Regarding Erik ten Hag’s tenure at Manchester United, Sir Jim Ratcliffe has expressed his opinions quite clearly.
Ratcliffe took over Manchester United’s football department in December 2023 after purchasing a 25% share in the team.
Since then, United has fallen short of expectations. Last season, despite defeating local rivals Manchester City in the FA Cup, they placed eighth in the Premier League, which marks a low point since the competition’s inception in 1992.
Ratcliffe has now spoken out on current manager Ten Hag and his tenure at the club. Despite this, he and his staff opted to stick with the Dutch manager after considering a number of possible successors.
Speaking to The Times, Ratcliffe said: “Erik is a good guy and had been doing his best, but doing too much.
“He was trying to sort out the squad and fix leaks in the roof at the same time.”
However, with Sir Alex Ferguson and managing director David Gill leaving Manchester United in 2013, the chairman of INEOS admitted that managing the team was extremely challenging.
“Up until that point, those two had been managing the sports side of the club and the Glazer family had managed the commercial side very well. And then all of a sudden there’s this vacuum,” Ratcliffe added.
“Manchester United has the biggest fanbase of any football club in the world, probably the biggest of any sports team in the world. They say about 10 or 12 percent of the planet are either Manchester United fans or sympathisers, which is getting close to a billion people. It is a colossal enterprise.”
