Sir Jim Ratcliffe has revealed Manchester United would have been “bust by Christmas” this year if he had not implemented a major redundancy and cost-cutting plan.
The billionaire Ineos owner issued the stark warning in a wide-ranging interview in which he gave his backing to manager Ruben Amorim, but warned that United had faced “running out of cash” by the end of the year.
Ratcliffe, who bought a 28.94 per cent stake in United from the Glazers one year ago and has complete control over the football operation, said the cutting of the staff by 450 was unavoidable if the club wanted to stabilise finances and rebuild the squad in the summer after losing £410 million over the past seven years.
He said that the jettisoning of erstwhile technical director Dan Ashworth had been a question of “chemistry” and admitted that appointment – as well as the decision to give Erik ten Hag a new contract before sacking him – was “a mistake”. But he also said that his new management team, led by chief executive Omar Berrada, would make United the most profitable club in the Premier League within three years.
The club’s profligacy had become so great, Ratcliffe said, that after he acquired his stake at the end of 2023, his management found that United employed “a body language expert” for £175,000 per year. He paid tribute to Sir Alex Ferguson’s willingness to step away from his £2 million annual salary after Ratcliffe told the Scot the club could no longer afford it. Ratcliffe said that he spoke personally to Ferguson in a conversation that was “grown up [if] a little bit grumpy at the beginning”. After which he said Ferguson came back to him subsequently “and he said, ‘Fine, I’m going to step away from it’.”
But it is the question of the club’s dire finances that has shown the depth of the challenge facing Ineos. The club have lost cumulatively £391.5 million over the past seven years, including £254 million in the last three. The £410 million lost over that period has been mitigated by just one profitable year, in 2019, when the club booked a profit of £18.8 million.
Ratcliffe said that even if United were not to sign a single new player this summer they would still have to pay off a massive bill of transfer debts. “This summer,” he said, “we will ‘buy’ Antony, we’ll ‘buy’ [Jadon] Sancho, we’ll ‘buy’ Casemiro, we’ll ‘buy’ [Lisandro] Martínez, we’ll ‘buy’ [Rasmus] Hojlund, we’ll ‘buy’ [André] Onana, and they’re all about £17 million each. If we buy nobody we’re buying those players. It’s not a light switch [that can be turned off].”
Over the past 20 years the club have serviced the Glazers’ debt to the tune of £1 billion in interest payments alone, even before the question of dividends and consultancy fees if approached. The home draw with Arsenal on Sunday was prefaced by mass protests by fans against the Glazers and Ratcliffe himself is now facing the anger of those who wanted the Florida-based family to be bought out in their entirety.
Asked whether turning around United was up there with the other challenges he has faced, in building Ineos into one of the world’s largest chemical conglomerates, Ratcliffe said it was “up there”. The 72-year-old, who has been described as Britain’s richest man, said: “We have seen lots of businesses that have gone off the rails and you have to try to get them back onto the rails. In that sense Manchester United was no different, but it had gone off the rails a long way. If you look at the numbers, they were fairly scary at Manchester United because they had lost control of where the ship was headed. And the costs had got out of control.
“In super-simple terms the club has been spending more money than it has been earning for the last seven years, including this year. If you do that for a prolonged period of time it ends up in a very difficult place, and, for Manchester United, that place ended at the end of this year. At the end of 2025, Manchester United would have run out of cash. There would be no cash at the end of this year. That is the first time we have ever said that in public, but that is the fact of the matter.”
Later, in defence of the job cuts, and accusations that the club had made swingeing cuts for relatively small economies – while having to pay off the likes of Ashworth and Ten Hag – Ratcliffe was unequivocal: “It [United] goes bust at Christmas [without change]”.
“Do you want to run an organisation as the press would like you to run the organisation or run the organisation the way you think is the best?” he said. “My mother would say: ‘You look after the pennies, the pounds look after themselves’.
“[The club can say to staff] ‘We’ll give you free lunches, we’ll give you all these perks and we’ll pay for your first-class train fare. We’ll give you a free taxi for this, but we’re going to cut back here [elsewhere].’ It’s not coherent.”
“People [think], ‘Well, you know the directors are doing this, in that case I can do that [in terms of spending]. That sort of thing, you can’t be half pregnant. You either get it sorted out or not. I mean it [United] goes bust at Christmas. To be clear, if we hadn’t implemented the cost-saving projects and [even] if we bought no players in the summer then it would have run out of cash at Christmas. However, we reduced the cost of running the club by about £125 million, so that transforms the club.”
‘United need to become a lean, efficient organisation’
Ratcliffe agreed a deal with the six Glazer siblings to buy the club for £1.25 billion and inject a further £232 million to take his stake up to its current level, but he said that the club’s finances were so dire that it had faced running out of cash even in spite of his investment. He said that the exact picture had not been “crystal clear” in the due diligence stage and the “forest of numbers”. United’s situation also changes year on year, according to the success or otherwise of European qualification.
“If you look at the time the club has been losing money, the headcount has increased by 250 people,” he said. “You are going through this period where you are losing lots of money and at the same time you are recruiting heavily. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. You’re just exacerbating the situation. So if you look at some really simple numbers, I think since about 2016 the costs of running the club have gone up by £100 million.
“It’s gone from £170 million to £270 million. If you look at the cost of the players’ salaries, they’ve gone up by £100 million to £250 million. And the revenue has gone up by £100 million. For the last six or seven years, the club’s lost money. It’s lost £320 million of cash in the last four to five years.
“You might bet the bank on spending more. ‘We’re going to spend money on new players and it’s all going to be fine because we’re going to get a Champions League place’. But if you don’t get a Champions League place, then you just carry on losing money each year. And eventually, you run out of road. So I know that we have got a lot of criticism in the media for some of these difficult things that we’ve been doing at the moment. But they are an absolute necessity at Manchester United. It needs to become a lean, efficient organisation that cuts its cloth according to its income. And it isn’t there at the moment.”
Ratcliffe said that the club would have been faced with “talking to the insolvency guys” or renegotiating with the banks. “Trust me, you don’t want to go there… you’re walking towards problems, so get it sorted out, guys. And we will sort it out. And we will have a budget for the summer and there won’t be a problem at Christmas. It’ll be fine. But it wouldn’t be fine if we weren’t doing what we do.”
‘Amorim doing a great job’
Ratcliffe said that Ruben Amorim is doing “a great job in the circumstances” and is missing half of his top earning players – either through injury or because their form has dropped to the extent that, in the case of Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho, they have been sent out on loan.
The man who is the United controlling power also said that Amorim, who said in January that his United team were potentially the worst in the club’s history, should be given “a bit of a break” from the relentless criticism.
“Frankly, with the squad that he’s had available and the fact he came in mid-season, I think he’s done a great job,” Ratcliffe said. “Everybody expects miracles overnight. It’s not real life in my view. I thought, a really impressive performance [in the 1-1 draw with Arsenal on Sunday]. They could not have worked harder. They couldn’t have been more committed.
“If you looked at the names on the bench, there weren’t many you recognised. Half the squad’s missing for Ruben. If you look at the top eight players in terms of salaries in Manchester United, 50 per cent of those are not available to Ruben. And if you had the same at Manchester City or Liverpool, it would be a very different case for them. If you look at our top eight, you’ve got Mason Mount, and Luke Shaw who’ve been injured. Rashford’s gone and Sancho [too]. Four of our top eight players in terms of salaries. He’s got a bunch of other injuries … Kobbie Mainoo and [Lisandro] Martínez.”
Asked how he felt about Amorim’s comments on the team’s performance given the investment in players in the summer, around £180 million, Ratcliffe said that “coaches are emotional”.
He said: “Ruben’s no exception to that. And he’s a young coach. And he’s not perfect. He’s got to be good on the stage [in press conferences], but we want him to be good on the grass. And part of that is [how he lives] life on the stage, isn’t it? He’s a young guy, he’s come into the Premier League for the first time in his life. It’s mid-season, it’s not his natural language. I mean, you have to give the guy a bit of a break. Give me a hard time, I have no problem with that, but give Ruben a break.
Asked whether he had full faith in Amorim, the Ineos billionaire said: “I do, honestly. I really, really like Ruben. I’ve met him before the game as well, but we sat down and we had half an hour with him after the game, didn’t we? He’s a very thoughtful guy.”
The new United chief executive Omar Berrada, recruited from Manchester City, said that Amorim had said since before his appointment that his style of play – a 3-4-3 system – was a key part of the way he worked. “He [Amorim] was very clear with us,” said Berrada, speaking alongside Ratcliffe. “Ruben said, ‘This is how the team’s going to play. I’m going to stick to my principles. And I think that takes courage. And I think this is what we want, which is a coach that has a clear vision and a clear idea. One who can work with Jason Wilcox [technical director] on identifying the types of players that they want for the system and the style of play that Ruben is trying to put in place.
“And he’s ready to absorb the pain in the short term in terms of trying to improve the culture in the dressing room and trying to change the way the team is playing so that we can be set up for success in the following seasons. And that’s what we as ownership and management are ready to give to the team. We do absolutely believe that the guys are ready to do that.”
Berrada said that the changes the club had made over the season meant that there would be scope under financial controls – profit and sustainability rules [PSR] – to sign players in the summer. “The changes that we’ve done over this season, plus the ones that have been announced recently, will put us in a position to be able to do that,” he said.
‘No chemistry’ with Ashworth
Ratcliffe has said that there was no “chemistry” with departed Manchester United sporting director Dan Ashworth, whom the club pursued for more than a year only to sack him five months after he joined.
And Ratcliffe said that giving Erik ten Hag a contract extension in July – he was then sacked in October – was an “emotional response” and another “mistake” after the Dutchman won the FA Cup final and stopped another Manchester City league and cup double.
Ratcliffe, who has been criticised for the costly sackings, said: “They were just mistakes. The Erik thing is slightly mitigating. There was quite a lot of debate about that time. He had just won a Cup final. The fans were clearly of the view that we’d like to stick with him and all that sort of stuff.
“They were both mistakes. I don’t think we can say much more than that. It’s a journey and there’s a lot of decisions that we have to make over the course of the journey and we’re not going to get them all right. I don’t think in the future we’ll get them all right either because we’re not perfect.”
He added on Ten Hag: “There was an emotional response [after the FA Cup] … we get criticised for being unemotional and there was a bit of emotion in that decision. I think [new chief executive Omar Berrada] had only been there about a morning. Jason [Wilcox, technical director] hadn’t been there very long.” He said the club had wanted to give Ten Hag a chance in a new management structure he had not been given the opportunity to work in before.
Asked whether he could offer any explanation as to how Ineos and Ashworth, a former Football Association technical director, as well as at Newcastle United and Brighton and Hove Albion among others, could not work together, he said: “We’re talking about our old industry [with Ineos]. I think we just have to say, ‘chemistry’. Really, I don’t want to go down that [road]. It is what it is, and it was our fault.”
Old Trafford could be ‘like Eiffel Tower of North’
Ratcliffe says that Manchester United will pay for any new Old Trafford – or the rebuild of the existing stadium – but it needs government support to regenerate South Manchester and create the kind of tourist hub that could rival the Eiffel Tower for visitor numbers.
United will announce soon what they plan to do for their famous, if dilapidated Theatre of Dreams, and Ratcliffe said that he is confident the club can finance it, despite pressure on Ineos’s businesses in Europe.
“We’re not going to ask the government for any money to build the ground but we can’t afford to do all of the other stuff around there because that we can’t finance. But I think if we build a really iconic stadium, which is what I would like to do, then I think those billion [United] fans around the world will all want to come to Manchester and see it. And they’ll all create value for the Manchester and the northern economy.
“If you look at Oxford Economics [economic advisors] their number is £7 billion per annum of value added to the northern economy because it would become like the Eiffel Tower, which five million people go to Paris to see.”
On the cost of the stadium, Ratcliffe said: “I don’t think that would be a problem for this, but I think it’s down the road really. We’ve obviously done some homework but I think it’s very financeable, but only up to a point,”
United have instructed the celebrated architect Norman Foster to the project, and Ratcliffe says that the challenge has consumed him. “They can’t get Norman to concentrate on anything other than the stadium because he’s a Mancunian and he’s really got captivated by this,” Ratcliffe said, “and I think he’s done a fabulous job of it.”
