Sir Jim Ratcliffe, minority shareholder at Manchester United, in the stands at Old Trafford on November 10, 2024
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has not made himself popular at Old Trafford in recent weeks
Another big week at Manchester United in which they have sacked their new sporting director, lost at home to Nottingham Forest for the first time in 30 years and moved up to seventh, four points behind the leaders, in a Europa League table of 36 clubs largely operating on a fraction of their budget.
A bracing introduction to life at United for Ruben Amorim as he approaches a derby away at Manchester City on Sunday. Six games in, and some suspect that he might win given City’s form – but either way he would rather have City’s on-pitch problems than those at United. City are proposing a rebuild of their squad from a position of relative strength and great experience. United are trying to rearrange the staff tasked with the rebuilding as they do so.
United are attempting change, the problem is that the football never stops. That is, the games flow relentlessly for nine months of the year and the market itself is never really shut. In the meantime, the club lost £113 million last year, and £115.5 million two years before that. Costs accumulate like bad results on the pitch, and yet the surest way for a club to go backwards is to stop investing. This is a football talent-based industry, and the moment one steps back from the football-talent market, so all momentum is lost.
The minority stake, majority influence, new force at the club, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, has not made himself popular in recent weeks. Ticket prices have gone up, 250 staff have left or been made redundant, Dan Ashworth has been discarded at some expense after a long pursuit. Sir Alex Ferguson was finally let go by the club 38 years after his appointment – his ambassadorial role terminated. Christmas was cancelled for the remaining staff, while their Liverpool counterparts convened for dinner in the city’s Anglican cathedral, albeit going home early.
Many of the big Premier League clubs have been through a painful rebirth in recent years under new ownership, or new ideas from old ownership. Most recently Chelsea, but also Liverpool and Arsenal. Even City worked their way through three managers under Abu Dhabi before they recruited Pep Guardiola. The summer of 2008 for City was tumultuous as much for who they did not sign as for those they did, and the Premier League charges suggest a sting in the tail. United’s situation is that much more difficult because the decline has resisted many relaunches, reboots and fresh starts over the last 11 years.
United cannot keep losing money in such volume
The issue for United is there is no other way. Ratcliffe may present as an irascible billionaire with a disproportionate interest in workplace tidiness, but he does have a point. United cannot keep losing money in the volume that they have done in the past three years. Over that period around £370 million in losses have flowed from poor signings in no small part – and a squad that has been unable to mitigate the cost by consistently qualifying for the Champions League.
Erik ten Hag was sacked as Manchester United manager after a poor start to the season
The cost of sacking Erik ten Hag has added to the financial burden on United
The burden of sacking Erik ten Hag, and then Ashworth, has not helped that cost-cutting programme when those financial losses have been self-inflicted and it is ordinary people paying with their jobs, and fans being asked to pay more for tickets.
As for the redundancies, the club believe that every saving helps – however punitive it may feel. Losses are covered by loans that add cost. If the club could erase the contracts of Casemiro and Antony from their financial obligations they would, but those mistakes cannot be undone quite so simply. Ratcliffe has chosen to take the pain now rather than hang on to what he considers a mistake, as has been the case in the past. The pressure now is to stay the course.
Club’s pursuit of youth hampered by data analysis
Courting unpopularity is not why anyone buys a football club, although all but a tiny fraction of owners experience it at some point. While some can build corporate empires and fortunes, nothing can quite prepare them for the reaction of a disapproving football public. Ratcliffe and Ineos have to pick a method to deal with the losses on their balance sheet, the extractive nature of the Glazers and the demands of the Premier League and Uefa’s financial controls.
There are signs that they will go the way of Chelsea and others by prioritising very young talent on longer contracts and attempt to back their judgment in that respect. Although, as Ratcliffe has hinted, the bespoke data analysis models required to do so successfully are unto United as the mechanised power loom was to the 19th century Manchester’s non-industrialised textile rivals. United are, so to speak, still weaving by hand.
That presents problems although United’s new signings point in that direction. Diego León, the teenage left-wing back from Paraguaya, has been enthusiastically talking up his move to Old Trafford this week to his local media. While that deal is far from done, it is certainly a possibility. It would be of a different cost and contract to those done for the likes of Leny Yoro and Chido Obi-Martin. The exception being that León, 17, does not have a European Union passport.
It could yet get worse beforehand for United – and that could be against City at the Etihad where the champions remain very hard to beat, and after Saturday have a chance to make ground on Liverpool and Arsenal. Amorim has clearly seen enough in the past few weeks to recognise that the challenge is no smaller than he thought. Ratcliffe has £250 million of his own money in play, too – which will be no consolation to those who have paid with their jobs at the club this year. But he, like everyone else involved, has much to lose as he insists that the club takes its medicine.
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