'Morale on the floor': Inside the DISASTROUS first year of Ratcliffe at Man Utd

Suraj Radia

• 20 Feb 2025 18:00 GMT
• 3 min read

The turmoil under Manchester United’s INEOS leadership has continued to unravel with revelations of the club’s ‘penny-pinching’ that has seen purchases of Sellotape scrutinised in cost-cutting measures.

This week marked one year since Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS took over day-to-day running of United as minority investors, overseeing mass redundancies and ‘extreme’ budgeting to lower costs.

United revealed this week that revenue has dropped 12% in the last financial year, with debts totalling more than £1 billion, prompting club insiders to open up about the tightening of spending by INEOS.

The Telegraph detail that Ratcliffe has implemented a ‘zero-based budgeting’ system in which every single expenditure is scrutinised, such as a stationary order where Sellotape was returned as it was not considered a necessity.

An employee is described as joking that it would be easier to ‘smuggle drugs’ than send a letter, with envelopes and stamps scarce and employees often forced to spend their own money on expenses as they await repayment by the club.

The situation has reportedly left morale ‘on the floor’ among staff, who feel that they are paying the price for long-term failures by the Glazers as well as ‘botched decisions’ by INEOS.

‘What good is penny-pinching when savings are obliterated by hare-brained decisions?’

United also revealed this week that the cost of sacking Erik ten Hag and his staff came to more than £14.5m, while the fiasco that saw Dan Ashworth hired as a director and fired months later set the club back over £4m in compensation.

With United also spending more than £200m on signings in the past year yet sitting in a disastrous 15th place in the Premier League this season, one staffer said: “What good is penny-pinching when savings are obliterated by hare-brained decisions like that?”

Having cut 250 jobs in August, saving an estimated £35m, United this week advised that there could be 175 further redundancies, with the scouting department set to be in line for ‘extensive streamlining.

United are now in line to miss out on European football altogether, which would only further harm the club’s revenue, and at least two global sponsors are said to be having ‘serious doubts’ over renewing their agreements due to the club’s downfall in recent times, with the situation not likely to be improving anytime soon.