After 18 years of Glazer silence, Sir Jim Ratcliffe finally speaks Manchester United fans’ language

Finally, Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been ratified. His 27.7 per cent stake in Manchester United has been cleared by the bodies concerned. He is, officially, the new kid on the Old Trafford block. And as such he has been allowed to tell us where his ambitions lie, what he would like to see at the club, what he wants to do.

It is pretty obvious what most United fans would wish to hear from the new boss. After 18 years of silence, obfuscation and evasion during the Glazer years, what they want from those in charge of their club is some leadership, some direction, some purpose. And Ratcliffe, who has been brilliantly briefed by King Charles’ former public relations guru Paddy Haverson, is making every appearance of doing precisely that. His first interview is coherent, plausible and suitably ambitious. Funny too, as in his neat skewering of the apparent bid from Sheikh Jassim to buy the club. Given he never met any of those involved, never made a public statement and never actually put in a bid of any kind, Ratcliffe observed, there is every chance the apparent Gulf potentate did not actually exist.

For sure, those United supporters who fell for the fantasy financial promises of the shadowy Sheikh will have been disappointed by Ratcliffe’s initial announcements. There was no bid for Kylian Mbappe, no insistence that the Champions League will be won next season, no promise to install Pep Guardiola in the dug-out. Nor, more disappointingly, was there any vow to wipe out the Glazer-imposed debt at a stroke of his gold pen.

Instead, he addressed the issues United supporters of more rational understanding wish to see repaired in their fractured, debilitated, woefully mismanaged club. He wants to end what he calls “11 years of complete misery” since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson. He wants to see trophies, he wants to see good football, he wants United to return to being best in show. But his approach is one of incremental improvement, sorting out the recruitment system, hiring in good people. Every sensible fan would agree with that.

They would also wish to see lessons learned, ideas borrowed and top staff shamelessly poached from the club’s great rivals Manchester City and Liverpool. Sir Jim wants that too. More to the point, in doing so he speaks the language of the fan, he wants to see those institutions, to borrow the turn of phrase of the great man himself, “knocked off their perch”.

Ratcliffe wants, in short, what we want: for the club once again to be the world leader, on the pitch and off it. Anyone who has witnessed how the Glazer malaise has institutionalised drift and decline will recognise it will not be done overnight, whatever the Jassim fantasists insist. It will take time, it will take patience. And from the stands, the new man will be granted that if progress is clear from the off. Talk like this, and support will be there.

Not that United fans have historically been entirely easy with their owners, whether they hail from Florida or Alderley Edge. And some of the things Ratcliffe said will have grated. His insistence, for instance, that government money should be available to rebuild Old Trafford given that “people in the north pay their taxes just as people in the south pay their taxes” might have carried more heft if he himself paid his taxes in this country instead of legging it to live in exile in Monaco.

Such caveats, however, should not detract from the logic of his first pronouncements. With this interview Ratcliffe has immediately proven himself to understand precisely the issues that confront him. He has talked the good talk. Now all he needs to do is deliver. We will be watching.

Ratcliffe’s nod to Ferguson hits a sweet spot – but he must deliver

There is no doubt Sir Jim Ratcliffe struck a sweet spot by declaring it was his intention to not just restore Manchester United’s fortunes but, in doing so, to “knock both” Liverpool and Manchester City “from their perch”. There is nothing like a little local rivalry even on a global stage.

It is a phrase that resonates so deeply with United fans. It is a phrase that harks back to past glories; glories they have yearned for over the past decade. It is a phrase that will, forever, be linked to Sir Alex Ferguson.

It is also a phrase that Ferguson first used in response to a column for The Daily Telegraph written by former Liverpool defender Alan Hansen. It has become one of football’s most famous quotes.

In was back in September 2002 and Ferguson was under pressure. He may have won seven Premier League titles, he may have landed a – then – unprecedented treble in 1999 (with Ratcliffe present at the Champions League final triumph in Barcelona against Bayern Munich when Ferguson also came out with his “football, bloody hell” line) and he may have been knighted.

But the scrutiny was growing with the argument that Ferguson was falling behind innovative managers such as Arsene Wenger, who had led Arsenal to the title by winning at Old Trafford and were already six points ahead of United.

In his Telegraph column Hansen had said Ferguson faced the “greatest challenge of his career” having announced his retirement and reversed that decision the previous summer.

The response? It was calculated and it has gone down in legend. “My greatest challenge is not what’s happening at the moment,” Ferguson said before delivering the killer line: “My greatest challenge was knocking Liverpool right off their f------ perch. And you can print that.”

It has been printed – and quoted – many, many times since. And now it has been used by Ratcliffe. Ferguson knew exactly the button to press – as does the Ineos billionaire.

In fairness to Ferguson he meant it as surely Ratcliffe does. Ferguson’s obsession with toppling a dominant Liverpool had been clear since he arrived at United from Aberdeen in 1986. “This isn’t a job for me. It’s a mission,” he later said.

The argument put forward by another great former Liverpool defender, and Telegraph Sport’s current columnist, Jamie Carragher may also ring true - that it was Liverpool, not United, who knocked themselves off their perch with poor decisions and they were out of contention when Ferguson won his first title in 1993 – but so do the words of a now former United executive.

The senior figure said it was actually more important for United to finish above Liverpool, and for them to struggle, than it was for United to be ahead of any of their other rivals. The argument was that despite having not won the title since 1990, before Jurgen Klopp finally delivered it again in 2020, Liverpool had stayed big and stayed relevant.

United have also stayed big and stayed relevant – sometimes for all the wrong reasons in recent seasons – but unlike back in 2002-03 they will not change things as quickly as they did then when Ferguson went from ninth to first and won another title, not losing a league game after Boxing Day. But Ratcliffe has certainly struck the right note. It is always an easy win to hark back to yesterdays but Ratcliffe, a genuine lifelong fan and local boy made good, can be allowed that indulgence. But he also has to deliver, and surpassing City as well as Liverpool makes it an even more difficult challenge, or it will come back to haunt him.

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