Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has seemingly taken a swipe at the Glazers, blaming them for the club’s current financial woes.
Ratcliffe purchased a minority stake in United last year and as part of the agreement with the Glazer family, the British businessman assumed operational control of the club.
Since then, Ratcliffe has gone about implementing a raft of cost-cutting measures in a bid to return the Red Devils to profitability – some of which have proven extremely unpopular.
Last summer, around 250 staff were made redundant and recently, the club announced hundreds more will be axed over the next few weeks. Ratcliffe also cancelled cup final perks for employees, slashed the salaries of club ambassadors, terminated Sir Alex Ferguson’s lucrative contract and ended free lunches for staff.
United reported a net loss of £113m in their latest accounts and they have lost more than £300m over the past three years.
A large part of United’s fanbase has consistently and rightly blamed the Glazers for the club’s dire financial shape after years of mismanagement and poor recruitment. Before the team’s meeting with Arsenal on Sunday, supporters staged a massive anti-Glazer protest, calling on them to permanently part ways with the 20-time English champions.
Ratcliffe sat down with The Times and addressed the financial challenges currently crippling United.
Asked whether his first year at Old Trafford has been difficult or challenging, he answered, “Both I suppose. I mean, I don’t think we thought it was going to be a walk in the park. Because obviously, it was after 12 difficult seasons. It takes a while to get your arms around what the scale of the problems are and what the actual problems are.”
On if the business task at hand is one of the toughest he has ever faced, he replied, “Yeah, I think it is. Manchester United is a lot more than a business. It’s also a very emotional entity.”
“But if you think about Manchester United as a business, it’s gone off the rails. It’s gone off the rails a long way, really.”
“If you look at the numbers, the numbers were fairly scary, really. Because they’d sort of lost control, I think, of where the ship was headed. And the costs had got out of control. If you think of it in really simple terms, you’ve got the operating costs, which are all the staff and the fixed costs of running the business. And then you’ve got all the squad costs, player salaries and player purchases.”
“In super simple terms, the club has been spending more money than it’s been earning now for the last seven years, and it ends in a very difficult place. And for Manchester United, that place ended at the end of this year, the end of 2025, with the club running out of cash.”
“I think it’s the first time we’ve probably said that in public, but that’s the fact of the matter.” Asked to clarify this, he continued, “There’s no money left in the club. And that is after my 300 million.”
On whether they couldn’t see these projections before buying their stake, Ratcliffe pointed out, “No, it wasn’t as crystal clear as that. There’s a sort of forest of numbers at Manchester United. And in football there are variables. If you get into the Champions League, it’s one thing. If you don’t get in the Champions League, you get in the Europa League, it’s a different thing.”
“If you get in the Conference League, it’s a different thing again. If you come fourth in the Premier League, it’s one thing. If you come 14th in the Premier League, it’s a very different thing. It is a forest of numbers that you have to walk through. And it takes time before you get absolute clarity.”
“You look at the period of time the club’s been losing money, and yet the head count increased by 250 people. So you’re going through this period where you’re losing lots of money and at the same time you’re recruiting heavily. It doesn’t make any sense really.”
“In that time the cost of running the club has gone up by 100 million. The cost of the players is up by 100 million. So the cost has gone up by 200 million but the revenue has gone up by 100 million. It’s lost 320 million pounds in cash in the last four to fiveyears. So that’s a third of a billion.”
“Eventually you run out of road. We have got a lot of criticism in the media for some of these difficult things that we’ve been doing but they are an absolute necessity at Manchester United.”
He added about the cost-cutting measures, “It needs to become a lean, efficient organisation that cuts its cloth according to its income.”
“And it isn’t there at the moment. So there are structural changes that need to happen at Manchester United to get it to a place where it’s stable financially. That’s sort of the first thing you have to do.”
“Then we can move on to the difficult things like recruiting. We’re in a period of change. It’s not fun, particularly making the changes. But when we come out the other side, we will be back on the rails.”
United are back in action on Thursday when they face Real Sociedad in the second leg of their Europa League round of 16 clash.
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Derick Kinoti
Derick Kinoti is a football writer at The Peoples Person who has covered Manchester United and the game extensively for many years. He is a keen analyst with expertise in SEO and journalism standards. Derick is convinced Wayne Rooney is the true GOAT and won’t hear otherwise!
