Manchester United’s problems run deeper than another managerial sacking |
At its peak in the 1990s and 2000s, Manchester United was the reference point in professional club football around the globe. It set the commercial agenda, dominated the game domestically and projected power far beyond the pitch. That era now feels distant – not because ambition has faded, but because competence in execution has.
Manchester United’s latest chapter, the sacking of manager Ruben Amorim, has been framed as a necessary football decision. The team’s results were inconsistent and its performances uneven.
Yet focusing on Amorim alone risks missing the wider truth. Manchester United is stuck in a cycle of poor business decisions off the field. The arrival of petrochemical billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos to assist majority owners the Glazer family in 2023 has not broken it.
Ineos was brought in as a corrective force, promising modern governance, football expertise and significant investment in infrastructure. At the time, it stated that it wanted to see Manchester United back at the “very top” of English, European and world football.
Fast forward a couple of years and that aim already looks in jeopardy. Instead, the club continues to display the same damaging tendencies that have defined the era after Sir Alex Ferguson’s legendary management period between 1986 and 2013.
These tendencies include reacting to the performances on the pitch rather than prioritising the long-term vision and allowing managerial changes to disrupt wider restructuring projects. Staff redundancies, plans for a new stadium and the latest managerial sacking have all drawn criticisms from fans, analysts........