Sir Jim Ratcliffe provided an emphatic update on the sales of Kobbie Mainoo and Alejandro Garnacho, while the Manchester United co-owner also owned up to two major mistakes made early in his tenure.
Mainoo and Garnacho were both understood to be available for the right price in January. Man Utd were not actively pushing the pair out, though offers of around £70m for Mainoo and roughly £60m for Garnacho would have been given serious consideration.
The pair are homegrown and sales of those types of stars are extra lucrative for clubs. Indeed, the proceeds are logged as ‘pure profit’ on the books and greatly enhance a side’s spending power.
With new boss Ruben Amorim requiring a total squad rebuild, it has been speculated Mainoo and Garnacho will again be up for grabs if sizeable bids are received in the summer.
But according to Sir Jim Ratcliffe himself, Man Utd will not part ways with either player for financial reasons.
When asked about potential exits for the pair, Ratcliffe responded: “No no. We won’t be selling players because of the state we are in financially.
“The club had got bloated so we reduced that and will finish it with a lean and efficient organisation. That’s how we will address the costs. The player decisions will all be focused on how we are going to improve performance. That’s all.”
While Ratcliffe’s response was crystal clear, it does not rule out a sale if one or both of those players push to leave or if they underperform.
Per the latest from the Guardian, Mainoo wants to leave Man Utd and ‘move abroad’.
The midfielder pockets just £20,000-a-week at present and talks with Man Utd over a contract extension and worthy pay rise have not borne fruit.
TEAMtalk understands Chelsea will attempt to convince Mainoo to remain in England if he is given the green light to leave Man Utd at season’s end.
Ratcliffe’s errors
Ratcliffe also touched on Man Utd’s managerial situation and held his hands up at two decisions he now concedes were “errors”.
“It was too early for us to make a big decision in reality,” said Ratcliffe on NOT sacking Erik ten Hag last summer.
Man Utd would in turn hand the Dutchman a new contract before swinging the axe less than three months into the season. The final cost of removing Ten Hag and his coaching staff after he was handed a new deal hit £10.4m.
“It was quite difficult to extract Erik’s performance from the structure around him,” explained Ratcliffe.
“Was the erratic performance a function of Erik, or was it a function of the organisation? And we couldn’t really get to the bottom of answering that question with certainty, I suppose, so we gave Erik the benefit of the doubt.”
Asked if he regrets that now, Ratcliffe said: “Yeah, it was the wrong decision. We made the wrong decision. It was an error. So yeah, I suppose in that sense I regret it.”
Ratcliffe also admitted hiring Dan Ashworth as sporting director proved to be an error. The official lasted just five months at Old Trafford and cost £4.1m to remove from office in December.
Offering a brief explanation as to what went wrong, Ratcliffe claimed the “chemistry” between Ashworth and Man Utd simply wasn’t right.
Latest Man Utd news – Ratcliffe throws five stars under the bus
In other news, Ratcliffe threw no fewer than five Man Utd stars under the bus when claiming they are problems he and INEOS inherited.
The 72-year-old said: “If you look at the players we are buying this summer, that we didn’t buy, we’re buying Antony, we’re buying Casemiro, we’re buying Onana, we’re buying Hojlund, we’re buying Sancho.
“These are all things from the past, whether we like it or not, we’ve inherited those things and have to sort that out.”
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