Sir Jim Ratcliffe needs to resist the urge to make an immediate impact

The INEOS CEO wants to restore Manchester United but should focus on going about it the proper way rather than making a big splash early

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Manchester United’s long takeover saga finally appears to be moving towards the next step with the announcement that INEOS’ Sir Jim Ratcliffe is set to acquire a 25 percent stake in the club pending approval at a board meeting on Thursday.

Though United fans will be disappointed that this isn’t a full takeover, the silver lining is Ratcliffe is expected to assume sporting control of the club. While the Glazers will ultimately still be minority shareholders they will no longer be making the day to day decision makers on the sporting issues at the club. This is very good news considering they are aren’t good at that.

On the sporting side, Manchester United don’t need the billions offered by a potential Qatari bid. In fact, they don’t need billions from anybody. The Manchester United machine is so big the football club can run just on the revenues it creates alone. It just needs to be run well.

Taking the club out of the hands of people who aren’t running it well and into the hands of someone new, presents an opportunity for that to happen.

One doesn’t have to look much further than Todd Boehly’s Chelsea to see that new owners may arrive with a superhero complex. They want to save the day, they want to do it their way, and most importantly they want to do it right away. After all there is no group of people that demand more immediate results than football fans.

With sporting control changing hands, we will undoubtedly see a whole slew of players being linked with potential moves to United as early as January. Fans will undoubtedly be clamoring for these moves to happen.

Add in the fact that Sir Jim Ratcliffe is not the number choice among many fans for who they wanted to take over the club. It would be understandable for Ratcliffe to want to win those fans over and to do so quickly.

That could lead to Ratcliffe looking to make a “statement signing” early in his tenure but this would be just about the worst thing he could do.

United’s first team is currently a mess¹. It’s a terribly assembled collection of pieces that don’t quite fit each other. Many have been ‘statement signings’ at one point or another by different people. They’ve blown billions of pounds away assembling this squad, creating a crater of dead money currently on their books. Adding another expensive piece to the puzzle without much forethought is more likely to do far more long term harm than whatever good might come of it².

For United to get out of this mess, they’re going to need a plan. A real plan. They’re going to need a strategy at the club level that dictates what kind of players they’re going to target and what kind of coaches they’re going to hire.

Ben Jacobs reported that should Ratcliffe get approved, he will undertake a 100 day review of the club.

For argument’s sake, let’s say Ratcliffe’s tenure begins immediately upon being ratified at the board meeting on Thursday October 19th. 100 days on would be Saturday January 27th, already the end of the January window.

It’s not like anything major happens in the January window anyway so this isn’t that big of a deal. That review would still leave five months before next summer’s window opens. Plenty of time right?

Not quite. After the 100 day review, Ratcliffe would have to decide who is staying and who may be coming in. If he hires people from outside the club, those people will want to hire the teams underneath them. None of this is going to happen overnight, the hiring process itself takes time.

From there you need to actually create the strategy of the club. You need to get every team updated with what you’re looking to do and what your plan is. Once you have all the backroom pieces in place, then you can go and begin trying to find players that match your criteria.

These are things that take time, and when we say time, we’re not talking just a few months. Even if United were to hire someone like Paul Mitchell in December before the 100 day review is completed, it would be difficult to expect him to be delivering immediate results next summer.

There’s so much that goes into building the sporting side of the club. Getting the right people in place takes time, identifying profiles, takes time, scouting players takes time. If you’re building a data department - as these types of people love to do - oftentimes the models need to be built from scratch. Then you have to start loading your database with players.

When Fenway Sports Group took over Liverpool and gave the recruitment keys towards data based guys, they did so knowing it wouldn’t just take years for their recruitment department to build a winner, but that it would take years for them just to start building a winner.

FSG took over Liverpool in a dire situation. They didn’t try to pull them out of it and return them to glory overnight. They took the long view, opting to take their time and build a sustainable team that could compete at the top for years at a time.

They were ultimately pretty successful. By 2018 they had a team in the Champions League final. A year later they won the Champions League and finished with the third highest point total in Premier League history. A year later they eclipsed that total. In 2022 they contested the final of all three cup competitions they were in, and on the final day of the Premier League season they were still alive for a historic quadruple.

All in all, FSG built one of the best teams the Premier League has ever seen. It’s just their trophy haul is exceptionally light because they just happened to come up right at the same time as the behemoth that is Manchester City - who have an endless supply of money and 115 charges of alleged financial fair play breaches.

Given that you’re not going to have the resources of Manchester City, Liverpool are about the best you can hope for and certainly the model to follow.

But not pushing for immediate success doesn’t mean that immediate success won’t come.

Look up the road at Newcastle. Following their Saudi takeover Newcastle have not been drunkenly throwing money around at the biggest stars. Rather they’ve focused on building a backroom team with a clear strategy of what they were looking to build on the pitch. They’ve been smart in the transfer market, targeting young and under appreciated players with high upside. Everyone knew within 3-4 years Newcastle were going to be a problem for the traditional big six, but despite their patient strategy it only took a year for the Magpies to crash the Champions League party.

Outside of football there’s another team that comes to mind as one being rewarded early for having patience. The NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights.

In American sports, when a league wants to add a new team it doesn’t promote a second division or minor league club but creates a team out of nothing. That team needs players so the league holds an expansion draft where the expansion team gets to select one player from each of the already existing teams. (The existing teams are allowed to “protect” a certain number of players to ensure they don’t lose their best players for nothing).

Historically expansion teams are typically trash. Owners are looking to put a competitive team on the field right away so they can attract fans and build a fanbase. Typically this leads to the expansion team often targeting the “best available” veteran players from each team in the expansion draft only to quickly find out there’s a reason these teams left these guys unprotected.

The Vegas Golden Knights went about things differently. They had no interest in trying to compete in year one. Before the expansion draft they made several deals with other teams promising not to select that unprotected player that teams still didn’t want to lose in exchange for amassing more draft picks in the NHL draft. Their goal was to amass a lot of young talent and build up their farm system so they could develop into a contending team in three or four years.

No one saw what ended up happening coming. The “rejects” that they drafted in the expansion draft ended up playing with a chip on their shoulder. They discovered some gems that teams overlooked and in their first year of existence went all the way to the Stanley Cup Final.

Being good right away didn’t shift their strategy. They never took their eye off the ball of aiming to be competitive within about five years. They went to the semifinals twice in the next three years, and in year six they won their first cup.

Thinking long term doesn’t necessarily mean sacrificing short term results. It simply means not worrying about them.

United are currently in an FFP hell hole with a squad that is quickly aging out of its prime. Recklessly throwing money at it without taking the time to ensure these targets fit your long term strategy will only make the problem worse.

If Ratcliffe wants to restore Manchester United to glory step one is recognizing this is the situation you’re in. Step two is putting in place a coherent strategy and having the patience to see it through. If you’re not ready to splash big money around next summer then don’t. You’ll benefit more from that long term.

Of course if United don’t spend money the cries from the fans will be loud, but if you want to make it work, you have to tune them out. Resist the urge to make impulsive signings.

Get your team in place, put in a long term strategy, and see it through. You never know, could even run into success sooner than you originally imagined.

1. Yes, I’m referencing an unpublished piece that’s currently still sitting in the Kwestthoughts drafts folder. You’ll have to bear with me here.

2. Sort of like Casemiro