On the orders of Sir Jim Ratcliffe, CEO Omar Berrada is on a penny-pinching mission at Manchester United in a bid to stop the rot and “transform and renew the club”.
250 people lost their jobs last year and 200 or so more redundancies are in the offing as part of the ‘transformation plan’. They refused to pay for travel to the FA Cup final, staff lunches are being scrapped, they’re counting screws and returning sellotape, and season tickets are being ripped from the hands of the recently deceased.
Some of you may be thinking they’ve already gone too far, but not us. We’ve come up with 10 further cost-cutting/money-making method the Ineos lads can put into place that will see them dining back at the top table before you can say Don’t Buy A 30-year-old On A Four-year Contract Worth £325,000 Per Week.
Scrap lunches altogether
They’ve now scrapped lunches for staff members at Carrington, but in the name of inclusivity – a buzzword of the utmost importance to the new regime as the former women’s captain can attest (what was her name again?) – why not do away with hot dinners altogether?
Diogo Dalot batch cooking bolognese on a Sunday night, Joshua Zirkzee’s mum pulling up after training with a Tupperware and a face of fire after he left it on the kitchen counter, Alejandro Garnacho shaking the vending machine in an attempt to dislodge the pickled onion Space Raiders after it swallowed his money, Casemiro opening up his lunchbox and cursing his wife for omitting his Cheesestrings. Bring it on.
Lidl gift cards
Having been given £40 Marks and Spencer vouchers instead of their £100 Christmas bonuses last year, a Lidl gift card is the natural next step, accompanied by an email with a link to a price comparison website to show that just as many tasty Yuletide treats can be bought with £20 at Lidl as with £40 at M&S.
Or the full score can be used on something from the ever-alluring middle aisles. We’re sure Mrs Casemiro would love a home-brand power tool, and you never know when an inflatable kayak might come in handy.
Carpool to games
A clown car for the whole matchday squad is fitting but they would have to source and buy one, and it would serve a similar if less appropriate purpose to the team coach, which mostly sits idle, driving them to and from defeats once or twice a week.
At first we thought it could be used for airport transfers when not in use: Jason Wilcox holding up his coaching iPad at arrivals waiting for the next group of tourists. “This is where Sir Alex Ferguson used to sit,” he could say over the tannoy, pointing to a cordoned-off seat at the front of the bus adorned with lit candles.
But if the players carpooled then the coach could be repurposed all year round, with Casemiro’s Coffee Coach rolling up to dog shows and summer fetes.
Matchday tombola
A tombola every matchday, an hour before kick-off, £2 a ticket, “a strip of five for a tenner”, sold to fans on the proviso that the numbers are called by a member of the Class of ’92, but it’s always seven-game Chris Casper not one of your Nevilles, Butts or Beckhams.
Prizes include: manager for a game; a session with Mason Mount’s physiotherapist; a three-course meal cooked by Casemiro.
READ MORE: Ranking Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s 17 Man Utd f***-ups: 3) Ruben Amorim, 4) Dan Ashworth, 8) Kath Phipps
Disband the loan liaison division
Not much point in having a point of contact for the players who have managed to escape temporarily given they’re definitely not going to leave the greener grass they’ve found elsewhere and return to the Old Trafford cesspit that caused their careers, and those of countless others before them, to nosedive.
Player Cameos
Rasmus Hojlund wishing your daughter a happy birthday, Leny Yoro telling a nine-pints-deep stag to have one on him, Harry Maguire congratulating Steve on a decade of service at Futures Recruitment Agency, you get the idea.
A minimum of ten Cameos a day should be written into any new contract and research done to look into the image rights of club legends to see if AI is a possibility. We’re thinking Sir Alex Ferguson for wedding anniversaries, David Beckham for hen parties, Roy Keane for messages of condolence.
Kit-washing rota
Ecolab won’t be happy about their ‘hygiene partnership’ with Manchester United coming to an end, but the ‘laundry room set up with a digital system that monitors every wash cycle’ sounds like an unnecessarily expensive alternative to Andre Onana sitting in front of his Bosch Series 4 watching the Persil non-bio get to work on those stubborn stains.
We also shouldn’t discount the impact of team-building Dick Of The Day awards for those who forego fabric softeners resulting in scratchy collars, or God forbid, allow a red sock to slip into the whites wash to bring about catcalls and whistles from away fans as Manchester United players take to the field in pink shorts.
Up the sponsorship game
Shirt sponsors Snapdragon supposedly want the naming rights to Old Trafford, and those of you thinking a suite of system-on-chip semiconductor products for mobile products isn’t a sexy enough brand for the biggest stadium in the Premier League clearly haven’t read the club’s marketing spiel to sell up to ten Casemiro shirts per week:
‘Our logo placed on the front of shirt of the iconic Manchester United kit symbolizes performance, power, and the cutting-edge, all values that resonate with the club and its global fanbase.’
With that sort of confident promotion the sky’s the limit for sponsors. Matchdays brought to you by Fintech, that goal was thanks to Databricks, clean sheets by Nvidia.
Performance fines
The club must be saving a fair whack through not having to pay anything in the way of performance bonuses right now, but why not go the other way?
Rather than giving Hojlund a few grand when he scores, fine him when he doesn’t. Manuel Ugarte’s pass percentage below 80 per cent? That’s £10k. £5k from Garnacho for every shot off target. They could have a trampoline-touch sanction for Zirkzee or a whining penalty for Bruno Fernandes.
Introduction To Stadium Roofing
Much like a middle-class millennial with more money than they know what to do with taking an Introduction To Dry Stone Walling course which involves them building a wall for a farmer who can’t believe their luck, why bother paying qualified contractors to fix the leaky roof when you can instead sell a hard day’s labour to one billion fans through the prospect of a bird’s eye view of Old Trafford.
And why stop there? Introduction To Groundskeeping? Level Two Mascotting? Intermediate Coaching?
