Britain’s richest Sir Jim Ratcliffe has bought into Manchester United with 28.94% of the shares and taken over responsibility for football operations.
Manchester United are in 14th place in the table going into this weekend’s Premier League round.
The criticism hails with Sir Jim Ratcliffe and much of it has been well justified. – For example, a sharp increase in ticket prices, especially for young people, while the product is inferior.
Ratcliffe doesn’t mind being unpopular, but if United’s new co-owner is exposed to anything close to what the Glazers have experienced, he will throw in the towel. “It can be uncomfortable, and I’ve probably failed when it comes to having fun, but I can handle that for a while.”
Manchester United is leaving Old Trafford and building a new stadium that will accommodate 100,000 people, but it will be with significantly fewer employees after two deep rounds of redundancies. “I don’t mind being unpopular because I understand that nobody likes to see Manchester United where the club is and nobody likes the decisions we have to make at the moment.”
“If I can take some of my anger away, I can take it, but I’m no different from everyone else. It’s not nice – especially not for friends and family,” Ratcliffe says in a major interview with The Times.
Ratcliffe does not criticise the Glazer family who took over Manchester United with the club’s own money, while they were still the best club in the world. The Glazer family has continued to take on debts at the club, reportedly over £800 million, they have let Old Trafford rot and sucked out over a billion pounds from the club. – No wonder fans are angry.
Jim Ratcliffe feels sorry for them in many ways.
“If it eventually reaches the scale that the Glazer family has been subjected to, then I have to say, ‘Enough is enough, folks.'” Let someone else do this. The Glazer family can’t really come to the game. They have retreated a bit into the shadows, so I accept everything. After we shopped, I hardly saw them. It’s just messages like, “Thanks, Jim. You are doing a very good job.
“At the moment, I don’t have security around me – I’m not going to walk around like that, but it would be pointless, right? You can’t tolerate it at that level. Then it just wouldn’t have been fun”
“To be honest, the Glazer family are really good when it comes to commercial matters. People who give me advice say that the fans don’t want to hear it, so I have to be careful. I get a lot of criticism if I support the Glazer family, but the truth is that they are good people.”
“They are classic Americans from the East Coast. Very friendly and civilized. They are the nicest people on earth. There isn’t an ounce of evil in Joel Glazer’s body, and that’s part of the problem, because that’s why he’s not fucking…”2
Ratcliffe pauses.
“I mean… I wouldn’t have tolerated Ed Woodward or Richard Arnold.
“Richard was a rugby man. He didn’t understand football at all. Ed didn’t have the skills to lead the club. He was a banker, an accountant. He was not a director,” says Jim Ratcliffe in the interview with The Times.
