If Ratcliffe was true to his word he would sell up at Man Utd
If Ratcliffe was true to his word he would sell up at Man Utd
Oliver BrownMon, November 9, 2026 at 2:00 PM UTC
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Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who oversees football operations at Manchester United, has been fiercely criticised by fans - Getty Images/Ash Donelon
Everybody, even a billionaire inured to the bluntest verdicts, has a breaking point. For Sir Jim Ratcliffe, that moment threatens to arrive sooner than you might imagine. What began as a passion project for him at Manchester United has curdled into an unspeakable nightmare, with supporters’ criticism of his leadership turning from sharp to sulphurous to downright sinister. As his childhood team unravels under his control at such a rate that they will visit Anfield in the relegation zone for the first time in 89 years, this is the refrain with Old Trafford is serenading him: “Build a bonfire, put the Glazers on the top, put Ratcliffe in the middle and burn the f------ lot.”
Delightful. It is surely a cue for Ratcliffe, at 74 years old and buttressed by a £15bn fortune, to wonder why on earth he is bothering. After all, he did not make a drastic handbrake turn in his eighth decade from fossil fuels to football without believing that, at some level, he would enjoy it. Plus, he made it abundantly clear that if he received chants as vitriolic as those assailing the Glazers, he would walk away. “I can put up with it for a while,” he said. “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.’”
United’s absurd pantomime against Aston Villa on Sunday began, as usual, with a protest against the Glazers and the release of green-and-gold balloons intended to symbolise the days when the club were known as plain old Newton Heath. Except this time, the opprobrium was also plainly directed at Ratcliffe and Ineos, as a huge banner declared: “We don’t want a new stadium – we want new owners.” Such denunciations are becoming routine. To be at Stamford Bridge last month for the 2-0 defeat to Chelsea was to hear travelling fans call Ratcliffe the worst word in the English language within half an hour, as well as offering a predictable suggestion as to the orifice in which he could stick his beloved stadium.
Manchester United fan holds up a banner outside Old Trafford calling for the Glazer family and Sir Jim Ratliffe to give up ownership - PA/Martin Rickett
The future that Ratcliffe has teased at United looks tantalising: a 100,000-seater ground with a vast translucent canopy, leading to regeneration of the long-neglected area around Old Trafford. But the present is enveloped by a Stygian gloom. In a litany of low ebbs, United enter this international break having achieved what they have long risked doing since Ineos’s arrival in December 2023, falling into the top flight’s bottom three. Not since the tempestuous days of Ron Atkinson in late 1986 has that unflattering distinction come to pass. And the blame, to a large degree, is pinned on Ratcliffe, who has about as sure a touch as a minority owner as the hapless Diogo Dalot does as a full-back.
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For Ratcliffe, the only mercy was that he could not attend Old Trafford to face the fury in person. While he is not an absentee owner in the mould of the Glazers – so remote when it comes to their primary sporting asset that Avram has been to just two home games in four-and-a-half years, and Joel last turned up in April 2019 – he is limited by his Monaco tax residency on how much time he can spend in the UK. But even if he could squeeze in a game, what pleasure would he derive from this poisonous environment? It would be less a case of luxuriating in the VIP seats to survey his masterpiece than being frogmarched to the stocks to be pelted with rotten fruit.
True, there are compelling reasons for United to feel aggrieved at Ratcliffe’s stewardship and contemptuous of his judgment. He has picked his politburo as shrewdly as these silent executives have selected the players, with the result that the team is now in a state of ungovernable chaos, led by a manager who is almost certainly doomed. But it is one thing for people to scrutinise his miscalculations, and quite another for them to sing about setting fire to him. Why would any businessman, let alone one of Ratcliffe’s Croesan wealth, put up with this reception for a second longer than necessary? Any satisfaction has long since given way to suffering.
Ratcliffe saw the distancing of the Glazers, the way that they became – mostly deservedly, it must be said – punchbags for disenchanted fans, and vowed it would not happen to him. “They can’t really come to a match, the Glazers,” he reflected. “They’ve retreated into the shadows, so I’m getting all the stick. We bought in and I haven’t seen them since. It’s ‘thank you, Jim, you 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.”
Fun has been rendered an alien concept at United, replaced by a gruesome managerial soap opera and the spectacle of listless players who only seem to rouse themselves once two goals down. “When the fun stops, stop” was the message adopted by the UK betting industry, a token effort to protect gamblers from oblivion. You could hardly blame Ratcliffe, whose own punt to revive a sclerotic United has so spectacularly backfired, if he is fast approaching the same conclusion.
Source: “AOL Money”
