On Wednesday November 27, after news that Manchester United were planning to increase a small percentage of ticket prices mid-season, I requested an interview with co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe for the United We Stand fanzine that I’ve edited since it started in 1989. Readers, many of them at regulars at Old Trafford, were angry with the changes, believing that it was the thin end of the wedge of what’s to come.
Ratcliffe agreed to an interview. I’d interviewed all United’s leading executives going back to the 1980s bar any of the Glazers. I never asked; they don’t do interviews.
It was agreed that I’d go to the club’s Carrington training ground just before the Bodo/Glimt game on the Thursday of that week to talk. Expecting it to be a zoom call, I walked into a room where Ratcliffe, Sir Dave Brailsford, director of sport at Ratcliffe’s company INEOS, and Omar Berrada, the club’s chief executive, were talking. The latter pair left the room and the interview began. We had 30 minutes, not ideal, but sufficient, so we wanted to get through as much as we could — and we did.
The interview runs to 4,000 words and is published in full in the new issue of the fanzine which went on sale today before the game at home to Nottingham Forest (that’s if the weather hasn’t ruined things; nothing kills sales of a paper-based magazine like rain) and a digital version that can be downloaded on the fanzine’s website from midnight on Saturday.
The discussion in full covers the stadium, the women’s team, his support of the club, whether his people are best placed to run United, putting ‘football club’ on the club badge and how involved Ratcliffe is day-to-day.
But below is a selection of what Ratcliffe had to say on topics including those ticket prices, recruitment, data analysis, the Glazers, staff morale and why he likes that picture of Pep Guardiola after he had been scratching his head during Manchester City’s losing streak.
Appointments and unpopular decisions: ‘there is major change to come’
“To get Manchester United to where we need to get it — it’s a bit like the country,” said Ratcliffe as we sat down in the building currently used for the first team training (while the main block at Carrington is being redeveloped, expanded and modernised).
“We have to make some difficult and unpopular decisions. If you shy away from the difficult decisions then nothing much is going to change. We won’t get everything right and it won’t happen overnight, but we haven’t been sat on our hands for nine months. There has been a lot of change. Here at Carrington as you can see. We didn’t waste any time to get Old Trafford on the agenda. Changes in the football and executive structure. New players. Ruben (Amorim) has arrived.
“We still have a long way to go and we still have a number of difficult decisions to make but we have to do that for the better. 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. There is major change to come to achieve elite status. There has already been huge change.”
Ratcliffe was enthused by some of the appointments made since he bought in almost a year ago, including that of Amorim, brought in as head coach to replace Erik ten Hag last month.
“We have a fantastic coach. He’s intelligent, thoughtful,” he said. “We have a great chief executive in Omar. 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.”
Ticket prices and why it ‘doesn’t make sense’ for United to charge less than Fulham
Ticket prices were the reason the interview was requested. United sent an email to members of the Fans Forum on November 26, explaining how all remaining tickets for home games this season will be priced at £66 each whatever the age of the person buying them. United said this would apply only to the 3 per cent of tickets not yet sold.
This is how Ratcliffe answered:
What are your long-term plans for tickets? You said you wanted to put the Manchester back into MUFC. How do the recent changes, which exclude young and old fans, feed into that? The £66 blanket ticket costs are hugely contentious for fans and seen by many as a foreboding of future price hikes for tickets inside the whole ground.
“It’s an emotive one, ticketing, but we have to have some benchmarks with ticketing,” he said. “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.”
£66 for a kid does not look good, whichever way you look at it.
But this was on the three per cent, not the bulk of the tickets.
I get that but fans are also worried that this is the thin end of the wedge. They’re worried about what’s to come. Should fans be worried? Manchester is a predominantly working-class city. You know that, you’re from here.
“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.”
Fulham is in wealthy west London. Wages are higher there. And they’re going big for the U.S. tourist market. I stood with their fans a year ago when they were protesting about ticket prices. With respect to Fulham, kids in Salford can’t afford to pay what someone in Fulham could spend.
“I get that. I’m not sure there’s an answer that keeps everybody happy, but we need to keep the majority happy.”
Fixing recruitment and ‘very poor’ data analysis
Recruitment was another area of discussion and one where Ratcliffe knows the club must really raise their game.
“We’ve not been good enough at recruitment, you probably agree with that,” says Ratcliffe.
“Everybody would agree with that,” was my response, thinking back to how much money has been wasted.
“And until we’re as good as anyone in the world, then it’s not good enough for Manchester United,” he said.
“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.”
The Glazers and why staff morale ‘will be driven by success on the pitch’
Ratcliffe has inherited a difficult situation because United has not been run as well as it could have been under the Glazers, who still own the majority of the club but have handed sporting control to INEOS. I asked him about his relationship with the American family.
“Very good,” he replied. “Really good. They’ve had huge amounts of bad press but I will say that they are genuinely — and this is whether you like it or not — nice people. They’re respectful, and Joel and Avi are genuine fans of the club. I really like them as people and we have a very good relationship.”
I pointed out that morale is low among Manchester United staff, especially after the redundancies and after what they see as being blamed for the failings of the Glazer control of the club. Did Ratcliffe expect that morale to improve? Was he taking steps to lift staff mood within the club?
“Morale will be driven by success on the pitch,” he said. “If we’re losing matches then I don’t expect morale to be good and if we’re winning matches then it should be good. We want people here who are either happy or unhappy on a Monday morning depending on what happened at the weekend.”
‘A lot of things have to change’
“I don’t enjoy losing,” said Ratcliffe towards the end of the interview. “I find that very difficult. I quite like the picture of Pep Guardiola (with marks on his head). He does not like losing.
“Our results have not been fantastic and I don’t like where we are in the league. I like the challenge. It’s one of the biggest challenges in the sporting world, taking United back to where the club should be. That’s a very rewarding challenge if we get there, but it’s a rocky road with ups and downs.”
It has been rocky and will continue to be, but United fans ultimately want the same as Ratcliffe: to see the club back at the top. He’s put his own money in, put more than a few noses out of joint and don’t expect staff who’ve lost their jobs, nor fans fuming and protesting over ticket prices, to be enamoured by him right now.
Ratcliffe’s view is that significant changes had and still have to be made.
“The objective is unchanged. The measure of success unchanged. We always need to be challenging for the Premier League and the Champions League. The size of the task is considerable and to get there, a lot of things have to change at United,” he says.
I wanted Ratcliffe to take control a year ago and preferred his bid to the Qatari one. The back story wasn’t bad either: a Manchester lad who grew up in social housing; a United fan too who was now in a position to spend a billion on getting into a position where he called the shots.
He’s enjoyed a fair wind from fans so far, which is not a given. When he presented an award to Bruno Fernandes at the Leicester City league game a few weeks ago, there was even polite applause. But the mood turned last week from supporters who could be good allies inside the stadium going forward.
But not if they’re priced out.
(Top photo: Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images)
