Jim Ratcliffe’s worrying Man Utd bombshell exposes PSR issue that can’t be ignored

Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe claimed the club was set to run out of money over Christmas had they not implemented a raft of cost-cutting measures

Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s admission that Manchester United were just months away from running out of money illustrates that the rules governing football’s finances are not fit for purpose.

If United, arguably the biggest name in the game, can run the risk of going bust despite generating annual revenues in excess of £660million, then it’s clear that both UEFA’s Financial Fair Play Regulations and the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules need to be ripped up.

It also lends even more power to those who argue that the government has to save football from its own foolishness by appointing an independent regulator to bring an end to the way certain clubs have been able to bend the rules to suit themselves.

Debt is the issue that must be addressed. Just ask those United fans who have watched their club’s decline, hastened since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson almost 12 years ago. Michel Platini was the UEFA president who first came up with the idea of introducing financial regulations after declaring a war on debt.

Unfortunately, both the original idea and the Frenchman himself became corrupted. Instead, a framework was put in place that brought in limits on how much clubs could spend based on the revenues they brought in.

That appeared sound in theory – but practice meant the established European elite were able to build up debts that were made serviceable by their traditional wealth while blocking a route into the game for new money that wanted to invest.

It’s ironic that one of the driving forces of FFP was David Gill, the United chief executive and the club’s man at UEFA. He had kindred spirits at places like Arsenal, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and Milan.

It was on Gill’s watch that the Glazer family began plunging United into the kind of debt that’s now helping to strangle the club to death while at the same time plundering the coffers in the form of dividends.

“Debt is the road to ruin,” preached Gill in 2004. Twelve months later he took the Glazer shilling. Gill then played a key role in framing UEFA’s financial regulations whilst urging Premier League clubs to follow the same example.

Ratcliffe has clearly been stung by the way United supporters have realigned their crosshairs away from the absentee Americans and onto his forehead in the year since he entered into an alliance with the Glazer family.

He has spoken out more in the last 12 months than Malcolm Glazer’s kids did in the previous 19 years. Britain’s richest man knows where the blame lies, but either professional courtesy or a NDA prevented him pointing a finger towards Florida when Gary Neville urged him to come clean about why United are in such a mess.

Neville asked about the £730million the club owes, how £35million must be found every year just to service that debt and how another £300million-plus still has to be found to meet obligations for previous transfers.

Ratcliffe didn’t build a £20billion fortune by being stupid, so his attempt at playing dumb over the role the Glazers’ greed has played in his favourite club’s fall from grace didn’t do him any favours.

“It’s not my money, it’s the fans’ money,” said Ratcliffe when grilled about the cuts that have included making 450 people redundant, bringing an end to free staff lunches and seeing a vital financial commitment to the former players’ association slashed.

That’s not a message the Glazer family would recognise given they have used the club as their own personal ATM for the last two decades. The future of the game was shaped for their benefit when FFP was written – and, as Ratcliffe confessed, United would have been skint by November.

Football needs to be taken out of the hands of these people and shaped by what is good for the wider game rather than the chosen few.

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