The latest round of redundancies at Manchester United has thrown the light again on the infamous Dan Ashworth gaffe by Ineos and Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
The man who was highly coveted from Newcastle, Dan Ashworth left Man Utd after just five months in the role, a circus that cost the club about £4.1 million.
Money United will save from cutting jobs at the grassroots level is a drop in the ocean compared to the money wasted on the Ashworth gaffe, not to mention the Erik ten Hag extension-sacking-Ruben Amorim hiring cycle.
While that can be deemed necessary to some extent, new details have emerged that show how tense the relationship had become between Ashworth and Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
The Ineos chief finally did what he wanted Ashworth to do at the time but he refused.
New details on Dan Ashworth-Sir Jim Ratcliffe tension
It is no secret that if a highly-coveted executive departs the club after five months, at a cost to the club already pleading poverty, something has gone terribly wrong.
Ashworth clearly didn’t get along with Ratcliffe, with some of his suggestions even “irritating” the Man Utd part-owner.
The buildup of all those little disagreements eventually snowballed into a parting of ways which left Ineos with an egg on their face.
The latest details on another factor behind the tension between the pair have come to light in The Athletic’s report about United’s new round of redundancies.
The report states that Ratcliffe wanted Ashworth to start cutting people from the footballing side of the club, then headed by him, but he refused.
Ashworth deemed every employee under his command as necessary, something Ratcliffe clearly didn’t resonate with, eventually resulting in another disagreement.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe got what he wanted at Man Utd
For a man who’s been insistent on building a “best in class” executive team and empowering them to do what they do best, Sir Jim Ratcliffe is making a few too many unilateral decisions overruling them.
It’s hardly empowering if his call is the final one every time and any disagreement with him results in the other person losing their job.
If agreeing with Ratcliffe remains the only way to keep a job at the club, then he might as well get rid of the “best in class” team and save even more money!
In any case, the positive flip side is that the club recognised they had made an error by hiring Ashworth, whose vision didn’t align with the broader philosophy, and immediately cut the cord instead of getting trapped in a sunk cost fallacy.
How fruitful that broader philosophy is remains up for debate.
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