When Sir Jim Ratcliffe arrived at Manchester United, fans thought it would mean seeing the back of the Glazers and instant signs of a return to the club’s former glory days. One year on, all fans have gotten are a number of high profile interviews and a slurry of financial headlines. Oisin MacCarthy takes a look at how the new boss’s reign has begun and looks at if any of Ratcliffe's revelations in these interviews can give United fans hope for the future.
A New Beginning
After years of dwindling performances, erroneous spending, and a laser focus on siphoning money out of the club, the Glazers conceded control of football operations at Manchester United to Sir Jim Ratcliffe in early 2024. The boyhood fan, who came bearing vision, energy, and genuine pedigree through his cross-sport endeavours, promised a new hope for fans that they would return to their trophy-laden glory days.
Just over a year on, even the most sanguine would struggle to rate his tenure as anything above an unmitigated disaster. While the Liver bird appears poised to soar back on its perch, Ratcliffe’s reign of terror has been marred by dismal performances and baffling boardroom decisions, culminating in tone deaf ticket price increases. Keen to bat back, Ratcliffe has delivered a flurry of interviews across UK media. I have collated the good, bad, and ugly from the onslaught.
Early Woes
Ratcliffe’s first big decision concerned the fate of the club’s former manager, Erik Ten Hag, who after spending just south of £400m in his two years at the club, delivered United’s worst ever league position. He failed to finish with a positive goal difference, although did caveat the season with an FA Cup. Ratcliffe conceded it was a mistake to extend the Dutchman’s contract, back him to the tune of another £200m, and sack him after just 9 league games, costing an additional £15m, although he pleaded ‘mitigating circumstances’, in the form of a lack of time together with his freshly minted board.
This represents quite curious reasoning. While it is true some key lieutenants such as Omar Berrada had barely warmed their seats, there were board members in place who Ratcliffe trusted, including Dave Brailsford, later lauded in the interview for his achievements in British cycling. It also doesn’t explain why United were sounding out alternatives in the Summer, if reliable media reports were to be believed. In their interview, Gary Neville mentioned this to Ratcliffe, who neglected to touch on the point.
Amorim’s Appraisal
Ratcliffe inadvertently gave a thorough synopsis for why hiring Amorim mid-season instead of pre-season was unwise, opining that he has done an ‘excellent job’ despite languishing in 13th, listing a lack of training time for his niche system, absence of a full transfer window, and a language barrier as extenuating circumstances for poor performances. He further excused Amorim by stating that 4 of his 8 top earners have been unavailable for large swathes of the season, and that when accounting for this, their performances should be expected to be in line with Nottingham Forest and Everton.
There is merit to the idea that wage bill is a good predictor of performance. In fact, Harvard educated economist Stefan Szymanski considers it among the best, although he underpins this assessment with the notion that paying big wages tends to attract the best players. Therefore there is an inherent selection bias in Ratcliffe including players such as Sancho and Rashford, who were shipped out in large part for not living up to their reputation, and therefore not as big of losses as implied by the metric.
In any case, Ratcliffe oversaw the signings of De Ligt, Mazraoui, Ugarte, Yoro, and Zirkzee this Summer, all of whom comfortably earn over £100k p/w according to Capology, with De Ligt earning just shy of £200k. This is before even considering their transfer fees, and renewals to other players such as the club’s brightest star in Bruno Fernandes, reported to be pushing £300k p/w. As for plucky old Nottingham Forest, name dropped by Ratcliffe as a team that should be comparable to the Red Devils? They possess one player in their entire squad on a 6-figure weekly salary, but sit ten places above United in the league. While there have been availability concerns in spells, even for some of the new additions, and reported wages can have some discrepancies, it is tough to reconcile his comments with any sound evidence.
Financial confusion
For a man who rose from little to become Britain’s richest man, Ratcliffe displayed a ferocious misapprehension for the scale of money across his interviews. Gary Neville enquired as to why the Association of Former Manchester United Players were on the receiving end of £40,000 worth of budget cuts and suggested that Bruno speak at a dinner and raffle a shirt to cover the costs and reinstate the funding. Ratcliffe appeared quite stumped and insisted that the idea was never presented to him, and that he would have supported it.
To put it lightly, it is hard to believe Ratcliffe or his subordinates had not thought of the idea, given it was far from a novel suggestion, and if he had any semblance of desire to maintain the funding, it could have surely been rectified even since the interview had aired. Ratcliffe went on to delineate the well-publicised financial strains at Man United, with the club recording around a third of a billion pounds in losses over the last 5 years. He did stretch these claims to the extreme however, by brashly declaring that United would have been ‘bust by Christmas’ without the draconian cost cutting measures that he has implemented. Just about every source attached to the club with any iota of financial fluency stressed that the idea an SEC-traded club the size of Man United would cease to exist was a goliath exaggeration, and it certainly wasn’t the removal of free lunches or miniscule cuts to a charity wing for former players that kept the club afloat.
Ratcliffe went on to preach to the fans of the club, humbly proclaiming that it was their money he was spending, and described a binary choice to fans, whereby he would rather spend that on a new player than staff lunches. To me, this seems like an unfair comparison given the lunch cuts will save around £1m a year, contrasted with the newly signed youthful wing-back Patrick Dorgu who will cost around £7m per year over his 5 year contract when his wages and transfer fee are amortised.
Neville brought up the failures of the Glazer family as the source for the financial mishaps, which the steadfast Ratcliffe seemed keen to distance himself from, instead shifting blame to the 2 or 3 administrations who preceded him. When Gary retorted that by any definition this was negligence on behalf of the Glazers, given it was them who made the appointments, Ratcliffe suddenly remarked that he was keen to ‘look forward’ and not dwell on the past.
Other Tidbits
When pressed for why he wanted to take on a role of such magnitude, Ratcliffe gleefully began to illustrate his passion for the club that he has held since he was a schoolboy. He spoke of his belief that Manchester United is the biggest and greatest club in the world, and mentioned an anecdote surrounding a trip to Mongolia where he was engulfed by adoring fans. It was all very engaging, but one must wonder how this question would have been answered had he been successful in his bid to buy rivals Chelsea just a few years ago, where he held a season ticket.
Ratcliffe touched on concerns around meeting the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) in his BBC interview, and assured fans that the club would not be in danger of breaching regulations ahead of the new season. He further affirmed that there would be a budget made available for the Summer, and that no players would have to be sold to fund signings instead focusing on other avenues such as the aforementioned cost cutting measures and increasing ticket prices. He did add that player sales could supplement the summer’s budget.
A New Home
Ratcliffe first hinted at plans for a £2bn new stadium in March, and later revealed more extensive details a short time later. Despite his relatively recent move out of the country to save an estimated £4billion in taxes, Ratcliffe portrayed fervent support for the government’s economic growth endeavours, and said that he planned to work with Rachel Reeves to underpin the Manchester regeneration project with what he considers will be the most iconic stadium in the world. The reveal was heavy on aesthetics, with some rival fans taking creative liberties in describing the ‘trident mast’ design, but there was a noticeable lack of detail on finance, particularly in light of his comments surrounding the club’s liquidity issues.
Reasons to be hopeful?
Despite some ubiquitous difficulties that have marred his early tenure, and ambiguous contentions throughout his interviews, there were nuggets that may perk the ears of United supporters.
Regarding the stadium, there are a few things to note. Firstly the coyness around how they would finance the project is likely due to the limitations that come with being a publicly traded corporation, given the likes of Berrada have stated that they are ‘supremely confident’ in obtaining funding. Ratcliffe has mentioned how the stadium would likely pay for itself and it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe they will be sourcing external investment into the stadium rather than going down the borrowing route akin to Arsenal and Tottenham, which greatly reduced the London clubs’ flexibility in the transfer market.
It is also worth noting that expenditure on the stadium would not count towards PSR balance sheets. While I would be cynical about Ratcliffe leaning into the idea that he is more interested in bringing United back to the glory days as a fan, instead of a profit motive, both ideals can be symbiotic. If the stadium was to be built within the, admittedly, very ambitious parameters of 5 years and a £2billion budget, it could well attract lucrative commercial opportunities for years to come.
Ratcliffe delivered his agenda for how he would take Man United to where clubs such as Liverpool, Real Madrid, and Manchester City are currently. He mentioned the need to complete the transition of the management team, get the club on stable footing financially, and overhaul the recruitment process. He has promised a keen focus on data analysis, which had been virtually non-existent under the Glazers.
Ratcliffe has assembled an ensemble board which bears strong reputations and track records, most obviously with the poaching of new CEO, Omar Berrada. His signing from rivals Manchester City was seen as a major coup. Just about every giant club who have undergone recent renaissances have done so on the back of strong recruitment, backed up by a data driven approach. Liverpool have perhaps taken the limelight as poster-boys of the moneyball trend, and even clubs whose resources are greatly outweighed by United such as Brighton and Brentford have punched far above their weight in recent times by exploring these avenues.
A Europa League win, and therefore Champions League qualification, would be of enormous importance to the club in this regard, significantly enhancing their summer war chest and attractiveness to targets ahead of the board’s first full summer window together.
Another reason for optimism, which was surprisingly not brought up by Ratcliffe in his interviews as a much-needed palate cleanser, is that the club have revamped their training and academy structures. Improvements in this area have been long needed and will help with the long term goals of the club.
There’s a general sense among supporters that it can’t go on like this. Ratcliffe has caught a falling knife, and so far seems to have been unable to stem the vicious cycle of financial and regulatory constraints, resulting in a poor squad, continued poor performances, and less money earned.
Time will tell if Sir Jim will bring the glory days back to the red side of Manchester, but one assurance for now is that there will be no lack of news coming out of Old Trafford in the near future.