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Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has revealed he would walk away from the club if he faced the same level of abuse as the Glazers.
Ratcliffe invested more than £1.2bn last season to buy 28.94% of United and as part of the deal, he assumed operational control of the club. The Glazers – who own 67.9% of shares – remain extremely hated figures in the eyes of supporters.
As recently as last weekend, thousands of United fans staged a protest calling for the American family to end their association with the Red Devils.
Ratcliffe sat down with The Times and opened up on his relationship with the Glazers. The INEOS billionaire also shed light on the criticism he has been subjected to over the past few weeks amidst a number of unpopular decisions including staff redundancies and hiked ticket prices.
Asked if he can stick it out of the friction between himself and some sections of the fanbase continue, Ratcliffe answered, “It can be unpleasant.”
“And I’ve probably failed on the having fun front. I mean, I can put up with it for a while. I don’t mind being unpopular because I get that nobody likes seeing Manchester United down where they are, and nobody likes the decisions we’re having to make at the moment.”
“If I draw a bit of the ire, I can put up with that. But I’m no different to the average person. It’s not nice, particularly for friends and family.”
“So, eventually, if it reached the extent that the Glazer family have been abused, then I’d have to say, look, enough’s enough guys, let somebody else do this. They can’t really come to a match, the Glazers. They’ve retreated into the shadows a bit now, so I’m getting all the bloody stick.”
“We bought in and I haven’t seen them since. It’s, ‘Thank you, Jim, you’re doing a really good job.’ At the moment, I don’t have security, I don’t have to walk around like that. But it would defeat the object, wouldn’t it? You couldn’t tolerate it at that level, it just wouldn’t be fun.”
“I haven’t had it so far, not really. I had that guy through the car window at the Fulham match that got arsey with me, but I haven’t had what I would call threatening behaviour — although my brother Bob sends me f***ing critical notes. It’s a bit like me and Ruben, he gives me advice.”
Ratcliffe insisted that the desire to make money was not what motivated him to buy into United.
“That is 100 per cent not where I’ve come from at all. I’m making enough money in chemicals and oil and gas and all that stuff. I can’t honestly answer why we did it. It’s quite a difficult question. With Nice, in the French league, you can buy a club for £100million. It’s much cheaper access. But I don’t particularly enjoy going to watch Nice because there are some good players but the level of football is not high enough for me to get excited.”
Ratcliffe acknowledged that, just as the United shirt has weighed heavily on managers and players, he too feels the burden as he works to restore the club to its rightful place.
“The first thing Alex Ferguson said to me was that the shirt can be too heavy. It applies to everyone here really, the coach, the players — the owner. It’s turning me into an old man. It’s hard to do the interviews. On camera for 40 minutes, one cock-up and you’re legendary for it.”
“Remember [jewellery chain chief executive] Gerald Ratner, the guy with the rings? Spent his life building a business; one word, all gone. It takes a lot out of you. Because it’s around the world in a heartbeat. It goes viral. Everything is scrutinised. It takes one small piece…”
The British businessman explained that he has been urged by those close to him to refrain from taking a positive stance on the Glazers. However, this did not stop him from launching a staunch defence of them, branding the American investors as “the nicest people on the planet.”
“To be fair to the Glazers, they’re really good on the commercial side.
“The people who advise me say the fans don’t want to hear it. So I’ve got to be cautious. I get a lot of criticism if I support the Glazers, but the fact is they’re really decent people. They’re East Coast, you know — that old East Coast America, they’re very polite, they’re very civilized, they’re the nicest people on the planet. I mean, there isn’t a bad bone in Joel Glazer’s body. I mean, part of the problem is there isn’t a bad bone in his body, which is why he didn’t bloody…”
Instead of blaming the Glazers for United’s current predicament, Ratcliffe elected to point the finger at past members of the club’s executive arm – Ed Woodward and Richard Arnold in particular.
“I mean, I wouldn’t have tolerated Ed Woodward, or Richard Arnold. Richard was a rugby man, he didn’t even understand football. Ed didn’t have the credentials to manage the club. He was a merchant banker, an accountant. He wasn’t the chief executive.”
“The way I look at it is that you had two management teams at Manchester United for the past 12 years who did a poor job because the owners weren’t like, say, Steve Parish [Crystal Palace] and Daniel Levy [Tottenham Hotspur], they weren’t really into the details. Those two know what’s going on. They’re there every day and the management at their clubs are on a short leash.”
He added, “The management of Manchester United have been given a huge amount of rope. The owners just managed the club and left the football side alone and they’ve made a lot of very poor decisions over 12 years, stupid things. They made a complete cock-up of it, shocking really.”
“They couldn’t see where they were headed. The first management group, they thought they understood and wanted to get involved in buying footballers but they didn’t have the knowledge to buy footballers, you know, so they went in the marketplace, spraying money around and it was just random, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that says, well, that’s just life in football, ups and downs, these things happen, because if I look at Real Madrid and Barcelona and Bayern Munich, they don’t do that. They just stay at the top. And it’s not like that here because it’s been poorly managed and they’ve made poor decisions.”
“Look, I like David Moyes, and I think he’s a really good manager, but to go from Sir Alex Ferguson to Moyes is not where I would have gone. Moyes stepped into the shoes of Ferguson, who’s won the Premier League 13 times, who won the Champions League twice and then you’re handing over to a guy that has never managed big players and had never won anything. He’s not necessarily got the personality to stand in front of them all.”
“And I don’t think Real Madrid would have made that choice as coach. If you look at coaches, a club can’t always get it right, but they should have found the best chief executive in the world, and the best coach in the world, because Manchester United is the best club in the world. Instead they got both of those decisions wrong.”
Ratcliffe continued, “So, in my mind, we have a very professional partnership with the Glazer family. But have you met them? They’re really honest, straightforward, not what you expect when you read about them in the press. And they’re both [Avram and Joel — the most involved in the club] passionate about Manchester United.”
“I like them as people — to be honest, they could have given us a bloody hard time, couldn’t they, after we cocked up with Dan Ashworth and Erik ten Hag? Could have, but didn’t.”
United are back in action on Sunday when they go away to the King Power Stadium to face Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Leicester City.
Kick-off is at 19:00 GMT.
Featured image Michael Regan via Getty Images
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