Man Utd owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe announces reason he would walk away from club

Sir Jim Ratcliffe has revealed what will make him quit Manchester United, with the Ineos chief having taken full control of football operations after buying a stake in the club

Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has revealed he will walk away from the club if he receives the same level of abuse as the Glazer family.

Ratcliffe has taken charge of football operations since buying a stake in the club and the 72-year-old has implemented a raft of cost-cutting measures that have drawn criticism. These include significant ticket price hikes and hundreds of job cuts, while Ratcliffe has also claimed several players are “not good enough” and “overpaid”.

Although the Ineos chief says he “doesn’t mind being unpopular”, he has claimed he will quit United if things go too far. “I can put up with it for a while,” he said in an interview with the Times.

“I don’t mind being unpopular because I get that nobody likes seeing Manchester United down where they are and nobody likes the decisions we’re having to make. If I draw a bit of the ire, I can put up with that. But I’m no different to the average person.

“It’s not nice, particularly for friends and family. So, eventually, if it reached the extent that the Glazer family have been abused, then I’d have to say: ‘Look, enough’s enough, guys, let somebody else do this.’ They can’t really come to a match, the Glazers.

“They’ve retreated into the shadows a bit now, so I’m getting all the stick. We bought in and I haven’t seen them since. It’s: ‘Thank you, Jim, you’re doing a really good job.’ I don’t have security, I don’t have to walk around like that. But it would defeat the object, wouldn’t it? You couldn’t tolerate it at that level, it just wouldn’t be fun.”

Ratcliffe also defended the Glazers, insisting they are the “nicest people on the planet” but trusted the wrong people in key roles. “To be fair to the Glazers, they’re really good on the commercial side,” Ratcliffe explained.

“The people who advise me say the fans don’t want to hear it. So I’ve got to be cautious. I get a lot of criticism if I support the Glazers, but the fact is they’re really decent people. They’re East Coast, you know — that old East Coast America, they’re very polite, they’re very civilized, they’re the nicest people on the planet.

“I mean, there isn’t a bad bone in Joel Glazer’s body. I mean, part of the problem is there isn’t a bad bone in his body, which is why he didn’t bloody… I mean, I wouldn’t have tolerated Ed Woodward, or Richard Arnold.

“Richard was a rugby man, he didn’t even understand football. Ed didn’t have the credentials to manage the club. He was a merchant banker, an accountant. He wasn’t the chief executive.”

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