Pratyush Nalam
Game on

The Dying Embers of Manchester United

The debt of sporting mismanagement is catching up

· 5 min read

Somehow worse than Woodward

MUN 0-3 BOU

Yet another loss at Old Trafford. But you know what, losses like this have stopped stinging. In a different time, I would be mad for an entire week after such a loss. Not just the result but the manner of it. But of late, I have stopped being mad. I care even less than I did at the end of the Woodward or the Murtough eras. Three years ago, I wrote how “Manchester United may after all have some glimmer of a light at the end of a long and icy tunnel”. How wrong I was to have hope. Hope has almost been snuffed out. All that’s left are a couple of dying embers.

As a lifelong United fan, it has been hard to watch. Growing up, watching United play used to give me joy. Sir Alex Ferguson crafted and perfected a footballing dynasty for more than two decades. United fans were on top of the world. We taunted fans of other clubs. Nothing could go wrong. But then, the big man hung up his boots in 2013. And, it has been a long 13 years and counting.

Every season, the club sinks to new lows. We do see some temporary highs that give us hope. Like José Mourinho coming 2nd in a difficult season, or Ole Gunnar Solskjær converting vibes into two consecutive top 4 finishes (the only manager to do that since SAF by the way), or Erik ten Hag’s wonderful first season which saw the club play some of its best football since the glory days. And of course, who can forget Michael Carrick taking the club to 3rd last season when everyone wrote them off after the Amorim dismissal. But they have been few and far between. And every local maxima is followed by a local minima that ends up being a global minima or close to it.

At the end of the 2024/25 season, the club flirted with relegation and eventually finished a lowly 15th. This season, the club has endured its worst start to a season in 40 years, collecting just 7 points in the first 8 games of the season. For a second consecutive season, the club was eliminated from the League Cup in the first fixture it played. The players once again look lifeless and seem to have given up on the manager. It was Carrick today, and ten Hag and Solskjær and Mourinho and van Gaal before.

INEOS

When INEOS took over sporting control close to three years ago (incidentally when I wrote my last post on Manchester United), fans had high hopes. Fans like me were disillusioned with how the Glazers ran the club and the personnel they appointed in charge - like Ed Woodward, Richard Arnold, John Murtough, Matt Judge, Nick Cox, et al. On the other hand, OGC Nice was doing very well at that point of time in Ligue 1 (although they have had their fair share of tumultuousness after being taken over by INEOS), and Sir Jim Ratcliffe promised that they had learned from their experiences running OGC Nice and FC Lausanne-Sport and that a proper footballing structure and financial management would be in place. All the right things were said and the PR was on point.

Well, that was a lie.

Ratcliffe enacted sweeping layoffs as his first major “streamlining” endeavor to save the club some cash flow. How much money this saved is debatable. Around 450 people were let go - saving the club around £15m by some estimates (despite the club claiming it would be around £45m). I wonder how much that actually mattered considering the club’s wage bill is around £300m. At the same time, the club extended Erik ten Hag and fired him a few months later, hired Dan Ashworth and fired him a few months later (while also paying Newcastle United a compensation fee), and spent around £15m on these missteps. Don’t forget the severances also paid to the fired employees. And let’s not forget the missteps in the transfer market.

Based on public financial reports, it seems that the club is in a worse state than before. Debt is up and is over £1bn. Losses are growing again. And there’s about £375m of outstanding transfer fees, much of it for INEOS-era signings. An incredible number, given who some of those players are. Anyone could have told you that firing the lunch lady wouldn’t help. INEOS inherited one kind of debt and added another.

And the promised Berrada-Wilcox dream team has been more of a nightmare team. It has been the same story of delayed decision-making and running around like a headless chicken that plagued the club pre-INEOS. Managers are fired too late, wrong managers are hired for permanent positions, and managers are even fired for the wrong reasons. Case in point: Ruben Amorim, who was fired not for the dreadful results during his tenure but for publicly questioning the club’s leadership in a press conference. I am not going to drag each manager’s name through the mud here despite my feelings about them. It is the fact that the club is run in such a poor fashion that no manager at Manchester United gets the support or backing that they deserve - be it transfers, data analysis, or footballing structure.

How to fix?

I can go on and on about the issues plaguing the club. However, here are some things that I would like to see the club fix.

  • First off, the club needs to let go of not just Michael Carrick but also Omar Berrada and Jason Wilcox. Consequences have to be felt at the top. And the reason I say this is because we have read too many reports about how the club does detailed scouting and data analysis on buying good players which then ends up getting discarded because Wilcox preferred someone. This is the same problem as Woodward.
  • Hire a competent director of football and let Vivell cook. In years to come, the director of recruitment, Christopher Vivell, might be recognized as the sole person preventing the club from becoming much worse. Credit to INEOS where it is due.
  • Decide what the philosophy of the club should be - which a competent director of football would do. Going from ten Hag to Amorim to Carrick is 3 managers with 3 vastly different footballing philosophies. A competent football structure would never let this happen.
  • If you hire managers based on a sound footballing structure, it is easier to let them go when things go south. Right now, it feels that the club fires managers too late despite knowing they are not right for the job because they are clueless as to who should be hired next.
  • Figure out what the hell is going on in the medical room and hire some sports scientists. Manchester United seem to be having way too many injuries to way too many players way too often. It honestly feels that the club is cursed.
  • Invest some money into the club (within the bounds of FSR and PSR of course). Given the club’s financial situation, they obviously have to be smart about this and not throw away another £500m. A footballing structure as described above is a precursor to this.
  • Finally, can Ratcliffe stop meddling in the club’s running? You are not a footballing person. Hire the folks who know this and step out of the way!

Manchester United is a decorated sporting institution with a rich history. The club deserves better than this. The players, the fans, and the staff have suffered for far too long. It is time to fix the club before it is too late and too expensive. It can be done. It must be done.