In a media blitz, Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has repeatedly claimed that the club would go “bust by Christmas” if he did not execute a controversial cost-cutting plan.
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United have made 450 staff redundant, 39% of the club’s workforce, so far this financial year as penny pinching methods including scrapping staff lunches and ending legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson’s £2 million-a-year ambassador deal have been implemented.
Ratcliffe, the billionaire owner of British multinational conglomerate Ineos who bought a 28.94 per cent stake in the club from the Glazers a year ago for £1.25 billion with a commitment to inject a further £232 million, has total control over football operations and has copped flack for the redundancies in particular.
But in separate interviews with the BBC, UK Telegraph as well as with club great Gary Neville for Sky Sports and The Overlap podcast, Ratcliffe reiterated that United had “gone off the rails” and his measures were necessary to get the club back on track.
“In super simple terms the club has been spending more money than it has been earning for the last seven years, including this year,” he said.
“If you do that for a prolonged period of time it ends up in a very difficult place and, for Manchester United, that place ended at the end of this year. At the end of 2025, Manchester United would have run out of cash. There would be no cash at the end of this year. That is the first time we have ever said that in public, but that is the fact of the matter.
“It [United] goes bust at Christmas [without change]”.
“Do you want to run an organisation as the press would like you to run the organisation or run the organisation the way you think is the best?” Ratcliffe added.
“My mother would say: ‘You look after the pennies, the pounds look after themselves.’
“[The club can say to staff] ‘We’ll give you free lunches, we’ll give you all these perks and we’ll pay for your first-class train fare. We’ll give you a free taxi for this, but we’re going to cut back here [elsewhere].’ It’s not coherent.
“I know I’m getting a tough time in the press for being brutal, unpleasant, all those sorts of things.
“People [think], ‘Well, you know the directors are doing this, in that case I can do that [in terms of spending]. That sort of thing, you can’t be half pregnant. You either get it sorted out or not.
“I mean it [United] goes bust at Christmas.
“To be clear, if we hadn’t implemented the cost-saving projects and [even] if we bought no players in the summer then it would have run out of cash at Christmas.
“However, we reduced the cost of running the club by about £125 million so that transforms the club. And £125 million is a lot.”
The dire financial state that Ratcliffe has outlined is the result of astronomical spending on a massively underperforming squad.
United have lost £410 million over the past seven years on the transfer market and are required to spend £100 million this summer in fees for players they already own.
Despite all that spending, the Red Devils sit 14th on the Premier League table and need to beat Real Sociedad in the second leg of their Europa League Round of 16 tie on Friday morning Australian to keep their last remaining hope of winning silverware this season alive.
Such a lowly standing in the league prompted Ratcliffe to label some of the recent signings “not good enough” and “overpaid” but he defended manager Ruben Amorim, who is having a torrid time since replacing Erik ten Hag in November.
Ratcliffe stated that the squad the Portuguese boss is dealing with is a “fraction” of Liverpool or Manchester City’s.
“If I actually look at the squad which is available to Ruben, I think he is doing a really good job to be honest,” Ratcliffe said.
“I think Ruben is an outstanding young manager. I really do. He’s an excellent manager and I think he will be there for a long time.”
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Ratcliffe was also reluctant to point the finger at his co-owners.
The Glazers have been the bane of Manchester United fans throughout the club’s downward spiral, and Neville pointed out that United had “the best stadium in the country, the best training ground in the country, the best team in the country and were debt-free” roughly 20 years ago when the American family took charge.
But Ratcliffe insisted that past administrations were at fault for United’s current woes, rather than the Glazer’s.
“If you look at some of the other characters in English football that are owners, and you know them very well, they’re heavily involved in all the running of the club,” Ratcliffe said.
“They [The Glazers] gave management an awful lot of rope, too much rope, obviously. But the previous two teams of management have to take a lot of the blame for the decisions they made.
“They have to, I’m afraid. It’s not just the Glazer family. They’ve not been involved in a level of detail.”
Neville was angered by the Glazer’s stepping back from the intricacies of how the club was run, labelling their actions “negligence”.
“You’re involved in the level of detail and you’re having to correct their mistakes,” Neville said to Ratcliffe.
“If they’ve not overseen the club in the last ten years to the point where it’s run out of cash, that’s negligence.
“You know that better than anybody.”
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Ratcliffe avoided the debate going further and instead also took the chance to look to the future.
One of the biggest gripes among United fans for many years has been the state of Old Trafford.
As rivals have unveiled shiny new stadiums or redeveloped their traditional homes, ‘The Theatre of Dreams’ has remained much the same, a relic of a bygone era, fitting of the club’s downfall.
A roof leak at the famous Stretford End last year was a particularly embarrassing moment for the iconic venue, while rival fans love to chant ‘Old Trafford is falling down’ to taunt United supporters.
All the while ticket prices have risen and away fans have gained easy access to sit among season-ticket holders, causing clashes, at several Premier League and European fixtures this season.
But despite the cost-cutting measures, Ratcliffe revealed that a new-look Old Trafford is among his plans to make United the most profitable Premier League club within three years.
“It’s definitely deliverable but I think it needs to be set in context again,” Ratcliffe said.
“If you take the view that it’s the greatest football club in the world, then if it’s going to build a new stadium it should be a new stadium that’s befitting the greatest club in the world.
“And also a stadium that befits the greatest league in the world because the Premier League is the greatest league in the world.”
Ratcliffe wants to emulate Real Madrid’s Bernabeu which was renovated from 2019 to 2024.
The stadium in the Spanish capital can hold up to 83,000 fans and boasts a retractable playing surface to easily swap out the football pitch for stages to host concerts.
It also has a retractable roof to ensure matches are always played in sublime conditions, as the club spent more than US$1 billion on the project to make the venue look out of this world.
“At the moment, if you look at the Premier League, we’ve got some great stadiums, but we don’t have a Bernabeu, do we? And we don’t have the new Nou Camp. We don’t have that in the Premier League,” he said.
