An Ineos-run sporting empire is in disarray. After a prolonged spell of era-defining dominance, they’re now stuck in a rut, hammering away at a rebuilding project with no planning permission, the glory days fading fast.
Turmoil and tension permeate behind closed doors, punctuated by a managerial merry-go-round, a lack of clear direction, and persistent disagreements over style. Question marks hang over the quality of the squad, transfer policies are dissected to within an inch of their lives, the press hover like vultures, the ghosts of the past haunt the present, and the threat of protest lurks constantly in the background.
Luckily for Geraint Thomas and the rest of the Ineos Grenadiers, the glare of the ‘fallen giant’ spotlight – one that has dominated the narrative around the team formerly known as Sky throughout the 2020s – has shifted in recent times, onto another of Sir Jim’s pet projects.
After a painful period of transition, the newly retired Thomas and his team have spent their winter quietly rebuilding, the acquisition of Tour de France revelation Oscar Onley from Picnic PostNL a bold statement of intent for a squad eager to reassert their authority at cycling’s biggest races.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe at Team Ineos launch (credit: Simon Wilkinson/SWpix.com)
The same cannot be said, however, of Manchester United, the rapidly deteriorating jewel of the Ineos sporting crown.
Since Sir Jim Ratcliffe stepped into a leaky, rusty Old Trafford (which he swiftly deemed fit for the bulldozer) in 2024, a convenient football-focused smokescreen for the Glazer family’s much more important money-hording enterprise, things have been far from plain sailing for the petrochemicals tycoon.
Ratcliffe was supposed to herald a new era for a United side without a Premier League title since Fergie retired, one with a clear, coherent ‘identity’, stemming from the very top.
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But a whole host of dodgy decisions – from sacking a manager three months after giving him £300m to spend, to hunting down a ‘best in class’ sporting director, only to show him the door because he dared challenge His Jimness – have culminated this month in the messy firing of Ruben Amorim.
The young Portuguese jacket model/football manager is a 3-4-3 fundamentalist, a rigid, conservative, formation-first tactician at odds with the free flowing attacking style, synonymous with United’s illustrious and increasingly distant history, that Ratcliffe and his henchman seemingly were desperate to implement.
The football, unsurprisingly, was dire, the results appalling, as Amorim – a purveyor of dodgy decisions himself – failed to galvanise a squad not even half-heartedly built in his image. It was like putting Thomas Voeckler in charge of the Sky train. And then blaming Tommy when Chris Froome blows up with 90km left to go in the Alps.
Seasoned observers of Sir Jim’s football and cycling hobby projects will note striking similarities in how they’ve been run since Ineos jumped on board. Beset by confusion, too many voices struggling to be heard, an inability to adapt at speed to a changing sporting landscape, no clear direction within a broken structure, funds promised and not delivered.
Sir Dave Brailsford with Geraint Thomas, 2018 Tour de France (credit: Russell Ellis/russellis.co.uk/SWpix.com)
The overlap between the Ineos cycling and footballing empires doesn’t end there. Dave Brailsford, the architect of British cycling and Team Sky’s golden era and Ratcliffe’s sporting right-hand man since 2019, was one of the key figures behind Amorim’s arrival.
But since then, Brailsford has stepped back from his role as United’s football club director – an appointment that left fans baffled and, it’s fair to say, a little worried back in 2024 – and has reverted to his previous position as Ineos’s head of sport.
He also spent quite a bit of time knocking around the Ineos team bus at the Tour de France, refusing to speak to journalists about David Rozman. That’s more like the Sir Dave we all know and love.
There was also the suggestion this week that, despite his billionaire’s penchant for meddling in things he doesn’t know much about, Ratcliffe’s myriad sporting interests have led him to sometimes taking his eye off the, ahem, ball.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe (credit: Simon Wilkinson/SWpix.com)
In his assessment of Amorim’s sacking, the Independent’s chief football writer Miguel Delaney wrote that one football manager told him about the delays he encountered while being interviewed for the vacant head coach role at United following Erik ten Hag’s sacking in 2024.
According to the manager, his planned meeting with Ratcliffe was delayed for three days because the Ineos owner was “off cycling”. Delaney noted that the coach may have been exaggerating for comedic effect, but the “point still stands”.
(I wonder if Geraint Thomas’ interview with Ratcliffe for the director of racing role at the Ineos Grenadiers was pushed back because Jim was too busy at five-a-sides?)
Anyway, there you have it. Manchester United’s current woes are apparently down to their co-owner’s love of bikes. And we all assumed Sir Jim’s minority takeover of United was going to harm his WorldTour cycling team, shunted to the side of the room as the billionaire started playing with his shiny new toy.
If anything, it could end up having the opposite effect. What that says about Ratcliffe’s influence on his sporting projects, I’ll leave up to you.
We approached the Ineos Grenadiers for comment, asking about the unnamed manager’s claim and for details of how Ratcliffe divvies up his time between cycling and football. Shockingly, they never got back to us.