Jim Ratcliffe hints at major change to rescue ‘mediocre’ club

SIR JIM RATCLIFFE has labelled Manchester United as "mediocre" and warned that "difficult and unpopular decisions" would be needed to get the club back to the top.

Ratcliffe came under scrutiny earlier this week after the controversial decision to raise prices for unsold Premier League tickets to a minimum of £66 regardless of age.

Speaking to United We Stand editor Andy Mitten in a bombshell interview, Ratcliffe was asked about the decision to scrap concession ticket prices.

The Ineos billionaire, who now controls a 27.7 per cent share in Man Utd, said: "The club has drifted for a long period of time, a decade or so. Manchester United has become mediocre.

"It’s not elite and it is supposed to be one of the best football clubs in the world. That’s what it used to be under Alex [Ferguson].

"There is major change to come to achieve elite status. There has already been huge change."

Following Ineos' takeover of football activity at the club, a number of key appointments have been made to improve the club's structure including the arrivals of Dan Ashworth and Omar Berrada as director of football and CEO.

Ruben Amorim was appointed as the team's new manager after Ineos sacked Erik ten Hag despite initially keeping the Dutchman in the summer - decisions costing the club £21.4million.

On those calls, Ratcliffe said: "I know we get criticism in the press but we do need to challenge the cost of running this club because what I want to be free for us to do is buy really good footballers, not spend so much of the money on infrastructure.

"We can't run a business at a loss, which is where United have been in the last couple of years.

"If you are losing money you have to borrow from the bank to pay for the losses. Eventually that becomes unsustainable...

"We’re on the way, but this won’t happen overnight. There are financial issues which we need to address because we’ve inherited a financial situation that only time will solve."

Asked specifically about the rise in ticket prices which sparked furious fan protest at Old Trafford earlier this week, he said: "It’s an emotive one, ticketing, but we have to have some benchmarks with ticketing.

"We must make sure that we look after the community because at the end of the day it’s their football club.

"We need to make sure that people who are genuine supporters can afford to go. Maybe their circumstances don’t allow them to spend a fortune on tickets.“I 100 per cent get that. But we have to balance that and optimise our ticket income because it feeds back into how do we win the Champions League or Premier League.“I’m very cognisant that we have to look after the community because it’s the community’s team, but equally I want to optimise the revenue from people who can afford it."

Ratcliffe argued the decision only looked at three per cent of the tickets and insisted he did not want to price out locals.

He added: "I understand that. I was brought up on a council estate in Manchester, I absolutely get that.

"I don’t want to end up in a position where the genuine local fans can’t afford to come, but I do want to optimise the ticketing. We need to find a balance. And you can’t be popular all the time either.

“Here, we’re talking about three per cent of the tickets. That’s not the issue.

"The issue, as you say, is whether this is the thin edge of the wedge. I don’t think it makes sense for a Manchester United ticket to cost less than a ticket to see Fulham."

Ratcliffe also slammed the team's recruitment in recent years, describing the club as in the "last century" in terms of data analysis.

He said: "We’ve not been good enough at recruitment, you probably agree with that. Everybody would agree with that.

"And until we’re as good as anyone in the world, then it’s not good enough for Manchester United.

"We must have the best recruitment in the world. Data Analysis comes alongside recruitment. It doesn’t really exist here. We’re still in the last century on data analysis here.

“There’s an immense amount of useful data that we can get from data analysis and we’re in the ‘very poor’ bracket with data analysis here.

"These things don’t happen overnight. You can’t just flick a light switch and sort out recruitment. It’s all about people and we need to find the right people.

"The other big one is we need to run the club efficiently and well. We need to sweat every pound so that we have more capacity for the investment in players.

"Those are the big-ticket items which take up time.

“The other point here is how you grow the amount of money that you can spend on players. You can run the business more efficiently. And you can grow the top line."

Ratcliffe added that he wants staff morale to be driven by results on the pitch and that he saw much-maligned majority owners Joel and Avram Glazer as nice people" who are "genuine fans of the club".