The timing of the completion of Sir Jim Ratcliffe‘s £1.25billion deal to buy 25 per cent of Manchester United was exquisite. I have no idea if Britain’s second richest man has a God complex but when it was Christmas Eve that brought confirmation of his investment in England‘s most famous football club, it certainly made it look that way.
The saviour-symbolism was so obvious that the press release might as well have been etched on a stained-glass window.
United need a saviour. No one is about to dispute that. Their season is lurching from one low to another. One metric says that they have made their worst start to a campaign since 1930, they finished bottom of their Champions League group and languish in eighth place in the Premier League, where only Sheffield United have scored fewer goals.
They have no identity on the pitch, their recruitment has been a disaster, their players play like strangers, their wingers won’t pass to their centre forward, their star player looks like he’d rather be anywhere else and their captain is fresh from missing their biggest game of the season because he got booked in the last minute of a match they had already lost.
Their stadium, Old Trafford, is a decaying, decrepit embarrassment, they have taken to banning the media for stories they don’t like, they made a horrible mess of the Mason Greenwood situation, their training ground is outdated and Aston Villa are visiting on Boxing Day to remind them what a well-run club looks like. Apart from that, everything’s fine.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe completed his deal to invest £1.3billion in Manchester United
The Glazers still own a majority shareholding in the club and will benefit financially from any improvements in fortune on the pitch that Ratcliffe effects
So it’s a low bar that the new stakeholders have to clear now that they have taken over sporting control at the club to try to lift the malaise that has settled over it. It’s not as if the contingent from Ratcliffe’s Ineos organisation have got a tough act to follow. United are in disarray. Things can’t get any worse than they already are, surely.
Probably not but it would also be wrong to think that Ratcliffe’s involvement in United will be a panacea. History does not support the idea that, in sport, he is a man with the Midas touch.
Sir Jim’s problem with pitching himself as the Manchester-born messiah, come to deliver the club from its manifold woes, is that he will still have to sup with the Glazers, who United fans see as the Devil, who still own a majority shareholding in the club and who will benefit financially from any improvements in fortune on the pitch that Ratcliffe effects.
Many ask how the club can really move forward while the Glazers exert the ultimate control over Old Trafford, raising the spectre of split authority. That is one of the reasons why there was a lukewarm reaction from United fans to Sunday’s news of the conclusion of the Ratcliffe deal.
Then there is the fact that Ratcliffe is supposed to be pledging £245m to upgrade the stadium. It is a lot of money, sure, but compare it to the work that has just been completed at the Bernabeu, the renovations that are taking place at the Nou Camp, and the majesty of the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and it feels decidedly half-hearted.
Ratcliffe (left) and Sir Dave Brailsford (right) will now look to turn United’s fortunes around
Ratcliffe may be a phenomenally successful businessman in the Badlands of the petrochemicals industry but his track record whenever he dabbles in sport reads like the curriculum vitae of a wide-eyed superfan who loses his business acumen when he moves away from his core area.
You have heard of ‘the INEOS Curse’, I’m sure. Most of what Ratcliffe has touched in sport has turned to dust. The fortunes of cycling’s former Team Sky, the Mercedes F1 team and the All Blacks have all gone into sharp decline after Ineos got involved. Ratcliffe bought Nice football club more than four years ago. It is only now that it is starting to perform well in Ligue 1.
And then there is the presence of former cycling guru Sir Dave Brailsford, who is prominent among Ratcliffe’s lieutenants and will take a seat on United’s UK club board. Brailsford’s prominence has already raised plenty of eyebrows.
United’s beleaguered boss, Erik ten Hag, will be looking over his shoulder now Ratcliffe has taken over
If Ratcliffe is a messiah, some have accused Brailsford of being a very naughty boy. It is enough to say his squeaky-clean image in cycling evaporated a long time ago.
Brailsford’s ‘marginal gains’ theory, once considered revolutionary, is now widely regarded as a sham. Still, he may not have to work too hard to find a few marginal gains at United. If he gets the number of passes from Antony to Rasmus Hojlund up from nought to one, he’ll be hailed a conceptual genius all over again.
What may be more problematic for Ratcliffe is the possibility the presence of Brailsford in a structure above a director of football will put off some leading candidates. There is a bad feeling about Brailsford’s involvement in a sport he knows precious little about.
Some have already compared it to Southampton’s ill-fated decision to give a position of responsibility to England’s World Cup-winning rugby coach, Sir Clive Woodward. And some of those who have already encountered Brailsford’s efforts to embed himself in football have been less than impressed by the levels of his knowledge.
Ratcliffe once told a newspaper interviewer that ‘they’, meaning United, ‘have been the dumb money, which you see with players like Fred.’ He was absolutely right about that. And that situation has only got worse. Paying £85m for Antony beggars belief but he is just one of many spectacular busts.
If INEOS can improve that trend, if they can attract a director football with proven pedigree like Dougie Freedman at Crystal Palace, who is widely respected, if they can improve recruitment, if they can stop dumping money in the bin, then maybe things will start to improve.
United have no identity on the pitch, their recruitment has been a disaster and their players play like strangers
If they think things will get better because Brailsford sends the players home with comfy pillows or gets them to eat kale in the canteen, then they’ll be disappointed. Modern footballers already eat kale. If you believe some reports, they eat little else.
Brailsford is rumoured to be attending the Villa game on Boxing Day, sitting in the Old Trafford directors’ box. United’s beleaguered boss, Erik ten Hag, will be looking over his shoulder at him. The speculation around the manager’s position will only increase now Ratcliffe is in charge of football operations.
There are easy gains to be made here for Ratcliffe. He and his team can’t make it worse than it already is at United but can they make a big enough difference to close the gap on Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool in the next four or five years? Maybe. But God-complexes tend to get dismantled fast at Old Trafford these days.
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