Sir Jim Ratcliffe's bold vision for a ground-breaking new £2bn stadium entirely depends on building a title-winning team
Sir Jim Ratcliffe is effectively performing the splits at Manchester United, straddling the canyon between the Glazer family, the club’s rapacious majority owners, and the fans, the bedrock of the institution.
How he manages this high wire act will determine his longevity at the club. He admitted that he would not stick around were the abuse to reach anything close to Glazer levels. Top tip, Sir Jim, don’t hit the club for one billion in interest payments, and you have half a chance of sticking around to see United fulfil your pledge of winning the Premier League in your shimmering, new palazzo.
For now the fans remain sympathetic. In their response to the latest round of ticket hikes announced for next season, the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust (Must), while expressing their disapproval and disappointment at the move, made plain where the blame lies.
Must accept that Ratcliffe inherited an almighty mess born of mismanagement, neglect and debt. They understand Ratcliffe’s desire to reset the finances to ensure stability, but they profoundly disagree with asking the supporters to pay for the incompetence of distant owners in Florida.
Moreover, Must believe Ratcliffe was wrong to rush into increasing the cost of admission. They argue that freezing prices next year would have sent an inclusive message, demonstrating how much the club values the fans.
This in turn would have engendered a deeper bond with Ratcliffe and galvanised support inside the ground, the power of which was much in evidence at Leicester City on Sunday.
The tolerance of United supporters has reached unprecedented highs in a period of turbulence that has had fans looking anxiously at results from Southampton, Ipswich Town and Leicester such was the fear that the Championship might be their destination next season. Try modelling a financial future in a new stadium that involves fixtures against Oxford United, Swansea City and Hull City.
United are 13th in the Premier League. They have lost an unprecedented seven matches at home. Whilst the fans have remained loyal to the team, the steep decline following the sacking of Erik ten Hag in October rekindled the anger felt towards the Glazers, resulting in protests at the last home game against Arsenal that saw an estimated 5,000 fans gather on Sir Matt Busby Way before converging on the Munich Tunnel.
Ratcliffe responded to the gathering unrest with a round of strategic media interviews principally channelled through premium brands, the BBC, The Times and Gary Neville Inc. Ratcliffe impressed with his candour and apparent willingness to listen. The aim was to justify his latest round of cost cutting at Old Trafford, offering the prospect of a ground-breaking new stadium to provide a soft landing.
This paved the way for this week’s ticket hikes. Well, if you want the best stadium in the world, someone has to pay for it. The fans get that. They also know how United ended up in the midden and will have squirmed when in the interview process Ratcliffe declared his affection for the Glazers, who he felt were nice people.
Knock me down with a feather, members of the billionaires club with a shared interest enjoying each other’s company. Who’d have thought it? Ratcliffe’s claim that debt isn’t a problem is straight from his old A level economics textbook.
Managed debt is the founding principal of capitalist gain, one of the key motors of any economy. The slight of hand at United was to get the club to pay for the borrowing, not the Glazers, and that is what galls supporters.
Open expressions of devotion to the Glazers without acknowledging their financial chicanery is a policy move Ratcliffe’s script writers might want to reconsider. The supporters aren’t fools. Must might be a short form of “Mustard sharp”, so switched on is a body of campaigners, whose loyalty ultimately underpins the value of the club.
Trust is the heart of the matter. Ratcliffe’s reason for buying United, a kind of unexplained mad moment without any real motive, is hard to believe and even harder to reconcile with the warp speed at which his company Ineos is attacking the balance sheet.
The latest ticket hikes combined with cost cutting measures are entirely consistent with the acquisition of one organisation by another. This is not how football proceeds, historically at least.
United took £108m in gate receipts last season, £20m shy of Arsenal, the Premier League’s highest earners, and £47m short of Real Madrid’s table-topping £155m. Since that is where United see themselves, as market leaders, it is fair to assume, especially in any new home, that watching them will not get any cheaper.
The assumption has always been that the fans will pay the price asked. But that is also predicated on a title-winning team, something United have not managed since 2013 and show no sign of achieving in the near future, unless winning the Championship is part of the modelling.