Ruben Amorim acknowledged that United’s on-field struggles are partly to blame for Jim Ratcliffe’s ruthless cuts but things may still get worse at Old Trafford.
“We are initiating a wide-ranging series of measures which will transform and renew the club,” said Manchester United’s chief executive Omar Berrada while announcing a plan to transform 200 members of staff into former employees.
There is, as the Portuguese accepted, their terrible record in the transfer market, rendered worse by a habit of paying what a former executive at the club called ‘the United tax’, way over the odds: look at the £85m fee for Antony or the £72m cost of Rasmus Hojlund.
Now they are in a world where Sir Jim Ratcliffe paid above the share price on the stock exchange for his stake in the club and has sought to cut costs, seemingly modelling his approach on Elon Musk wielding the axe to departments of the American government, while bringing in ever increasing numbers of his own hires.
It wasn’t a promise; perhaps one would have been meaningless anyway, given that none of United’s managerial appointments since Sir Alex Ferguson retired have been genuine successes, perhaps none the correct choice.
