Johnny Phillips: Can Sir Jim Ratcliffe really make change at Man United with 25 per cent?

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who is the chairman and chief executive of chemical powerhouse INEOS Group, is proposing a new Manchester United football committee of himself, United CEO Joel Glazer and Sir Dave Brailsford, who oversaw seven Tour de France wins in charge of Team Sky and then the rebranded INEOS Grenadiers.

If Ratcliffe’s deal to acquire 25 per cent of the club is agreed, it would herald the beginning of a new ownership model where the investor takes control of football operations but not the wider business. And it sparks the obvious question... Can that actually work?

The Glazer family would retain control of the commercial side of the business, but Ratcliffe would also have a say on those matters due to his minority stake in the club.

It is the football operations side, and what comes under that vague umbrella, which is up for debate.

As part of the £1.3bn deal for a quarter of the Premier League club, Ratcliffe would have control in this area, but it is a legal minefield and will take a lot of paperwork before the nuts and bolts of it all are sorted.

In the event the deal goes through, Ratcliffe would look at performance levels over the entire football operation, not just the first team.

Ratcliffe’s colleagues from INEOS visited Manchester several months ago for an initial perusal of the business, but it was certainly not a forensic examination of the operation.

Brailsford will be a key figure in the new structure.

INEOS’s director of sport has been leading the company’s project at Ligue 1 club Nice where Ratcliffe’s empire took control in a £90million deal in 2019.

Limited success has been achieved, with the highlight being a French Cup final appearance in 2022.

When the takeover on the French Riviera happened four years ago, there was talk that the club could now financially aim to be among the title contenders within a few years, but that hope has not genuinely materialised and it would be more realistic to suggest that Nice are now just European qualification contenders and no more.

What has been achieved is the progression through of a crop of talented young French players, with Jean-Clair Todibo and Khephren Thuram knocking on the door of the national team.

But, as a project, United fans will not look at Nice as a benchmark for what can be expected at Old Trafford.

It has been a long and barren journey since the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson 10 years ago.

The club have not won a league title since 2013 and billions of pounds has been spent treading water.

Clearly the malaise goes way beyond the managers they have employed.

Since the leveraged buyout back in 2005, the Glazer family’s ownership has been hugely criticised by supporters who have watched on in dismay as the club has lagged further behind its Premier League rivals over the last decade.

It now appears that the owners are washing their hands of the matter.

Rather than taking responsibility for the situation, they seem happy to shed a minority stake in their ownership in return for dumping all the football issues on somebody else’s shoulders. It is an unusual approach to say the least.

United sit 10th in the table as we head into this weekend’s round of Premier League fixtures and that is not an unreasonable reflection of their season so far.

Investment in the playing side of the business has actually been fairly significant, but there are clearly issues of transfer strategy to address and the change in managers over recent seasons has certainly upset the balance when compared to traditional rivals Manchester City and Liverpool.

Off the pitch, does the state of Old Trafford come under that umbrella of football operations?

The famous old ground has not been listed as a Euro 2028 venue and it is easy to see why.

Despite its capacity – the largest in the Premier League – the stadium is tired, run down in parts and badly needs upgrading.

The sums that would involve are frightening and it is hard to see how this is a priority right now.

Ultimately, United fans want to see the back of the Glazers.

For a brief time it appeared they had landed the golden ticket in the form of Sheikh Jassim, but with the Gulf interest now dead in the water, a full sale of the club is no longer on the table.

What we are left with is a bizarre form of takeover that could either lead to genuine change or merely give the impression of somebody allowed to dip their toes in the water.

The story will run for some time yet as all the invested parties try to move forward and reach some kind of satisfactory agreement.

Can Ratcliffe bring about fundamental change with just 25 per cent control? The jury is definitely out.