There was a peculiarly opaque metaphor Sir Jim Ratcliffe used when explaining the precarious financial situation he claimed Manchester United were in not so long ago.
“There’s a sort of forest of numbers at Manchester United,” Ratcliffe said when pressed on why or how he did not see this financial meteorite he now described plummeting towards the club before agreeing to hand over £1bn for a 25 per cent stake and the reins of the operation.
And the “Jim Reaper” continued the metaphor, keen to clarify why he had wielded his scythe so brutally to cull 450 of the 1,100 club staff.
“If you get in the Conference League, it’s a different thing again,” he said, in interviews with The Times and The Telegraph in March.
“If you come fourth in the Premier League, it’s one thing. If you come 14th in the Premier League, it’s a very different thing.
“It is a forest of numbers that you have to walk through. And it takes time before you get absolute clarity.”
Ironic, really, because after plenty of time and several rereads of the quotes, you were left with no clarity whatsoever about what he meant.
Are the numbers trees or leaves in this forest? Are they the forest itself? Do United have spreadsheets full of oaks and firs and fluttering butterflies?
And here we are, five months later, his comments about the club teetering on the edge of financial oblivion – or “running out of cash [by] the end of 2025”, as Ratcliffe put it – appear murkier than ever.
United finished 15th in the table – their worst league finish in the Premier League era and lowest in 25 years. They lost the Europa League final, costing them £5.6m in prize money and losing the significantly more valuable prize of Champions League qualification via the backdoor.
Factoring in the £10m reduction in their Adidas sponsorship contract, potentially tens of millions in prize money, drops in broadcasting, commercial and matchday revenue, the losses could be worth up to and over £100m.
Marcus Rashford, who could potentially have represented a wedge of pure profit had he secured a £40m transfer following his Aston Villa loan, has gone back out on loan.
Nobody has yet been sold. Ruben Amorim has been seemingly determined to drive down the value of sellable assets – Alejandro Garnacho, Jadon Sancho, Antony and Tyrell Malacia – by ostracising them from the first team.
In all of Ratcliffe’s future modelling and scenario brainstorming, the situation could barely be worse.
And yet Ratcliffe walked through these trees and saw money to burn: £62.5m on Matheus Cunha, £65m on Bryan Mbuemo. Still more money has been found, possibly down the back of a sofa in a luxury Old Trafford lounge, for RB Leipzig striker Benjamin Sesko.
Sesko is said to have an agreement with the Bundesliga club that he can leave if they receive a £70m offer. The two clubs are talking.
Don’t get me wrong: nobody needs to pay a body language consultant £175,000, as Ratcliffe found after taking over (I pay mine a mere £100,000 salary).
But these are not the actions of a club that stood on the precipice a few months ago, in such catastrophic financial condition it necessitated major staff cuts, rescinding employee perks, getting rid of stewards with decades of service.
Sure, the losses have been bad – £372.7m in the accounts from 2020 to 2024 – but recruitment has been abysmal.
That is the fault of the highly paid executives and sporting directors, the people who agreed to spend £82m on Antony and £73m on Sancho – not the staff who work in the canteen.
I asked the experts, just to check I wasn’t missing something. And none are more expert in football finance than Kieran Maguire.
“United have certainly made accounting losses before tax but at the same time the club has been happy to boast of its EBITDA profits, which are cash orientated, in press releases,” Maguire tells The i Paper.
EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation, is what banks use to judge a company’s performance. United’s EBITDA was around £180m for 2024-25, and previous years have similarly impressive numbers.
Maguire considers it “a bit disingenuous” to reference accounts which were severely impaired by the pandemic. Especially for United, who make so much revenue from matchday sales and tours.
Recent losses also include nearly £35m in advisor fees when the Glazers sold a stake in the club to Ratcliffe’s Ineos, tens of millions in pay-offs for managers and executives, including £4.1m spent to hire Dan Ashworth and fire him after five months and £10.4m to sack Erik ten Hag and his staff.
“These far outweigh savings from office and service staff, which is more to do with the Ineos culture of slash and burn seen in petrochemicals which works to a degree when the product being sold is a generic item based on price,” Maguire says.
“Football is different. It is part of the service and entertainment sector, where morale is important. According to the accounts United signed players for £272m in 2024-25, and the signings of Cunha and Mbeumo will take this to just over £400m in the first three windows.
“Making 400 staff members redundant at £30,000 each ‘saves’ £12m, although the chances are that some of those former roles will now be outsourced to third parties not on payroll.”
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None of Ratcliffe’s claims seem to add up to me.
Then again, what do I know? I haven’t built a financial fortune worth £23.5bn (nor, incidentally, have I lost £6bn in 12 months). I don’t own several football clubs and a global empire of sports teams.
Maybe I simply can’t see the wood from the trees.
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