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Manchester United’s part owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, has spoken out on the future of the Premier League and also the club’s inability to sign Jean-Clair Todibo from Nice due to INEOS also owing the French side.
The British billionaire came out on top to buy the club in December 2023 after months of bidding. His Ineos company has already appointed a wholly different background team and made plans to invest in the training ground and set up a taskforce to improve the stadium.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Ratcliffe warned that the Premier League is facing a tough future.
“We’ve got more accountants than we’ve got sporting people at Manchester United. If you’re not careful, the Premier League is going to finish up spending more time in court than it is thinking about what’s good for the league,” he said.
Ratcliffe also launched an attack on parliamentarians’ idea to launch a football regulator. The Labour Party in the United Kingdom, who are predicted to win the election in July this year and form the next government, “this week backed plans to push forward a Football Governance Bill”.
The legislation would set up checks and balances on how clubs are managed and would supposedly aim to protect their financial stability.
Speaking on the proposal Ratcliffe outlined his opposition by stating, “if you’ve got a government regulator at the end of the day they will regulate and that won’t be good.” He also took aim at the newly introduced financial rules known as “anchoring”.
“What would anchoring do? It would inhibit the top clubs in the Premiership. The last thing you want in the Premiership is for the top clubs in the Premiership not to be able to compete with the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and PSG.”
Ratcliffe then spoke on his aims to get Manchester United to where European champions Real Madrid are right now but admitted that the process will take time.
“It will take two or three summer windows to get to a better place” and he added, “I’m not confident that we’ll solve all the problems in the first transfer window.”
The INEOS chief also reiterated his stance that United would not try to solve their problems by signing global superstars by claiming, “Manchester United doesn’t have any players that are valued at €100 million or more” and that buying a superstar “isn’t going to solve the problem at Manchester United.”
He also commented on United’s much discussed decision to keep Erik ten Hag at the club by stating that the club’s problems are much deeper than that of the coach and that the new owners are plotting to fix the wider structure.
“The coach isn’t the central issue at Manchester United. It’s a sports club. It needs to be competitive, it needs a degree of intensity, but with a supportive side to it because you are dealing with players who are relatively young. It hasn’t had that type of environment historically.”
The billionaire also spoke out on yesterday’s news that United are effectively banned from purchasing Nice’s Jean-Clair Todibo due to INEOS’ involvement in both clubs.
“They’ve (UEFA) said we can sell him to another Premiership club, but we can’t sell to Manchester United,” Ratcliffe said. “But that’s not fair on the player and I don’t see what that achieves.”
Finally, the 71 year old spoke of the economic potential of the side and spoke glowingly about the club’s world famous reputation.
“Everybody in the world knows of Manchester because of Manchester United. It is like Coca-Cola, isn’t it? Everybody knows it. I’m not sure I know why, But it’s a fact.”
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