Caoimhin O’Muraile ⚽ On 24th February 2024 Jim Ratciffe, CEO and founder of INEOS petrochemicals, paid £1.25 billion to purchase a 27.7% share in Manchester United.
He bought these shares off the Glazers whose ownership legally of the club is questionable? The overall owners are still the Glazers but Ratcliffe through his purchasing of this sizable chunk is in charge of all matters relating to football. The Glazers look after the other aspects of the business, like commercialisation and the sales of merchandise increasing their profits but not necessarily the good of the club. Incidentally the Glazers have reportedly taken £1 billion out of United since 2005 in various consultancy fees, though what these consultancies are is unclear!
Ratcliffe is now part of this gang of brigands with the Glazers who arguably acted unlawfully at the 2004 Annual General Meeting (AGM) remaining the majority shareholders. Since his visage crossed the door at Old Trafford Ratcliffe has embarked on an orgy of butchery regarding job cuts. He has cut 450 jobs in total and that is only so far, the majority of them low paid in the catering side of the business. John Allen who worked heading the communications team had worked at United for 25 years has also lost his job leaving this loyal supporter of the team in tears. Ratcliffe has closed the staff canteen and lunches once provided by the club have been replaced by portions of fruit!
The legality of this move again is questionable because employers are obliged under the Health, Safety and Welfare Regulations 1992, to ‘provide suitable rest areas and facilities for workers to eat and drink, especially if they cannot leave the site’. No doubt United employees were free to leave Old Trafford during their lunch breaks but for those who did not use this option have the said facilities been provided? Either way the self-styled United fan, as Jim Ratcliffe claims to be, has denied 450 people the right to earn a living at the club many loved!
As for Ratcliffe’s claim to be a lifelong fan (short for fanatic) I have never seen him at a game. I, and many others, attended over five decades, four of them home away and abroad (the sixties being my debut decade with parents) and not a sighting of Ratcliffe. Those of us who travelled to every game got to know each other as fans from Newcastle to Torquay with Manchester as the hub regularly shared pubs and places on the terracing and sometimes police cells! Jim Ratcliffe, the lifelong supporter nobody who I know has ever seen was not one of these fans. Even if he was a home supporter only somebody would have spotted him it would be thought. I remember Maurice Watkins, the former club Solicitor and Board Member, who, like Ratcliffe, claimed to have been a lifelong ‘fan’ of United. He regularly boasted of that night at Wembley in 1968 defeating Benfica to lift the European Cup and his presence at the game, lucky bastard. Despite his attendance at one match, albeit an important one, he was never seen at matches, as a fan not a Board Member, away from Old Trafford. When the price was right Watkins, like Roy Gardner another Board Member, sold his shares unashamedly to the Glazers! These parasites are not fans but, at best, passing supporters of the club. The Gazers and Ratcliffe have managed to separate the club from the team making it possible to love and support the team but not the club!
If people like Ratcliffe and Watkins before him were really fans of United they would act in the team and the fans interests and not their own financial gain. Matt Busby’s fears about the interests of football being “sacrificed on the altar of big business” have come to pass alas. The only people Ratcliffe and Watkins are fans of is themselves and their pockets. “Football without fans is nothing” is another Matt Busby core belief and the Glazers have reduced the fans status at Old Trafford to that of “customers”. Ratcliffe has outsourced the catering and entered talks with Levy Catering part of the Compass group where he was once a Board member some years ago.
If people like Ratcliffe and Watkins before him were really fans of United they would act in the team and the fans interests and not their own financial gain. Matt Busby’s fears about the interests of football being “sacrificed on the altar of big business” have come to pass alas. The only people Ratcliffe and Watkins are fans of is themselves and their pockets. “Football without fans is nothing” is another Matt Busby core belief and the Glazers have reduced the fans status at Old Trafford to that of “customers”. Ratcliffe has outsourced the catering and entered talks with Levy Catering part of the Compass group where he was once a Board member some years ago.
John Allen, the Communications Officer, said on hearing of his departure pausing to hold back the tears; “it has been the biggest honour coming from Manchester to work with all these managers”. He continued; “This is my club and to be able to do this, I am very lucky”. John worked in the ticket office before moving to communications and has given his club years of loyal service. John doesn’t know why he has to leave he is just one of those employees who Ratcliffe has decided have to go to trim the ‘wage bill’.
Club historian, Cliff Butler, is another stalwart who has fallen victim to Ratcliffe’s axe as has Alex Wylie after 40 years as kitman both were important positions at the club Ratcliffe deems have to go. ‘Emotional goodbyes are being replicated all over the club while other members of staff are having their workloads, in some cases, doubled,’ they should refuse to carry out these extra tasks. That’s business Ratcliffe might say, but is this not sacrificing the interests of the club and football on the “altar of big business”? Lifelong fan my arse.
In the Irish Daily Mirror on Thursday 12 February sub headlined; “SIR JIM: MY CALLS NOW PAYING OFF”. Ratcliffe says in this short but significant article; “Well, I’ve been very unpopular at Manchester United because we’ve made lots of changes. But for the better, in my view”.
“And I think we’re beginning to see some evidence in the Football Club that that’s (sic) beginning to pay off”.
During Ratcliffe’s tenure at Old Trafford United have sacked two managers, Erik Ten Hag who despite winning the League Cup and FA Cup was sacked. He was succeeded by Ruben Amorim who spoke out against those above him, in my view not before time, and he was dismissed for his troubles, though his results on the field were not great! Where the fuck are the managers trade union, the League Managers Association, while managers, not only at Man Utd but elsewhere, are being sacrificed almost on a weekly ritual like lambs to the slaughter? Reading Ratcliffe’s statement about “some evidence in the Football Club that that’s beginning to pay off” suggests he is trying to take some sort of credit for the team’s recent success under interim boss, Michael Carrick and his backroom team.
In the Irish Daily Mirror on Thursday 12 February sub headlined; “SIR JIM: MY CALLS NOW PAYING OFF”. Ratcliffe says in this short but significant article; “Well, I’ve been very unpopular at Manchester United because we’ve made lots of changes. But for the better, in my view”.
“And I think we’re beginning to see some evidence in the Football Club that that’s (sic) beginning to pay off”.
During Ratcliffe’s tenure at Old Trafford United have sacked two managers, Erik Ten Hag who despite winning the League Cup and FA Cup was sacked. He was succeeded by Ruben Amorim who spoke out against those above him, in my view not before time, and he was dismissed for his troubles, though his results on the field were not great! Where the fuck are the managers trade union, the League Managers Association, while managers, not only at Man Utd but elsewhere, are being sacrificed almost on a weekly ritual like lambs to the slaughter? Reading Ratcliffe’s statement about “some evidence in the Football Club that that’s beginning to pay off” suggests he is trying to take some sort of credit for the team’s recent success under interim boss, Michael Carrick and his backroom team.
This success is despite of and not because of Ratcliffe’s presence at Old Trafford as he like the overall owners, the Gazers, are not wanted at Man Utd by most supporters and, perhaps if they told the truth, many employees! If Ratcliffe is trying in some way to tell the world that him cutting low paid jobs to cut the wage bill has in some way contributed to the good work of Michael Carrick and his team producing results on the pitch, defeating City, Arsenal, Fulham, and Tottenham while drawing away at West Ham then he, Ratcliffe, is a cheeky, arrogant self-centred narcissist to say nothing of being delusional. He should fuck off back to petrochemicals and take the Glazers with him. A vat of cleansing solvent sounds a tributing place for these parasites!
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| Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist. |
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