Sir Jim Ratcliffe is in the process of eroding the “heart and soul” of Manchester United, with the club’s enquiry over the status of Kath Phipps’ season ticket two days after her passing providing clear evidence of an increasingly grim football club.
Ratcliffe arrived as co-owner almost exactly a year ago and has overseen dramatic changes off the pitch that have thus far failed to reap any reward on it, save for the FA Cup final win, which has inarguably set them back in the long-run anyway.
Erik ten Hag was offered an extension thanks to that win over Manchester City but was booted out in October and replaced by Ruben Amorim, against the wishes of former sporting director Dan Ashworth.
He was poached from Newcastle for £3m and lasted five months, with his sacking costing the club £4.1m, which when added to the £14.5m cost of dismissing Ten Hag, has seen the club’s operating profit drop by a mammoth 88.7 per cent.
Those expensive calls have come amid the backdrop of over 250 staff being made redundant, with more exits in the offing, and ticket prices rising to £66 per game, with no concessions for children or pensioners.
A Ratcliffe ‘spy’ now patrols the halls of Carrington to create a ‘culture of fear’ and not even the kind gestures of men’s captain Bruno Fernandes can stop the inexorable path to total misery that the British billionaire and Ineos have set course for.
Staff who remain at the club have told The Telegraph that what used to be ‘an oversized family club’ is having its ‘heart and soul’ eroded by the new regime.
The report adds:
‘A particular sore point has been a perceived lack of empathy and sensitivity towards staff who have been shown the door, some of whom dedicated most of their working lives to the club.
‘Ratcliffe has been keen to move away from the perception of a “jobs for life” culture and he is understood to have ended a 30-year service award that involved payment of a bonus equivalent to an employee’s annual salary up to a maximum of £50,000.
‘Telegraph Sport understands one staff member was just weeks shy of hitting that milestone before leaving as part of the summer redundancies and had to forgo a significant chunk of that bonus as a consequence.
‘Some employees who had gone on last summer’s pre-season tour to the United States after being told their jobs were safe are thought to have been pulled into a room only days later to be told they were, in fact, “at risk” and offered the opportunity to fly home immediately.’
But nothing screams employee indifference quite like asking about the status of the longest-serving staff member’s season tickets two days after their passing.
The report continues:
‘The death of Kath Phipps, at the age of 85, on Dec 5 hit many staff hard. Having first joined the club as the switchboard operator in September 1968, she was a bridge to different eras and beloved of many. Her passing felt like another severing of links with the club’s past.
‘The nurses who cared for Kath in her final months said they had never witnessed a patient receive so many daily visitors, let alone one with no living blood relatives. Her friends at the club, including several who had been ousted in the cuts, ran a daily rota via WhatsApp to ensure she was never alone.
‘Ferguson, David Beckham and Jonny Evans were among her many famous, frequent visitors. There was disbelief then, when word emerged that Phipps’s listed next of kin, to his considerable shock, had received a call from the club two working days after her death to enquire about the status of her two season tickets.
‘United say it was a misunderstanding and there has been no request to recall the tickets.’
