Sir Jim Ratcliffe has defended Manchester United‘s controversial cost-cutting schemes at Old Trafford and has revealed that without those the club would have “run out of cash by the end of this year”.
Ratcliffe has now overseen a year as co-owner of the Red Devils since spending £1.3bn to purchase a 28.94% stake in the club in a deal which saw INEOS take control of football operations from the Glazer family.
The 72-year-old British billionaire has delivered his verdict on several key issues around the club in a series of wide-ranging interviews with multiple news outlets following recent fan protests outside Old Trafford.
Ratcliffe, who was in attendance for Man United’s 1-1 draw with Arsenal in the Premier League on Sunday, has received criticism for a number of tough decisions made in attempting to steer the club onto a better footing financially, including a controversial move to scrap free lunches for staff.
Man United’s cost-cutting schemes have also included rounds of redundancies, cutting annual contributions to a charity supporting former players, raising ticket prices and ending the ambassadorial contract of club icon Sir Alex Ferguson.
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Ratcliffe: ‘I do feel sympathy with the fans’
Explaining to what extent Man United are still dealing with problems from the past and whether INEOS must take some responsibility for the club’s financial demise, Ratcliffe told BBC Sport: “I just think when you are in a period of change, it is disruptive. It does, if you will excuse the pun, take people’s eye off the ball a bit. We have got a club which was in a level of financial difficulty.
“Manchester United would have run out of cash by the end of this year – by the end of 2025 – after having me put $300m (£232.7m) in and if we buy no new players in the summer, if we hadn’t have implemented the cost programmes and restructuring that we have done over the last 12 months.
“So we have to deal with all those things, and there’s only so many things you can deal with at once. We have a new management team, we have to deal with the financial restructure, then we have to move on to the squad, data analysis, and moving forward.
“But we are in the process of change and it’s an uncomfortable period and disruptive and I do feel sympathy with the fans, but I am not actually surprised where we are in the league because Ruben’s only got a certain size of squad he can deal with, and quite a number of those players are injured or not available to him.”
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Ratcliffe insists cost-cutting measures are “essential” and “necessary”
Discussing how precarious Man United’s financial situation was when he arrived, Ratcliffe added: “It’s a simple equation. If you spend more than you earn eventually that’s the road to ruin. So for the last seven seasons, if you include this season, the club would have lost money. Seven consecutive seasons.
“I think that totals about £330m, so about a third of a billion of cash that’s gone out of the club in the last four or five seasons. The costs of running the club in the last seven years have increased by £100m. The cost of the player wage bill in the last seven years or so is £100m. The increase in the revenue during that period is £100m. And that sum doesn’t work.
“If you are losing money every year, and at the same time you are increasing your costs of running the club, it doesn’t work and it ends in trouble. And that’s where this club would have finished up at the end of this year.
“All of the things that we are doing are essential, are necessary to the club. They are not easy things to do, but we’ll get through that process and we will come out of the other side in the summer. Some of that is all finished and done with now.”
Ratcliffe added: “The simple answer is the club runs out of money at Christmas if we don’t do those things. Ultimately, if you look at running the club the size of Manchester United with an income of about £650m you spend a part of that £650m on operating the club and part of it on the squad. Where do you want to spend the money?
“Do you want to spend it on operating the club, or do you want to spend it on the squad? Because if you spend it on the squad you get better results, and at the end of the day what’s Manchester United here for if it’s not to win trophies and silverware. What we want to do is invest in the best players in the world if we can, rather than spend it on, I’m afraid, free lunches.
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‘Man United is comfortably in the middle of PSR’
Ratcliffe has also revealed how close Man United have been to breaching the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules which were implemented to prevent clubs from losing up to £105m over three years.
“PSR. I think the principle of PSR is a good principle which is you live within your means,” said Ratcliffe. “That’s basically what it says. A football club has to live within its means so it doesn’t got bust. But there are lots of variables in PSR and you are not always in charge of those variables.
“So if you qualify for the Champions League, then that’s an income of £80m to £100m. If you qualify for the Europa League it’s an income of £40m. If you don’t qualify for either it’s an income of nothing. So that’s one variable. Where are we going to be at the end of this season? Are we going to be in the Champions League, or are we going to be nowhere? We don’t know the answer to that.
“And then there are all sorts of other variables with player movements and things like that. It’s quite… there are many moving parts with PSR but you need to be all over that, and you always need to be sure you are going to comfortably sit in the middle of it. Manchester United is comfortably in the middle of it, so we are not going to breach PSR. But it’s quite a complicated business.”
Ratcliffe has given his full backing to current boss Ruben Amorim who has “done a remarkably good job” since his arrival at the end of last year, even though he has lost 10 Premier League games as head coach of Man United, who are languishing in 14th place in the table.
