The Harsh Truth About Manchester United’s 12 Years Of Decline

Just when you thought the cuts at Manchester United were done up popped another set of efficiency measures.

This news comes mere months after the club axed 250 employees. Earlier this week, it was revealed that another 200 roles will be slashed in an effort to boost profitability.

Manchester United chief executive Omar Berrada delivered the grim news to staff, saying the measures were part of a “transformation plan.”

“This will create a more solid financial platform from which the club can invest in men’s and women’s football success and improved infrastructure,” he said.

“We have a responsibility to put Manchester United in the strongest position to win across our men’s, women’s and academy teams.

“These hard choices are necessary to put the club back on a stable financial footing.

“We have lost money for the past five consecutive years. This cannot continue.

“Our two main priorities as a club are delivering success on the pitch for our fans and improving our facilities. We cannot invest in these objectives if we are continuously losing money.”

If this were a regular type of business, staff would be unhappy but be able to rationalize the decision.

Working for a PLC is, after all, about making money; if that isn’t happening, then the potential for jobs to be lost is always there.

However, Manchester United is not a regular company with reasonable expenses; it is a soccer club where 25 core staff members have a disproportionate sway over the outcomes for everyone else.

Not that this small pool of individuals gets much sympathy. They have successfully leveraged their importance to take a larger slice of revenue than star employees in practically any other field.

So, Old Trafford staff outside the playing team and coaches have every right to feel annoyed that they are being made to pay for the lack of profitability.

More than anyone else, they will know that when it comes to underperformance, the dugout and dressing room should be feeling the heat.

The last time Manchester United was champions was 12 years ago. But it’s important to stress they weren’t one-off winners back then.

They had been the team to beat in England for the best part of the previous three decades. While clubs like Arsenal and Chelsea had sparkled for a couple of seasons here and there, United had been a league-winning machine, hoovering up enough titles to overtake Liverpool’s championship record and lifting two European Cups along the way.

All that changed with the departure of legendary coach Sir Alex Ferguson, who sparked an era of unexpected and dramatic decline.

Since he left with that last Premier League title clasped under his arm, the club has only once challenged for the title and even then finished a distant second with a rampant Manchester City.

Silverware has been delivered, but no one can pretend it is of the same prestige as in the Ferguson era.

Yet those in the offices of Old Trafford did continue to perform at levels worthy of previous eras.

It was remarkable how the club managed to increase its revenue and deliver profits while performances on the pitch nosedived.

Failure to qualify for the most lucrative European competition, the Champions League, was offset by the commercial arm’s delivery of deal after deal.

To put that in perspective, Manchester United was valued at $3 billion when it last won the league with revenues of $385 million. Despite 12 years of decline, the club is worth $7 billion and rakes in close to $800 million.

So, it would not be unreasonable for staff to feel that it is the playing staff where the accountability needs to sit.

Yet, some back Omar Berrada’s cost-cutting efforts, which form part of minority shareholder Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s strategy to make the club more efficient.

Former Crystal Palace chairman and radio pundit Simon Jordan claimed on his TalkSport radio show, “There must be a reason behind [the decisions].

He added: “Ultimately, what you are not looking to do, especially a commercial beast like Jim Ratcliffe, will be to detract from the performance of Manchester United. I can promise you, he will be looking at this and thinking: ‘This is jobs for the boys.’

“I had it at Palace and I went through it like a dose of salts. I was evaluating what a bunch of Mickey-takers they were and how they had been living off other people’s money for years and, actually, were not doing a particularly good job.

“What Jim Ratcliffe has done is: ‘Nah, none of this La La Land of football about how no one is accountable, here is the real world – who is doing what, where and how and how effective are you? Stop gorming out of the window and daydreaming about what you are doing outside of work, how much have you brought to the business today, tomorrow and the following week?’

“The reality is you bring businessmen into football, you streamline the thinking. The first thing he said was that he was gobsmacked at the lack of standards and people not being motivated.

“You want to work from home? Good, you can work from home permanently now for somebody else.

“The bottom line is, they are cutting out the fat and the elements of the business that are not producing the outcomes that perhaps they should. The overstaffing and the lackadaisical mentality and they are going to build an effective, lean and focussed machine that can come out the other side delivering the same outcomes better and more efficiently with less waste.”

It is hard to assess the true nature of Jordan’s assessments. We do know that it was not a poor business that saw United’s financials decline; it was the inevitable drag of a sustained period of poor performance on the field that finally started to take its toll.