Sir Jim Ratcliffe has singled out one key thing that Ruben Amorim has been able to take advantage of that Erik ten Hag never received at Manchester United.
Erik ten Hag’s reign as Manchester United manager came to an end last October after the Premier League club axed the former Ajax boss from Old Trafford.
The 55-year-old Dutchman had overseen a disastrous start to the 2024-25 Premier League season and Ten Hag was relieved of his United duties in 2024.
Ten Hag had committed his future to United only last summer after he inked a new deal with the Red Devils, despite Ineos committing to an end-of-season review.
Ineos were on the hunt for a United manager at the end of the 2023-24 campaign and England boss Thomas Tuchel was among the names linked with the club.
However, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos then committed to Ten Hag for the current campaign before the former United and Ajax boss was dismissed by the Red Devils.
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Photo by Alex Livesey - Danehouse/Getty Images
Photo by Alex Livesey – Danehouse/Getty Images
Sir Jim Ratcliffe highlights key Man Utd difference for Erik ten Hag and Ruben Amorim
Ruben Amorim left Sporting CP last November and the Manchester United manager arrived in the Old Trafford dugout as Erik ten Hag’s successor.
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Ruud van Nistelrooy, who was United assistant manager under Ten Hag, had briefly served as interim Red Devils boss ahead of Amorim’s appointment at the club.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos have made sweeping changes at Old Trafford since their arrival at the Premier League club, including a shake-up of the football structure.
Dan Ashworth was initially brought in as United sporting director last summer, but the former West Brom and Brighton technical director had an ill-fated reign.
The former Newcastle sporting director left Old Trafford after only five months and
Jason Wilcox succeeded him in his United role in December 2024.
Jason Wilcox was originally brought in from Southampton as United technical director, but Ratcliffe highlighted the benefit he has brought as the sporting director.
Speaking to BBC Sport, Ratcliffe said: “If I looked today there’s a great relationship between Ruben and Jason Wilcox the sporting director and Jason gives Ruben a lot of support. But Erik didn’t benefit from that.
“It’s quite difficult to understand in that previous season to what extent Erik maybe wasn’t performing as well as we had hoped, or it was that circumstances in which Erik was trying to perform.
“We couldn’t get to the bottom of that problem. It became clearer three months later and we got it wrong, but we’d moved on.
“I think we corrected it and we are in a very different place today.”
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What Sir Jim Ratcliffe made of Erik ten Hag’s Man Utd reign
Ratcliffe, who became United co-owner in 2023 after his minority stake purchase, made his position clear on Ten Hag amid the Red Devils building a football structure.
“At the end of the day, we are a consensus organisation,” he said.
“So, there’s a collection of us who make decisions It’s not just me that makes the decision, it involves that management team.
“If you look at the time we made the decision about Erik, the management team hadn’t been in place more than five minutes.
“Omar [Berrada] had only just arrived, Jason [Wilcox] had not been there terribly long, so we didn’t really have the management team in place for very long to make… it was a very difficult decision to make at short notice.
“Also, it’s quite difficult to extract Erik from Erik’s performance in the previous season from the management team he had been working with.”
Ten Hag has remained out of management since his United spell came to an end, but the Dutchman has since spoken out about his time at Old Trafford.