Manchester United: How do they get through this?
The vibes around Manchester United have never been worse. How can the club get back to where they want to be when the future looks so bleak?
A few years ago a friend of mine and his wife took the plunge and bought a house. It’s an older house and a bit small but it sits on a great piece of land with ample space to expand the house. If this was merely a ‘starter house’ it would be terrible but since they viewed this as their ‘forever home’ where they would be living for years and years, they loved the potential of it.
There was just one problem. They didn’t have the money for the renovation because they just spent all their money on the damn house. That wasn’t really a problem. They knew when they bought the house this was going to be the case. They planned on spending at least five or so years living in this older house while they got their finances in order and saved up enough money to start renovating.
Some of the stuff in the house is crap but they live with it because it’s the crap they bought. Once they start renovating things will be difficult because before you can bring in all the new stuff, you first have to gut the house of the old stuff. Anyone who’s ever renovated even parts of their house knows how annoying it is to live through the renovation. The payoff is worth it in the end and one day it will all be a distant memory but right now, they’re living through it. It might be annoying but they knew this was the path they chose.
What does this have to do with Manchester United?
In early 2024 Sir Jim Ratcliffe bought a minority stake in Manchester United that gave him controlling interest of the club. He acquired the club as it was, getting all of its good and all of its bad.
That bad includes mountains of debt thrown onto the club from the Glazers leveraged buyout. It includes an aging stadium that has been ignored for two decades with an almost equally ignored academy and training facilities.
The bad also includes a football team falling down the table and out of relevance. It’s a team almost paralyzed by bad contracts and record high transfer debt, putting ever tightening handcuffs around the club to try and change things.
Things have not gotten off to a good start in the Sir Jim Ratcliffe era. They were lucky to finish eighth last year, salvaging a bit of the season by winning the FA Cup. This season they fell to 15th - where their underlying numbers said they should have been last year. Next season will be just the second time in over 30 years that United aren’t playing European football.
Manchester United aren’t on the cusp of falling into the abyss. They’re already in the abyss.
They got here from years of bad decisions. Bad decisions at the executive level have long term consequences. These bad decisions may have been made before Ratcliffe bought the club but they’re the bad decisions he bought. He needs to live with them and now he needs a plan for how he’s going to get past them.
He needs a plan for how he’s going to get through this abyss.
If I were Sir Jim Ratcliffe this is what I would do.
The first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have a problem. For United, their on pitch problems are exacerbated by their financial issues which have essentially tied their hands behind their back. It’s much easier to start building for the future when you can use both hands freely.
Therefore, step one is to acknowledge how bad the finances are and work on fixing them. That’s going to take time so, give it time. No more shortcuts, no more seeking the alternative path. It’s time to go through the mess and hopefully come out clean on the other side.
You have to take a break from we’ve cleared one expensive players wages off our books so now we can spend a transfer fee to add another player on expensive wages. United’s TV revenue dropped by £16 million this season. Their merit payments are going to drop by at least £15 million and probably closer to 20. There is no European football revenue next year either. The wage bill has to go down. The wage structure has to get put in order. If you’re paying someone above market value, you’re doing it wrong1.
If you can sell players to raise funds, great. Most of these players are unmovable so the best way to go through this is to let them run out their contracts over the next two years. Utilize those talents on the pitch while letting your books get healthy again, and then say thanks and good bye when their contract ends.
That’s easier said than done. You still need to field a competitive team and one good enough to avoid relegation.
With that in mind, it’s time to pause efforts to implement a preferred style of play or build a squad around a specific philosophy. Those are luxuries reserved for clubs at the top of the table — and right now, Manchester United isn’t one of them.
Over the next two years, the focus should be on grinding out results by any means necessary. This isn’t the time to invest in players for a manager’s long-term vision, especially when resources are limited. Instead, empower football decision-makers to make smart, cost-effective short-term signings that can stabilize the team in the present, while continuing to prioritize the recruitment of high-potential youth talent like Sekou Koné, Ayden Heaven, and Chido Obi-Martin.
The football people will provide the players, the coach’s job will be to coach them and get results. If your idealized version of the way to play is the best way to get results great, if it’s not, you have to temporarily put that aside. If a key player gets hurt and you have to change things up, so be it.
I’d clearly lay that out to Ruben Amorim with a firm understanding that I’m aware these aren’t his ideal players and expectations aren’t high but even as is this is not a 15th place squad.
If the current players aren’t cut out for Amorim’s system and aren’t going to be here in the future, I don’t need to see them struggling to play it now. You can wait until they have the right players to do that. If Ruben Amorim isn’t on board with that then I’d find someone who is.
United don’t need a visionary right now. They need someone who could put an entertaining product on the pitch and tread water in the league while the club cleans up the back end of things. I don’t think they’ll be letting one of the best coaches Europe go. Even then, in two years there will certainly be another best young up and coming coach in Europe that you can hire.
Furthermore, I’m done paying guys to play elsewhere. If players returning from loans like Marcus Rashford, Antony, and Jadon Sancho want to leave, I’m giving them a price tag and telling them if you find a club willing to meet that price then so long, but if not you’re staying here. Fall in line with the coach or you won’t play.
The club holds the advantage here. It’s a World Cup year. Both Rashford and Antony are back in the fold with their national teams and they’re going to want to stay there. That’s not going to happen if they’re sulking on the bench. The last few seasons have shown that even when their form is poor United still don’t have a better goal scorer than Rashford and despite never hitting any semblance of form United still haven’t had anyone replicate Sancho’s underlying numbers.
If they’re doing what is asked of them by the coach they’ll get chances and if they’ve earned minutes on the pitch they’ll be helping United out a lot more than if the club were subsidizing their wages to play for someone else. If they’re not falling in line they’ll be banished from the dressing room so as to not affect the rest of the squad - but again, World Cup year, they’re highly incentivized to fall in line.
This is just one man’s idea. Is it a bit naive and perhaps far too idealistic? Maybe. I don’t think my idea aligns at all with Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s because if it did, you wouldn’t have hired an idealist like Ruben Amorim in the first place.
It’s not going to be easy but United can’t keep trying to avoid this period of turmoil any longer. They have to suck it up and go through it. No one wants to hear that United are going to be bad (on purpose) for the next two years - especially not after they’ve been bad for so many of the past years. The difference is when United have been bad recently it’s because the bottom has been falling out from under them. They need to actually take the time to build the foundation.
It doesn’t have to take all that long but you do need to both get lucky and be very smart along the way. Arsenal only toiled away in eighth place for two years2. Five years ago Newcastle and Aston Villa finished 13th and 17th respectively. Within five years they both had qualified for the Champions League via top four finishes.
Both of those clubs pushed all their chips to the middle and have leveraged themselves to the tilt to be where they are, but it stands to prove if you go about making smart decisions it’s possible. It’s just much easier to push your chips to the middle of the table when your books are at zero rather than when you’re in the negative.
If United are going to get through this they have to embrace what they currently are and start acting like it. Understand that you are a mid-table (at best) club who’s now trying to move up the table and crash the top four (or five) party. You can’t keep acting like they’re better than the Newcastle’s and Villa’s of the world. If United had acted like Villa or Newcastle over the last five years there’s no question they’d be in a better situation right now then they’re actually in.
Go about this in the proper way. Pay off some of your transfer debt and stop over leveraging your credit for a few years. Let those bad contracts run out and clear those wages off your books. Let the older players carry you and phase out while giving the younger guys time to develop. Get as close to back to zero as you can.
Once your books have recovered, you’ll be ready to hire that visionary coach and you’ll actually have the financial room to splurge on signing players that fit his vision. You’ll be in a good position to push your chips to the middle of the table.
Once you’ve pushed your chips into the middle and gotten back to the point Villa and Newcastle are in - where they’ve run into a PSR wall - that’s when you can go, ‘oh right, we’re Manchester United. We’re not a plucky mid-table team trying to crash the party. We can afford to push on from here.’
Jim Ratcliffe bought the house that’s livable but needs work. He spent all his money buying the house. He needs to spend a few years* living with the older crap he bought while he rebuilds his finances and is ready to splurge on the renovations.
*Or just promote a Lamine Yamal from your academy. That’ll speed things up quite quickly.
If you’re wondering why players are choosing United over other Premier League clubs… forget it, don’t think about that.
But quickly developed a superstar and a 21 year old castoff from Real Madrid. You gotta get lucky and have good timing.
The kind of sanity I wish we had. Unfortunately both the fans and the owners may not be patient enough for it.
Loved the clarity of thought. If only the United management had this.