Nottingham Forest and Manchester United are currently on very different paths and it’s not going in line with the norm.
Had someone said to Forest fans that with 10 games of the season remaining, you’ll have 17 more points than United, many would have laughed, whilst many would have rendered whoever dared to say it as clueless.
Despite struggling last season, United won the FA Cup under Erik ten Hag and still managed to finish in sixth place in the Premier League table to qualify for the Europa League.
This season has been a disaster though. United are 14th in the Premier League, have lost 12 of their 28 games – including at home to Forest – and are as close to Ipswich in 18th as they are to Nuno Espirito Santo’s team in third.
Now, Sir Jim Ratcliffe has taken the stand in a revealing interview with Gary Neville – and he’s namechecked Forest in a way that might come across as mildly amusing to both Reds and United supporters.
Photo by Visionhaus/Getty Images
Photo by Visionhaus/Getty Images
Sir Jim Ratcliffe shares how Manchester United are similar to Nottingham Forest
This is quite amusing in one sense and almost sad in another. For fans of a certain age, United were always the team to beat growing up in the nineties and the fall from grace is alarming.
Ratcliffe has given a word of warning to United fans. He’s explained some information about the club’s wage bill that they are working to right now – taking out injured players and ones out on loan – believing that it’s of similar size to a club like Forest or Everton.
He said on The Overlap: “If I look at the salary bill of the squad that’s available to him (Ruben Amorim), that salary bill is not the salary bill of Manchester City or Liverpool.
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“It’s a fraction of it. If you look at the salary bill of the players available to him that aren’t injured or aren’t out on loan; we’ve got Antony out on loan, we’ve got Sancho out on loan, we’ve got Rashford out on loan, we’ve got Mason Mount who hasn’t really played in the last two seasons, we’ve got Luke Shaw who hasn’t played in the last two seasons.
“So if you modify our salary bill for the players available to Ruben, our salary bill ranks us in the middle-second half of the table with the likes of a Nottingham Forest or an Everton; not a Manchester City.”
Forest wage bill and how it compares to Manchester United
It’s never really easy to grasp what footballers earn entirely, but Capology claim that the entire Forest wage bill comes in at just over £1 million a week with Nikola Milenkovic raking in the highest weekly wage.
United’s is considerably higher. They fork out £3.2 million per-week in wages equating to £171 million annually – which compared to Forest’s £55 million annual wage structure, there is no comparison.
It’s believed that United’s top earners are Casemiro and Bruno Fernandes – with both players currently available to Amorim – since Ratcliffe is keen to take out the players who are currently injured to prove his point.
Furthermore, comparing United to Forest is likely going to cause some intrigue among the fan base at Old Trafford. The Reds sit third and are massively overachieving, whilst United are languishing in the bottom half.
It makes zero sense to compare United to Forest in one breath and then claim that Ruben Amorim is doing an excellent job in another when quite frankly Nuno Espirito Santo isn’t fazed with the budget he has to work with.
Forest face United in a few weeks time and hopefully the United owner’s words can be ringing in the ears of the Reds players when the Red Devils come to the City Ground.