Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe spoke to BBC sports editor Dan Roan on a range of topics on Monday.
A full transcript of the interview can be found below.
How would you describe your first year as co-owner of Manchester United?
We are roughly where we thought we would be, but it’s also been quite challenging because there’s been a lot to do, and quite a lot of issues in the club we’ve needed to resolve.
Is the challenge facing you greater than anticipated?
Yeah, I mean the nature of the challenge is what we thought it would be. But the scale of it is probably slightly bigger. We are sort of in the moment in the process of change because United has obviously, since Sir Alex [Ferguson] retired, not performed at the level that has been expected of the club.
There are reasons for that, clearly. Unless you want that to continue there has to be a period of change. We are in the middle of a period of change at the moment. Nobody likes change, it’s uncomfortable, and we are in the midst of it.
You said you are aiming for the Premier League title again within three years – by 2028. You have dubbed it mission 21 for the 21st title. When you look at the table does it seem like mission impossible, rather than mission 21 right now?
No, I don’t think it’s mission impossible. I think it’s good to have goals and objectives. It’s good to put a time rather than just a bland statement that at some stage we want to win the Premier League again.
Putting a timetable is fine. Obviously it’s the 150th anniversary of what I think is the world’s greatest football club in 2028 so I think it’s a very fine target. Whether that’s feasible…I’m not Mystic Meg. I don’t have a magic wand. I can’t see into the future, obviously.
I think if you look at Arsenal, if you look at Liverpool, if you look at the period of time it took them to get the house in order and get back to winning ways, that’s probably slightly on the short end of the spectrum. But it’s not impossible.
I look at Liverpool when [Jurgen] Klopp arrived in 2015 with Michael Edwards and Ian Graham on the data side, they rebuilt the squad over 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 and then they won everything in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Mikel Arteta has been at Arsenal for four or five years now, and you can see Arsenal is in a very different place than where it was five years ago. So I think we are talking about three years. Maybe that’s slightly ambitious but I think it is the 150th year anniversary so it’s a good target for us. We are here. We have to measure ourselves. Whether we are doing the things we said we would do which is to get United back to where it should be.
When you look at the table and see yourselves down in 14th – 36 points behind Liverpool – how does it make you feel to see that?
It’s obviously not where we would like to be, but we are in a period of change. We haven’t had much time to change the squad, we’ve got a new coach who came in mid-season, and we’ve got a long list of injuries.
If you look at the top eight earners in Manchester United, Ruben [Amorim] has only got four of those because the other four are not available to him. So if I actually look at the squad which is available to Ruben, I think he is doing a realty good job to be honest.
Have there been times in the past year, Jim, where you have regretted investing in United?
Regretted the transaction?
Yes…
No. Not at all. I didn’t expect it to be a walk in the park. It’s quite tough sometimes reading the press, obviously. But in a way I’d rather the press had a go at me than Ruben [Amorim] the coach.
You know I suppose I’ve stood out there and said ‘we can make Manchester United great again’ so people are entitled to their opinions. In my view are on the trajectory I thought we would be on. We are in the process of change at the moment.
We put a new management team in place. We didn’t get that all right at the beginning, obviously. But today I think we have a really good management team in place.
We are dealing with the financial issues in the club, because the club has got financial issues and we need to address those. Then we need to move on to the squad, recruitment, data analysis and those types of things. So we are on the path we anticipated we would be on.
You mentioned criticism. This has been criticism from the media but fans, too. You’ll have seen the protests before the match against Arsenal. Do you understand the anger of those fans?
Yes and I sympathise with them because Manchester United is not where it’s expected to be. We are expected to be winning the Premier League and challenging for the Champions League and we are not there at the moment. But I think we need to get the house back in order before we can get back to our winning ways.
That’s the process it takes. It’s not a light switch. I’ll give you an example, if you look at the players we are buying this summer, that we didn’t buy, we are buying Antony, we are buying Casemiro, we are buying Andre Onana, we are buying Rasmus Hojlund, we are buying Jadon Sancho.
These are all things from the past but whether we like it or not we have inherited those things and we have to sort it out. For Sancho, who obviously now plays for Chelsea, and we pay half his wages, we are paying £17m to buy him in the summer. So it takes time for us to move away from the past into a new place in the future.
To what extent are you still dealing with the problems from the past? Or after a year is this on you to some extent now? Do Ineos have to take some responsibility?
I just think when you are in a period of change, it is disruptive. It does, if you will excuse the pun, take people’s eye off the ball a bit. We have got a club which was in a level of financial difficulty. Manchester United would have run out of cash by the end of this year – by the end of 2025 – after having me put $300m (£232.72m) in and if we buy no new players in the summer. If we hadn’t have implemented the cost programmes and restructuring that we have done over the last 12 months.
So we have to deal with all those things, and there’s only so many things you can deal with at once. We have a new management team, we have to deal with the financial restructure, then we have to move on to the squad, data analysis, and moving forward.
But we are in the process of change and it’s an uncomfortable period and disruptive and I do feel sympathy with the fans. But I am not actually surprised where we are in the league because Ruben’s only got a certain size of squad he can deal with, and quite a number of those players are injured or not available to him.
A year ago you were seen as a saviour for the club by many fans…now a lot see Ineos as part of the problem and they would look to some of the decisions which have been made, and the costs of some of those decisions financially. So do you accept that you have contributed to the predicament the club finds itself in?
We are not perfect, and we are on a journey, and there have been a couple of errors along the way, but I think in the main all the things we are doing are the right things for the club. And the club’s going to finish up in a very, very different place in three years’ time to where its been in the past, in my view.
I think it will become the most profitable club in the world. In three years’ time Manchester United will be. That will be my prediction for Manchester United – it will be the most profitable club in the world. I think we may well finish up with the most iconic football stadium in the world, and I think we will finish up winning silverware again.
Can you tell us about the stadium. There’s been a task force looking at whether to rebuild or replace Old Trafford. What is the latest on that?
We obviously have the day tomorrow [Tuesday] where we will talk about that in quite a bit more detail, but we have those two alternatives and we have looked at them in great detail. The government has announced three major growth projects for the UK, of which the regeneration of southern Manchester is what they describe as a shining example of their growth strategy for the future. And it would be the biggest regeneration project in Europe, assuming it goes ahead.
If it goes ahead then we would, I think, underpin that with a new stadium. Because with regeneration projects you need a nucleus, you need a heart to a regeneration programme, otherwise it’s just a housing estate. But I think if we were to build the most iconic football stadium in the world, which I think we will do, then that will attract the billion fans we have got round the world. They will all want to come to Manchester.
The value added to Manchester of that, and to the north of England, is enormous. It’s five, seven, billion [pounds] a year. It’s an enormous amount. You’ll hear more about that tomorrow.
I know we will hear more but in general the big question is how will you pay for this?
The financing is not the issue, I think it’s eminently financeable. But the detail of that we’d rather talk about in the future. It will be financeable, I think.
To go back to the financial situation the club was facing… for those who need to understand this, explain how precarious it was and what is the prospect going forward right now? How close was the club to being bust?
It’s a simple equation. If you spend more than you earn eventually that’s the road to ruin. So for the last seven seasons, if you include this season, the club would have lost money. Seven consecutive seasons.
I think that totals about £330m, so about a third of a billion of cash that’s gone out of the club in the last four or five seasons. The costs of running the club in the last seven years have increased by £100m. The cost of the player wage bill in the last seven years or so is £100m. The increase in the revenue during that period is £100m. And that sum doesn’t work.
If you are losing money every year, and at the same time you are increasing your costs of running the club, it doesn’t work and it ends in trouble. And that’s where this club would have finished up at the end of this year.
All of the things that we are doing are essential, are necessary to the club. They are not easy things to do, but we’ll get through that process and we will come out of the other side in the summer. Some of that is all finished and done with now.
How close were you to breaching PSR? (Under the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR), clubs can lose up to £105m over three years)
PSR. I think the principle of PSR is a good principle which is you live within your means. That’s basically what it says. A football club has to live within its means so it doesn’t got bust. But there are lots of variables in PSR and you are not always in charge of those variables.
So if you qualify for the Champions League, then that’s an income of £80m to £100m. If you qualify for the Europa League it’s an income of £40m. If you don’t qualify for either it’s an income of nothing. So that’s one variable. Where are we going to be at the end of this season? Are we going to be in the Champions League, or are we going to be nowhere? We don’t know the answer to that.
And then there are all sorts of other variables with player movements and things like that. It’s quite… there are many moving parts with PSR but you need to be all over that, and you always need to be sure you are going to comfortably sit in the middle of it. Manchester United is comfortably in the middle of it, so we are not going to breach PSR. But it’s quite a complicated business.
One of the reasons the fans were protesting was over ticket pricing. Explain again why you had to do that, and how you feel about that?
Well, I don’t get involved in the detail of ticket pricing. That’s for the management of the club, not for me really. My sort of general principles on ticket pricing are that it should be fair, affordable for the people in Manchester. We do need to look after the U16s and the older people who do not have as much money, but at the same time ticket income is part of the overall income of the club. The club receives income from ticketing, from merchandising and from TV. They are all major components of how much money we have to spend on new players and the squad.
I know we got a lot of criticism, and I think it was somewhat inadvertent a few months ago on ticket pricing, but the reality of that was that 500 tickets out of 75,000 were returned to the club by people who had bought those tickets but they didn’t want to go the game and wanted their money back. And they had been discounted, either because they were younger people or older people. So we gave those 500 people their money back and then the club sold the tickets at face value, which was £66. But it was only 500 tickets. I know that caused quite a lot of excitement. It wasn’t an enormous thing in the great scheme of things. We have 49,000 season tickets and most of them are reasonably priced.
Are there likely to be more increases for season tickets next season?
That is, really at the end of the day, for the management to [decide]. We have some financial issues in the club and ticketing income is part of our income. So they have to look at ticketing income as one of the major sources of income. So I think there will be some modest price increases, and I think we will try to hold the U16 tickets at the prices they saw last season. We’ll try to. But the management have got to deal with that and they have got a couple of weeks before they will announce their final conclusions.
Some would say the money you will make from these increases is dwarfed by the debt payments as a result of the debt the club is saddled with. They would argue fans are paying the price for the decisions of the past. Would you have some sympathy for that?
I understand the comment, but the issue isn’t really the debt. The issue is we are spending more than we are… if you spend £100m more than earning every year then that dwarfs [interrupted].
Tens of millions of pounds go out of the club to service that debt.
It’s about £35m.
Indeed…
But the £35m was only £20m four or five years ago because the club hadn’t lost £330m in the last five years. So if you lose £330m in five years the debt goes up by £330m. That’s the biggest issue in Manchester United. I know the interest costs money, but in the great scheme of things…our salary bill for the players is £250m a year, you know.
So interest is one of the costs but it isn’t the biggest cost in this club. And the club needs to get its house back into order so it’s on a good financial footing for the future, and can survive years maybe where it’s not as successful as other years and doesn’t get Champions League.
Some of those loans may mature in years to come and be refinanced at high rates of interest than the current debt is at. Won’t that bill for servicing that debt rise as well in years to come? Isn’t that an issue?
Debt has a cost to it, but most clubs in the UK – most companies – have debt of some form. But if the club is really profitable, which I think it will be in years to come, then you can do the reverse. You can start paying down the debt. That’s where I think Manchester United should be. It should be in a good fiscal position.
It’s not just the price increases, Jim. It’s the cost cutting you have instigated with the hundreds of redundancies in the last year, and hundreds more to come. Again why is there a need to do that? Because many would argue the money you are saving is dwarfed by the amount that has been spent on interest repayments, on player salaries, on signings, on decisions around managers and executives.
The simple answer is the club runs out of money at Christmas if we don’t do those things. Ultimately, if you look at running the club the size of Manchester United with an income of about £650m you spend a part of that £650m on operating the club and part of it on the squad. Where do you want to spend the money? Do you want to spend it on operating the club, or do you want to spend it on the squad? Because if you spend it on the squad you get better results. And at the end of the day what’s Manchester United here for if it’s not to win trophies and silverware. What we want to do is invest in the best players in the world if we can, rather than spend it on, I’m afraid, free lunches.
When it comes to cost cutting, whether it is free meals, whether it’s doing away with ambassadorial roles for Sir Alex Ferguson for example, or former players, and the costs there. Is there a danger you cross the line between efficiency and ruthlessness that potentially could taint the brand of United?
Well, I know I don’t enjoy reading the newspaper very much these days I have to say. I know it’s unpopular, and this period of change is uncomfortable for people, and some of the decisions we have to make are unpleasant. But they are necessary to put Manchester United back on to a stable footing. If people want to see Manchester United winning trophies again then we have do all this stuff. It’s difficult stuff, it’s unpopular, it would be much nicer if we didn’t have to do it. But if we don’t do it, we’ll just finish up where we have been for the last 12 years.
It’s a choice, which do we prefer. I don’t want to see Manchester United where it’s been for the last 12 years. I want to see Manchester United where Real Madrid is. Or where Manchester City has been. Or where Liverpool is. That’s where I want to see Manchester United. My only interest here is returning Manchester United back to greatness again. Where it should be.
Some would say you kept Erik ten Hag and backed him to the tune of £200m in the summer and then sacked him. If you hadn’t paid millions to secure Dan Ashworth and then let him go a few months after he started…these are tens of millions of pounds worth of compensation…
It’s probably £20m, yes.
…maybe you wouldn’t need to cut as many jobs, cut these perks, raise ticket prices.
But also remember I put $300m into the club in January – that’s all gone. That’s $300m. So yes, I agree the Erik ten Tag and Dan Ashworth decisions were errors. I think there were some mitigating circumstances, but ultimately they were errors. I accept that and I apologise for that. But at the end of the day we have to get the fundamentals right in the club – they are tens of millions. The numbers we are talking about are much bigger than that.
The cost that we would have taken out of the club over the course of the 15 months we have been there will be about £125m. And that put Manchester United… it will finish up being an organisation of about 700 people rather than 1,100 people. It will be lean, it will be efficient. It will be an elite sports organisation and it will be hopefully primed to take Manchester United back to where it should be, which is winning trophies.
The Dan Ashworth situation. You told me in February last year he was the best at what he does, and you were prepared to wait a long time to secure his services. Then he spent as much time on gardening leave as he did in the job. Can you explain what went wrong there?
No. It was an error on our part. All I will say is chemistry, really. I don’t really want to go into the details. I think we are where we are. We have moved on. A chemistry issue.
With Erik ten Hag. It has been suggested after the club finished eighth that last season you were keen to make a change but others felt differently. Is that the case? Can you shed any light at all?
At the end of the day we are a consensus organisation. So there’s a collection of us who make decisions. It’s not just me that makes the decision, it involves that management team. If you look at the time we made the decision about Erik the management team hadn’t been in place more than five minutes. Omar [Berrada] had only just arrived, Jason [Wilcox] had not been there terribly long, so we didn’t really have the management team in place for very long to make… it was a very difficult decision to make at short notice.
Also it’s quite difficult to extract Erik from Erik’s performance in the previous season from the management team he had been working with.
If I looked today there’s a great relationship between Ruben and Jason Wilcox the sporting director and Jason gives Ruben a lot of support. But Erik didn’t benefit from that. It’s quite difficult to understand in that previous season to what extent Erik maybe wasn’t performing as well as we had hoped, or it was that circumstances in which Erik was trying to perform. We couldn’t get to the bottom of that problem. It became clearer three months later and we got it wrong, but we’d moved on. I think we corrected it and we are in a very different place today.
You said a year ago you don’t mind people making mistakes but try to not make the same mistake twice… do you accept those two episodes – Ten Hag and Ashworth – given the cost of it has called into question Ineos’ decision making at United and do you feel confident you are going to learn from those experiences?
Yes. There’s no question we have learned from them. I hope we don’t make those types of mistakes again but one needs to be careful we don’t just focus on two things that went wrong… because there are many things we have done which I think are going quite well.
I think broadly speaking I think all the things we are doing at this club are good. I think Ruben is a great coach, in the circumstances of arriving mid-season and a squad which is obviously quite depleted, he’s doing a great job. We have a good new coach. We’ve got the attitude and atmosphere in the club as much better than when we arrived. I think there are many things which have changed.
You referenced last February that the chopping and changing managers hadn’t achieved success and it was time to look at the recruitment and decision making. Has it got to a stage with Ruben Amorim where you just have to stick with him now come what may?
It’s not we have to stick with Ruben. I think Ruben is an outstanding young manager. I really do. He’s an excellent manager and I think he will be there for a long time.
But he’s lost 10 matches in 25 or so games…you are 14th. This is historically bad in decades.
I think you look at the squad he has got at his disposal with the injury list at his disposal, and he comes in mid-season when he’s had no time to train the players with his style of play I think he’s done really well. And I think you are beginning to see a glimpse of what Ruben can produce.
I think you saw a glimpse of it yesterday against Arsenal. How many players against Arsenal on the bench did you recognise? How many have ever worn a Manchester United shirt for [the first team]… as there’s no squad left. We are down to the last 10 or 11 men in the squad really, of proper first-team players. Ruben is doing a super job.
How much will he have to spend in the summer to really reinforce the squad and get the players he needs to get the team playing the way he wants to. Or does that depend on selling players?
It’s a combination. There will be a budget for him, and I’m not going to reveal that. Obviously that budget changes based upon who we may choose to sell because that would supplement the budget. We are not at a place where we could reveal that at the moment.
Lot of fans are upset Kobbie Mainoo and Alejandro Garnacho could be for sale because of the state of the club financially…
No no. We won’t be selling players because of the state we are in financially. The way we are resolving the financial issue is to cut the… the club had got bloated so we reduced that and will finish it with a lean and efficient organisation. That’s how we will address the costs. The player decisions are ones that Omar, Ruben and Jason – and a bit me – will make in the summer. And that will all be focused on how we are going to improve performance. That’s all.
Ruben said it was maybe the worst United team in history. Do you commend the brutal honesty of that, or quite surprised he said that because it could affect confidence?
You have to sympathise a bit with Ruben. He’s come in mid-season, English is not his natural language, he’s come into the Premier League which we know is the toughest league in the world. And he’s come into a squad which has got a series of injuries – and other issues. He is, as most great coaches are, an emotional character. Nobody is perfect. I’ve made mistakes as you have brought out in this interview. Ruben is not perfect but I am a great supporter of Ruben.
What did you make of the hardline stance he took with Marcus Rashford. Did that have your support?
Yep.
Why was that stance taken?
Because he wants a dressing room that is full of people who are totally committed to winning football matches. He won’t tolerate people who don’t have 100% of that attitude.
It was about a culture?
Yes. That’s Ruben, and the players have to be in the same box.
Frustrating to see him do well at Aston villa?
No, I am pleased. He’s moved out of Manchester and maybe that’s a good thing for him. I am very pleased he is doing well. It’s good to see because he has got tremendous talent, but for whatever reason it wasn’t working in Manchester for the past couple of seasons. But he is a very talented footballer, Rashford.
United face the prospect of not being in Europe at all… but also could win the Europa League to get back in the Champions League. How important is it that United win the Europa League? Financially?
Thursday [the second leg of United’s Europa League last-16 game against Real Sociedad] is a huge game for us, absolutely. We shouldn’t underestimate them. There’s no guarantees in life but it’s a huge game for Ruben.
A chance to clear a few things up… when it comes to the women’s team it has been suggested you don’t care as much about that team as the men’s team. How would you describe the situation from your perspective?
It’s a bit unfair. What I said at the beginning was my main focus is on the men’s team because that, at the end of the day, is what moves the needle at Manchester United. The women’s team is much smaller than the men’s team. Of our £650m of income, £640m of that comes from the men’s team and £10m comes from the women’s team.
With my business background you tend to focus on the bigger issues before you focus on the smaller issues. But the women’s team wear the Manchester United brand, the Manchester United logo, so in that sense they are every bit as important as the men’s team. And frankly, they are doing better than the men’s team – they are second in the league and won the FA Cup last season. [Head coach] Marc Skinner is doing a great job as the coach and the new captain Maya [le Tissier] is doing a great job.
I saw reports you had to ask Katie Zelem who she was…do you want to clear that up?
No, not really. I did ask Maya if she was related to Matt [le Tissier] but the answer was no.
If the women get to the FA Cup final will you attend, or someone from Ineos, as was suggested?
Certainly someone from Ineos will attend. Whether I’ll be there or not I don’t know because I don’t know what the date is and my diary to be honest.
On Ineos’ general fortunes, what’s the situation…we read about debt several times more than annual earnings, downgrades by credit agencies and then you look at the fact you are withdrawing from some sports in terms of sponsorships. There’s the state of the European energy market, taxation. What is the state of play within Ineos financially? Could any issues impact United?
Ineos is in a good place today but not in as good a place as it was three or four years ago. Europe has become a very difficult place to do business for industrial companies because energy prices now in Europe are five times America, which is where a lot of our competition is. We have huge levels of carbon tax in Europe, and in America they have no carbon tax. The two biggest industries in Europe are the chemical industry and the automotive industry and both are tough industries to be in at the moment.
Ineos is clearly in the middle of the chemical industry and we are probably the largest chemical manufacturer in Europe. We are the only chemical manufacturer in Europe who is building something. We are building a huge facility in Antwerp which costs £4.5bn.
Times are tough and when they are you have to cut your cloth. We’ve not changed any of our sports ownership because we own things in sport like part of the F1 team, the America’s Cup team and what have you. But we have reduced the sponsorship. I know again that’s unpopular and difficult but sometimes you do have to be unpopular when times get tough.
New Zealand Rugby accused Ineos of reneging on a sponsorship deal?
We talked to New Zealand Rugby about the fact that times are tough and we’d like to see if we could find a compromise. Which you would think as a sponsor of the All Blacks they would have listened to, but they didn’t want to listen . So we finished up in a different place.
It might be legally sensitive but tell us about the America’s Cup and Sir Ben Ainslie… you split and he is threatening legal action. What went wrong? What happened there?
All I can say is Ben wanted to do his own thing and that’s fine. He’s going to do his own thing. We will be at the next America’s Cup and I think we will be there with a very quick boat.
Will you be the challenger of record, or will that be Sir Ben’s boat?
The question is really whether there will be a challenger of record because the format of the America’s Cup will change where the likelihood is you’ll finish with a governing body who will replace the challenger of record. I think probably we will not be the challenger of record at the next America’s Cup but then the challenger of record has never won the America’s Cup. It doesn’t worry me too much if we’re not challenger of record.
This apparent change in strategy shouldn’t worry United fans?
No, no. It has no impact at United.
Sir Dave Brailsford had great success in cycling but some would ask if he is equipped and suitable to be part of the running operation at Manchester United. What would you say? What does he bring?
Dave was extremely successful in one sport, cycling, where he won… people forget that over 100 years the UK had never won the Tour de France. He won it seven years on the trot, I think with four different riders. That is no accident.
He has some great skills at extracting the maximum performance out of those athletes and that’s all his focus is at Manchester United – on elite performance, how do we improve elite performance. Because at the end of the day football is elite athletes but more of an emphasis on athlete data. Football today is a sprinting sport and it wasn’t a sprinting sport 20 years ago which is why you get so many hamstring injuries and things like that today. It’ a more intense sport than when Bobby Charlton and George Best were playing.
You mentioned inheriting players like Antony etc. Are you saying they are not good enough?
No I’m just saying we’ve..[interrupted]
Or overpaid? What are you getting at there?
Some are not good enough, some are probably overpaid. But for us to mould a squad, that we are fully responsible for, and accountable for, will take time. We’ve got this period where we will move from the past to the future and we are in the middle of that period. There are some great players in the squad as we know. The captain is a fabulous footballer. We definitely need Bruno [Fernandes]. Without him it would be really tough.
What is the timeframe on building a new venue?
Yes. I think we can probably build the stadium, design and build a stadium, in five years. Normally it would take 10 years for a stadium of that scale but it’s more an issue of how quickly the government get going with the regeneration programme.
We have to sit down with the government and we have to talk about how it’s all going to work. I think the government are extremely keen to get on with this growth programme that they have which has got three bits – Heathrow Airport, the Oxford-Cambridge silicon valley and the Manchester regeneration. I think they really want to get on with it quickly and get stuck into it. If they go down the high-speed track then maybe five years would be achievable which would be very exciting.
That’s the reason you said earlier the club can be profitable…
That is in addition. We will become the most profitable club in three years’ time anyway. With a new ground even more so.
Do you hope in coming out and talking today people have a better understanding of what you are doing…
It’s one year [since buying the club], and you asked me [to do an interview]! I thought it would be helpful and we should stand up and face the music because some things have gone well and some things have gone less well. I think we should sit here and answer the questions.
Some have accused Ineos of treating Manchester United as part of its empire – an oil refinery or something as opposed to a treasured institution – with these cost cuts. What’s your response to that?
I sort of understand the point, but we fully recognise that an element of Manchester United is a business and if you have a business you have to run it well. It’s clear that it is has not been run well and we are going to be in difficulty if we don’t sort that out, and we will sort that out. But at the end of the day it’s an emotional entity, Manchester United. We are custodians of Manchester United – it’s owned by the fans. Emotionally to the fans – and I’m one of them – it’s a really important part of their lives. Your Monday morning is heavily affected by how the team performed at the weekend.
Anywhere I go in the world people want to talk to me about Manchester United. It affects their lives. You think about those emotional moments we went through in the game yesterday [a 1-1 draw with Arsenal] – that goal should have been at the end but wasn’t – you don’t get that in any other part of your life than sport do you? So it’s immensely emotional.
One of the moments in my life I will never forget was in 1999 when Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer scored in extra time [in the Champions League final against Bayern Munich]. You never forget those moments. That’s all emotion. But there is a business side and we need to get that right. Because if on the business side you are on shaky foundations you can’t achieve the sporting excellence that you want to.
Despite the struggles, are you more determined than ever to reverse the decline. Do you want that to be your legacy, ultimately?
Yes, I suppose in a way. I don’t really think of it that way. I recognise that I’m… I read the newspapers and I listen and I realise I’m unpopular at the moment. But I am prepared to be and can deal with being unpopular for a period of time because I believe that what we are doing is the right thing and will get us…Manchester United has come off the rails and we need to get it back on the rails. I believe what we are doing will put it back on the rails.
I believe in what we’re doing and I am comfortable with being unpopular. I’d rather I was the unpopular one than Ruben. The media need to give Ruben time and support and the same for the fans as well. Manchester United’s an easy target. It’s a big target and we need to stick together through this difficult period. When the going gets tough people need to show a bit of resilience, a bit of grit, don’t wilt, and come out the other side fighting and that’s what we will do.
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