A lot of Manchester United fans are extremely happy that at last Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS are in (minority) charge of their club.
There are plenty of justified reasons for that.
With Ratcliffe’s arrival, the football side of Manchester United – which as he quite rightly reiterated should really be the most important bit and the clue is in the full name that pundits take such delight in reeling off in full whenever some new disaster occurs – is out of Glazer hands forever, and United have also staved off the grim spectacle of becoming just another state-owned plaything in the increasingly vexatious willy-waving contest being carried out by some extremely troubling countries via the medium of football-club ownership.
But that doesn’t make Ratcliffe a saviour or messiah. You can be the least bad and still be… bad. He’s still a billionaire, for one thing, an inherently bad and unjustifiable concept. That’s kind of unavoidable, though, when you’re Manchester United and capitalism still hasn’t been overthrown. Hard to be owned and run by anyone who isn’t when you’re the size of Manchester United, so we shouldn’t hold that too much against him. We will, though.
Its also not the only red flag from what was clearly meant to be a chummy chat for selected journalists designed specifically to generate positive coverage and headlines. Though that doesn’t mean they didn’t stitch him up.
Here are five red flags:
Is Mason Greenwood a good guy?
The most obvious red flag came from the most obvious issue. There really is nothing new to be said about Mason Greenwood, and while the new owner would want to come in with a clean-slate approach, it is by now pretty clear what must happen with Greenwood and it’s unhelpful to pretend otherwise.
“The process will be: understand the facts not the hype and then try and come to a fair decision on the basis of values which is basically is he a good guy or not, and answer could he play sincerely for Manchester United well and would we be comfortable with it and would the fans be comfortable with it.”
Is he a good guy or not. F***ing hell. Later, speaking more generally about his experience with other football clubs in the INEOS portfolio, Ratcliffe notes: “At INEOS, we don’t mind people making mistakes – but please don’t make it a second time.”
Almost impossible to square that with even considering embarking on a second, so obviously doomed, attempt to reintegrate Greenwood after the backlash that forced United to pack him off on loan in the first place.
READ: Why are Manchester United so willing to degrade themselves for Mason Greenwood?
Man of the people
Speaking about his frustration at the length of time it took to get this deal over the line, Ratcliffe briefly forgets he’s supposed to be coming across as a fan and a regular guy who just wants things to be better.
“Time and time again. I remember at the Monaco Grand Prix, which was in May, we opened a bottle of very expensive champagne and all celebrated. That was a false dawn and we went through several more false dawns after that.”
We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Hard not to feel sorry for him.
Newcastle being mean and childish
In what is clearly a press briefing designed to generate extremely favourable coverage with its myriad obvious direct pitches to the fans, the jovial mask still slips an alarming number of times as reminders arrive that while Ratcliffe may not be the Glazers or state ownership he is still a billionaire and thus by definition a megalomaniac who loses his rag at the first hint of not getting his own way all the time.
The clearest example comes when discussion turns to Dan Ashworth, and Newcastle’s refusal to just let Manchester United have him because they want him and they are Manchester United.
He loftily declares this “a bit silly” and then insists “I won’t get dragged into that”.
‘He then,’ as Adam Crafton dryly notes in The Athletic, ‘very much dragged himself into that.’
“What I do think is completely absurd is suggesting a man who is really good at his job sits in his garden for one and a half years.”
Pure cakeism, this. If it’s so absurd for a man so good at his job to sit in his garden for 18 months then just pay what it takes to prevent that. Newcastle absolutely do not need to grow up and do as they’re told, the only reasonable inference from Ratcliffe’s pointed comments about Manchester City’s ‘grown up’ handling of the Omar Berrada defection.
Also, we really like the idea that even to billionaires, the very British, very euphemistic phrase ‘gardening leave’ still instantly conjures up images of literally spending that time sat in the garden. Rain or shine, Dan’s out there, picking up cat sh*t and tending to the beds.
We’d like some taxpayer cash, please, because winter is coming
The most disingenuous part is undoubtedly Monaco-residing Ratcliffe’s pitch for government – i.e. your – cash to help the assorted billionaire owners of Manchester United do up their stadium as an ‘investment for the north’.
“The people in the north pay their taxes like the people in the south pay their taxes.
“But where’s the national stadium for football? It’s in the south. Where’s the national stadium for rugby? It’s in the south. Where’s the national stadium for tennis? It’s in the south. Where’s the national concert stadium? It’s the O2 Arena, it’s in the south. Where’s the Olympic Village? It’s in the south.”
Is Wimbledon the ‘national stadium for tennis’? Not really sure about that, but that’s semantics really. The main point is that Ratcliffe’s sudden commitment to regeneration of the north of England is enormously convenient and quite transparently self-serving. Where was Ratcliffe saying all this guff? At the headquarters of his petrochemicals firm INEOS, which is of course in…London. Opposite Harrods, no less.
He goes on to talk about how many Champions League titles the north-west has won versus how many London has won, without ever really explaining why that’s particularly relevant. He then parcels it all up with a nod to the long-standing and reasonable complaint about northern fans having to schlep down to London for FA Cup semi-finals.
But ‘taxpayers spending a billion quid to do up Old Trafford during a cost of living crisis’ seems a pretty extreme solution to that particular problem. There are quite famously some other pretty decent football grounds in the north of England. The lack of suitable venues north of the M25 is not the reason FA Cup semi-finals are played at Wembley, and we suspect Jim knows this.
Pretty words
Above all the specifics, though, is a sense of an overarching smugness, of an act being put on that is simultaneously both enormously obvious to the point of insulting yet still frequently falters and reveals the billionaire underneath the mask.
There are lots of blatant easier-said-than-done sops to long-standing fan concerns over the club’s direction – which is fine but largely meaningless noise at this stage – and a very deliberate nod to Fergie’s famous ‘knock them off their f***ing perch’ jab. Perhaps our single biggest problem with Ratcliffe is the fact his version of that great line excises the all-important expletive and thus robs it of all its poetically vitriolic power. Can you really trust a man who doesn’t swear? Not sure you can.
But the whole thing is littered with this kind of stuff. In political terms, it’s a lot of red meat for the base. There’s an attempt at humour in a vaguely unsavoury swipe at Sheikh Jassim (“I’m not sure he exists!”) and a constant commitment to telling fans what they want to hear.
He even wheels out the greatest cliché of them all here.
“It’s a community asset. The club is owned by the fans. That’s what it’s there for: for the fans. We’re guardians or stewards for a temporary period of time. I’m not going to be there forever. It is important we communicate to the fanbase. We underestimate how important an aspect it is of their life and how it affects their life.
“On a wet Monday morning in Manchester, that’s the first thing you talk about when you go into the office or the factory: how did we do at the weekend? And you either start off with a good week or a bad week depending on how it went. It’s beholden upon us to… It’s not my job to do it on a frequent basis but it was quite important today that we are seen by the true owners, who are the fans, really.”
Noble, noble words. We’d love to think he actually believes a single one of them. Every answer, every quote, feels like a politician’s. The words may be pretty indeed, but the actions will speak far louder.
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