Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has given Ruben Amorim three years to prove himself a great coach, saying success in football could not come overnight.
In an interview with The Business, The Times’s new podcast, Ratcliffe said that Amorim should be given the full length of his three-year contract to prove himself, launched a scathing attack on the club’s fabled academy, defended the Glazer family and stated that United would become “the most profitable club in the world”.
Although United beat Sunderland 2-0 last weekend, they are tenth in the Premier League and were knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Grimsby Town six weeks ago.
Amorim’s predecessor, Erik ten Hag, was sacked a year ago, just four months after winning the FA Cup and signing a new contract.
There has been mounting criticism of Ratcliffe’s stewardship of the club, including his decision to cut jobs and end free lunches for staff. Ratcliffe defended the changes, saying he wanted to put the club on a “firm financial footing”.
“The costs were just too high,” he said. “There are some fantastic people at Manchester United, but there was also a level of mediocrity and it had become bloated. I got a lot of flak for the free lunches, but no one’s ever given me a free lunch.”
Ratcliffe was unapolagetic over his controversial decision to scrap free lunches for staff members
AFP
Ratcliffe, who owns just under 30 per cent of the club through his chemicals company Ineos, said improving the financial performance was key to the long-term success.
“There are two halves to a football team — there is the business side and the sports side,” he said.
“The biggest correlation, like it or not, between results and any external factor — is profitability. The more cash you have got, the better squad you can build. It’s like a Formula 1 car — the better car you can build, the quicker you go.
“The better your squad, the better your football should be. So a lot of what we have done in the first year is spend an awful lot of time putting the club on a sustainable, healthy footing.
“If you look at our results for last year we have the highest revenues ever. Profitability, the second-highest ever. We’re not seeing all the benefits of the restructuring that we’ve done in this set of results, and we were not in the Champions League. Those numbers will get better. Manchester United will become the most profitable football club in the world, in my view, and from that will stem, I hope, a long-term, sustainable, high level of football.”
He referred back to the reign of Sir Alex Ferguson, who faced calls for his sacking early in his tenure, but went on to oversee the most successful period in the club’s history.
Ferguson, left, was close to losing his job early in his reign before becoming arguably the world’s greatest football manager
GETTY
Ratcliffe also reminded his critics that Mikel Arteta endured a difficult start to life as Arsenal head coach but ultimately turned the London club into title challengers once more.
“I remember the clamouring for Alex Ferguson to be fired in his first two years,” Ratcliffe said. “You look at Arteta at Arsenal. He had a miserable time for the first couple of years.
“We’re results driven at the end of the day, but we have to be patient and we have to see through the results. I think there’s lots of good things at Manchester United. We have to be patient and we have a long-term plan. It isn’t a light switch.
“Ruben needs to demonstrate that he’s a great coach over three years.”
Ratcliffe, who has full control of United’s football operation despite majority ownership of the Glazer family, said the prospect of them asking him to sack Amorim “absolutely wouldn’t happen”
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When asked whether that meant he intended to give Amorim three years, Ratcliffe said: “Yes. That’s where I would be. Three years, because football’s not overnight.”
The Glazer family, who took control of Manchester United in 2005 before selling a minority to Ratcliffe in February last year, has come in for particularly heavy attacks from fans and the media. Ratcliffe acknowledged the criticism. “They get a bad rap … but they are really nice people and they are really passionate about the club,” he said.
Asked about his relationship with the family, Ratcliffe said they were content to let him take charge. “That probably sums it up. We’re local, and they’re the other side of the pond. That’s a long way away to try and manage a football club as big and and as complex as Manchester United. We’re here with feet on the ground.”
When asked what would happen if the Glazers told him to sack Amorim, Ratcliffe said: “It absolutely wouldn’t happen because it’s just a good working relationship. “They come to the board meetings. We sit down and we talk about things. We’ve made errors. There’s absolutely no question that we’ve made errors as we’ve gone along and we’ve talked about it. But no one’s perfect.”
Ratcliffe said that he was pleased with the four players that United had bought for a cost of more than £200million this summer.
He said that in the future, he wants the first-team squad to be supplemented by more academy graduates, in line with the club’s history. United have produced some of the finest young players in British football, such as Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Sir Bobby Charlton and George Best.
Ratcliffe is hopeful that academy products — such as McTominay, who was named Serie A player of the year after his move to Napoli from Old Trafford — will continue to be a regular feature in the first team
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The likes of Marcus Rashford, Scott McTominay, Amad Diallo, Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo have made the step up over the past few years, but Ratcliffe claims more players should have made the grade, which is one of the reasons why he has recently hired Stephen Torpey from Brentford to replace Nick Cox as academy director.
“The academy has really slipped at Manchester United,” Ratcliffe said. “You need the academy to be producing talent all the time. It helps you financially.
“That’s not a light switch. You don’t solve the academy problem overnight. It takes time. We just recruited a new academy director.”
Ratcliffe also thinks that the proposed construction of a 100,000-seat new stadium next to United’s present ground, which is looking old and worn, will help the club.
“If we can navigate our way through to building this new stadium, of course that has an enormous impact on the Manchester United revenues,” he said.
The Business podcast launches on Thursday 9th October. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.