INEOS has been part of Manchester United for just about a year. Their ownership has been mixed. They have made decisions that has caused outrage among the public and various pundits. Their ownership can be best described, at least to me, as controversial.
Good intentions and poor execution. If Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS were to up sticks and sell their stake in Manchester United 12 months after they were confirmed as investors, that succinct evaluation would be their epitaph.
Ratcliffe hasn't exactly been the red knight in shining armour supporters longed for to rid them of the Glazers; but anyone who took footballing decisions away from the much-maligned American majority shareholders – which is what Ratcliffe’s now 28.94% stake got him – remains preferable.
There has been a revolution of sorts, orchestrated by senior executives finally fit for purpose at Old Trafford but fans feel like they have been left out of the process. So much so, at a recent protest over ticket price increases, it was Ratcliffe’s name used in vain, more than any Glazer – something you would have never dreamed possible 12 months ago.
Perhaps an un-Christmassy point to start, Ratcliffe informing Sir Alex Ferguson that he would be cutting the legendary former manager’s £ 2m-a-year ambassadorial contract is one of the bravest and most positive moves he has made all year.
Former club captain, Eric Cantona, said the move showed, "a lack of respect." One former player said that Ferguson's removal as an ambassador, as well as the departure of a number of long-serving staff members as part of a redundancy programme, makes it feel as if Ratcliffe had "ripped the soul out of the club."
One of the myriad of reasons why United have lurched from one disaster to the next over the past decade of decay is a refusal to move on from Ferguson and his trophy-laden bygone era. Whenever another embarrassing home defeat unfolded, the cameraman always knew who to pan to in the director’s box. You could almost hear the, "it was never like this in my day" each time.
If United are to rekindle anything like their former grandeur, coming to a realisation that what Ferguson achieved and how he achieved is a thing of the past has long been a must. Paying £ 2 000 000 every year to be reminded how far the club has fallen each week was helping nobody.
New owners get supporters all hot and bothered for a variety of reasons, not least as it gets each amateur football manager in their armchair dreaming of what footballing megastar will front their team’s new dawn.
This never crossed Ratcliffe and INEOS’ mind. There were bigger fish to fry. Everyone else, other than the Glazers, could see it – for a club of United’s stature, the fact they did not have a suitable footballing hierarchy in place was unfathomable.
While Ferran Sorriano and Txiki Begiristain have played as crucial a role in Manchester City’s global domination as Pep Guardiola, United managers were left in charge of recruitment, to very, very limited success.
Off the pitch, Old Trafford and the club’s Carrington training ground mirrored the on-field decline. United’s most important signings would be in the boardroom. In came: Dan Ashworth as sporting director; Omar Berrada – spectacularly poached from City – as CEO; technical director, Jason Wilcox and Christopher Vivell as head of recruitment. All the pieces were in place.
Ashworth’s shock exit earlier this month covers the whole revamp in a puzzling cloud.However, at least there are other knowledgeable figures in place to give a previously rudderless ship hope of reaching it's destination.
One match shouldn't be enough to save a manager so clearly out of his depth he was drowning before our eyes.
That FA Cup final victory last season over City got supporters behind Ten Hag in great numbers but the writing still appeared to be on the wall; with United executives contacting representatives of six or seven other candidates for the managerial hot seat, behind the current boss’ back.
Ten Hag was given a stay of execution, however, despite overseeing their worst-ever Premier League campaign last term. Nobody was convinced, the trigger should have been pulled before yet more pain was administered. By the time Ten Hag was sacked, irrevocable damage had been done to another unsavable season.
It takes something to outdo the Glazers in the eyes of angry United supporters but Ratcliffe is trying his best. Thousands of fans rallied against Ratcliffe outside Old Trafford earlier this month after he increased ticket price for members to £ 66 and got rid of concessions for children and pensioners.
"You can’t be popular all the time," Ratcliffe conceded in an interview with fanzone, United We Stand, insisting it should not be possible for United to be cheaper to watch than Fulham, overlooking the disparity in pay between Londoners and Mancunians.
Getting fans on his side is a must. A savvy businessman should know better than to disgruntle the masses this early. Dealing with United’s spiralling costs was rightly identified as a priority for Ratcliffe. Rather than sell off Casemiro and his £ 300 000-a-week contract, it's those at the bottom of the food chain who again feel aggrieved.
Ratcliffe’s decision to axe nearly a quarter of the club’s workforce to save between £ 35-45m each year has been met with derision, especially given many of those were long-serving employees on low wages. Perks for staff have been cut, there has been no Christmas party and those left behind are still doing the same amount of work, with fewer bodies to get the work done.
"We need to sort out the main issue – the men’s team," Ratcliffe said in that controversial United We Stand interview.
Does one have to be mutually exclusive over the other? Can the women’s team not be addressed simultaneously? Those are the questions many disappointed fans have raised, with Ratcliffe again seemingly out of touch with what is required from an owner of a modern-day football club.
United Women have made great strides of late, winning last season’s FA Cup – a match Ratcliffe didn't attend, instead choosing to watch the men’s team lose at home to Arsenal. That's not a good look.
"It’s hard for me to hear those comments," United Women boss, Mark Skinner, said of Ratcliffe’s startling admission.
Ratcliffe has been compared to Scrooge after another contentious cost-cutting decision became public around Christmas. United have stopped paying £ 40 000 to a trust set up to support former players. The Association of Former Manchester United Players (AFMUP) were told the decision had been taken to stop paying them in another PR disaster. In reaction, a United supporters club said it showed, "nothing but total contempt for the fans and the very fabric of what our club was built on."
AFMUP trustee and former United youth team and reserve player, Jim Elms, said that the non-profit charity hadn't received the last two quarterly payments of £ 10k.
He said, "We sent a letter to say we’ve not been paid. Nobody came out and told us so we had to send another letter. That’s when we started hearing things that it was going to be the end of us."
Elms was then informed by chief executive, Omar Berrada, in the days before Christmas that the funding has been cut.
"Omar was non-committal. He’s going to meet us again in January but he said he couldn’t see it changing," he added. He didn’t seem to think that we were a necessity."
He continued, "We’ve ran it since 1985. Keeping the old players together. Looking after the ones that couldn’t pay for funerals. I just can’t understand them myself. It’s ridiculous. We give away around £10-20 000 to charity, mostly children’s charities in the local area. We’ve had £20 000 this year but not the rest of it."
United employees were given a first taste of the brutal cutbacks Ratcliffe and his new regime were planning with free travel to the FA Cup final scrapped as an early cost-cutting measure. United staff had previously enjoyed the perk of free tickets for cup finals, along with free travel to Wembley, hotel accommodation and pre-match food. That benefit was scrapped by Ratcliffe for last season's FA Cup final against local rivals, Manchester City, in which United produced a shock 2-1 win.
Although staff were still given a free match ticket, they had to pay for their own travel to and from Wembley, with all other benefits also taken away, in another move that damaged morale among United's disaffected employees. Higher up the chain of command at the club, senior employees saw the withdrawal of their corporate credit cards and chauffeur-driven cars, while match-day staff at Old Trafford had complimentary lunches stopped.
Ratcliffe has rightly been criticised by talkSPORT host, Angelina Kelly, who tore into the British billionaire.
Kelly said, "This is an organisation that helps a lot of ex-footballers who weren’t maybe earning the type of money that you see footballers earning now. "They also help with things like funding funerals for former players whose families maybe can’t afford it."
"They actually have these events at Old Trafford – they rent the space and pay for it, they also donate to children’s charities, so, again, from a PR perspective, it’s disgusting really when you look at it and the way all this has been handled is just horrendous."
"£ 40 000 is a drop in the ocean when you’ve got players on £350 000 a week; it’s just so so disappointing!"
Her talkSPORT colleagues, Natalie Sawyer and Tony Cascarino, agreed. The former added, "They’re stripping the soul out really from the fans. Even then they’re trying to price them out with some of the ridiculous ticket charges, it’s unbelievable!"
The promise to, "make United better" had a hollow ring to it as the first-team players threatened to pay for their own flight back to Manchester after the FA Cup final in London. The club was providing other means of transportation back from the capital, where United had beaten Manchester City to win the FA Cup. With the club holding firm, senior players pushed back and insisted they would source their own flight home.
When asked for comment, the club insists adequate transportation was booked for the Sunday morning, with the team enjoying a party at the hotel the night of the final but some players chose to fly off on holiday direct from London instead.
"The players and senior staff thought it was unprofessional to travel back to Manchester on a bus, simply because it was the cheaper option, so they told the club they would pay for their own plane," a source said.
"The club backed down pretty quickly, but it was embarrassing for them. This is Manchester United, and the players were being treated like a League One team."
For the players, sources have said that the experience of playing for Manchester United now seems like anything but representing one of the game's most illustrious teams. Two people said that Bruno Fernandes was prepared to leave this summer after growing tired of the club's repeated failure to deliver but eventually stayed and signed a contract after, according to one source, "the club panicked and gave him a massive new deal."
Many of the players have been, "underwhelmed" by the impact made by INEOS, while there has been anger within the dressing room at not simply the departure of several long-serving staff members as part of the job cuts, but also at the treatment of some of them.
"One member of the ground staff had been at the club for over 30 years," a source said. "He was let go by the club and was sweeping up on his own on his last day with tears rolling down his face. Nobody did anything for him, despite all the years he had given to the club."
It seems to me that INEOS are just plain cheap. They will look for anything to cut costs. They don't care about anyone but themselves. I find it hard to believe that they will keep their promises. They aren't justifying any decisions they have made. They don't care about the history. INEOS was supposed to be a breathe of fresh air. They haven't become that. To me, they have simply become an extension of the Glazers.
I can't picture United returning to their former glory days under INEOS as a result of their actions.