Manchester United legend Rio Ferdinand has slammed club co-owners INEOS, whose “huge kudos” is now in tatters.
United moulder in 15th place in the Premier League, and Sir Jim Ratcliffe has lost much of the goodwill with which he was greeted when he and his group acquired a 27.7% stake in the club off the Glazers last year – including from Ferdinand.
Speaking on his Rio Presents show, the former United centre-back laid bare his feelings on the current ownership.
“With INEOS, they couldn’t have come into Manchester United in a better circumstance than they did,” he said. “The fans were absolutely against the Glazers and they have been for a while. So they have huge kudos when they walk through the front door.”
The group took control of the footballing side of the United operation and invested heavily in reinforcements for Erik ten Hag last summer.
However, they have been heavily criticised for keeping the Dutchman on only to sack him at great cost a few months into the season.
They then spent big on Ruben Amorim and a new backroom staff, even though it meant implementing a totally different style of football which would require a different profile of player.
This is set against a brutal onslaught of cost-cutting throughout the club, leaving a sour taste as INEOS seem to target day-to-day staff rather than the multi-millionaires wearing the shirt.
Ferdinand said: “They have gone quickly towards reversing that [huge kudos] with the things they have done. The culling of the jobs, the staff of the football club and, from the outside, I look at it and think ‘could they have done it in a different way?’.
“Could they have gone to the Glazers and said ‘Look, could we cut some of the money you are taking out as a sort of management fee every year’ which is in the 20s of millions of pounds.
“Every year they take out. Sacrifice a little bit here, please, for the good of this club that you invested a lot of time in and let us have a chance to get back to the top.”
It is believed that INEOS did, in fact, ask the Glazers to forgo their dividends, but Ferdinand’s comments capture the negative mood amongst fans, and the doubtless toxic atmosphere at the club.
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Joe Ponting
Joe has spent more than half his life writing about football and all of it following United. As a child he told a doctor his name was ‘Paul Scholes’, but could never pick a pass like him no matter how much he tried.
