Manchester United’s serene international break saw a flurry of activity after Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s interview out of nowhere, and even though Ruben Amorim received strong backing, the bigger story is elsewhere.
Ruben Amorim quietened the noise around his future at Man Utd with a calm 2-0 win against Sunderland just before the international break.
However, nobody is under any doubt that a win against newly-promoted Sunderland ends questions over Amorim’s future.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe gave a strong backing to Amorim in the interview, which will delight the Man Utd manager, but the bigger story is Ratcliffe’s comments on the Glazers.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s curious comment on the Glazers
Before going into details, it must be noted that Ratcliffe is in a business partnership with the Glazers, so anyone expecting him to badmouth them publicly is setting themselves up for disappointment.
However, there is still a middle ground to be found between badmouthing them and raving about them, something Ratcliffe refuses to do.
In the latest interview with The Times’ The Business podcast, Ratcliffe again stressed that the Glazers are “nice people” who are “passionate” about Man Utd.
That’s not even the most curious part, since it could simply be business-speak by an individual who, ideally, would like full control of the club in the future.
The curious part began afterward, which just put into focus how good a deal the Glazers secured for themselves when selling to Ratcliffe and Co.
He said: “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 as complex as Manchester United. We’re here with feet on the ground.
“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.”
Glazers got the deal of the century with Ineos
Ineos and Ratcliffe are getting the majority of the blame now, despite investing their own money into the club and taking on several other projects.
That sits perfectly fine with the Glazers, who have retreated into the background by letting Ineos clear up the mess they created over nearly two decades.
Ratcliffe confirming that Ineos have their feet on the ground, while Glazers sit thousands of miles away collecting profits, is the biggest boost the American family could have received.
Effectively, the Glazers hired Ratcliffe to run the club for them in exchange for less than 30% of the shares.
They keep majority control of the club, are shielded from criticism and accountability, their work is reduced to effectively zero, and they are more than a billion pounds richer for it.
Ratcliffe’s backing for Amorim pales in comparison to the deal of the century Glazers struck with Ineos. After all, if it’s that hard to manage a club from across the pond, perhaps they could have thought about it before their leveraged buyout of the club, saddling it with millions of debt?
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