Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe
Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe
Former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan has insisted that Sir Jim Ratcliffe is doing what is right for Manchester United by cutting more staff at Old Trafford.
MEN Sport understands that United are set to lay off a further 100 staff members after 250 people were moved on in autumn last year. United officials insist that these decisions are being made because costs on and off the pitch remain high and need to be slashed.
Ratcliffe has become unpopular among the United fanbase after he chose to eliminate the concession prices on tickets for the remainder of the season. Further redundancies are bound to be unpopular with those inside the club and those that are at risk of losing their job have not been formally informed yet.
However on his talkSPORT show, Jordan insisted that these decisions will be made for the long-term benefit of the club. "There must be a reason behind it," he explained.
"Ultimately, what you are not looking to do, especially a commercial beast like Jim Ratcliffe, will be to detract from the performance of Manchester United. I can promise you, he will be looking at this and thinking: ‘This is jobs for the boys.’
"I had it at Palace and I went through it like a dose of salts. I was evaluating what a bunch of mickey takers they were and how they had been living off other people’s money for years and, actually, were not doing a particularly good job.
"What Jim Ratcliffe has done is: ‘Nah, none of this La La Land of football about how no one is accountable, here is the real world - who is doing what, where and how and how effective are you? Stop gorming out of the window and daydreaming about what you are doing outside of work, how much have you brought to the business today, tomorrow and the following week?'
"The reality is you bring businessmen into football, you streamline the thinking. The first thing he said was that he was gobsmacked at the lack of standards and people not being motivated.
"You want to work from home? Good, you can work from home permanently now for somebody else.
"The bottom line is, they are cutting out the fat and the elements of the business that are not producing the outcomes that perhaps they should. The overstaffing and the lackadaisical mentality and they are going to build an effective, lean and focussed machine that can come out the other side delivering the same outcomes better and more efficiently with less waste."