ultimate low hanging fruit in terms of easy money and the fact that they've never done that shows at least a smidgeon of caring what the fans want. I'm shocked that they've never done that.
I'm trying be as impartial as possible in this debate but I'm lying if I said I would sacrifice Uniteds position in terms of the quality of our squad. I think people underestimate how tough it will be to get back to competing if we sacrifice the team for this cause or any other, and this is coming from someone who hopes that their posting history illustrates me as a fan who doesn't need United to be the best to enjoy this team. That doesn't mean I want us to sink into obscurity though, not without a near guarantee of better days for the club and we don't have that. If that changes then so will my position on this.
In America,
My Hockey team Boston, in the 90's moved to a brand new arena.
The old one was called the Garden.
The new one was named Fleet Centre after the sponsors,
When the naming rights game up again, TD Bank bought the rights, but was asked to re name it Garden in honour of the original and so its now called the TD Garden.
I'm pretty sure a sponsor for the stadium could somehow incorporate "Old Trafford" into the naming rights and the club could use that money to refurbish thoroughly the stadium.
It should at least be put to us the fans, for a sensible consideration.