Ratcliffe austerity?

sixdwarf

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Sir Jim Ratcliffe has said Man Utd will not be trying to land superstar signings such as Jude Bellingham or Kylian Mbappé.
The Ineos chairman, who has taken control of United’s footballing operations after his minority shareholding purchase wants to turn them back into the force we once were. But he does not believe spending big on marquee signings the way to prosper.

Appearing as a guest on the Geraint Thomas Cycling Club podcast, he was asked whether he would try to sign Bellingham. He replied: “He is a great footballer. It’s not where our focus is; the solution isn’t spending a lot of money on a couple of great players.

“They have done that, if you look at the last 10 years, they have spent a lot of money on a couple of great players. The first thing we need to do is get the right people in the right boxes who are managing and organising the club. And make sure we get recruitment right, it is such a vital part of football today.”

United have spent more than £1bn on signings since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013 but have failed to challenge for the Premier League title, coming closest when finishing 12 points behind Man City in 2020/21 under Ole.

"I'd rather find the next Mbappe than spend a fortune trying to buy success,," he said. "It's not that clever, is it, buying Mbappe, in a way?
"Anyone could figure that one out. Much more challenging is to find the next Mbappe or Jude Bellingham or the next Roy Keane."

This for me this is code for we won't have money to spend. When we were at our best we sprinkled stardust amidst the young up coming players.
This does not sound like a blueprint for a future title challenge.
What do you think?
 

mu4c_20le

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He's not going to say we have a blank chequebook, watch this space is he ?
 

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sixdwarf said:
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has said Man Utd will not be trying to land superstar signings such as Jude Bellingham or Kylian Mbappé.
The Ineos chairman, who has taken control of United’s footballing operations after his minority shareholding purchase wants to turn them back into the force we once were. But he does not believe spending big on marquee signings the way to prosper.

Appearing as a guest on the Geraint Thomas Cycling Club podcast, he was asked whether he would try to sign Bellingham. He replied: “He is a great footballer. It’s not where our focus is; the solution isn’t spending a lot of money on a couple of great players.

“They have done that, if you look at the last 10 years, they have spent a lot of money on a couple of great players. The first thing we need to do is get the right people in the right boxes who are managing and organising the club. And make sure we get recruitment right, it is such a vital part of football today.”

United have spent more than £1bn on signings since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013 but have failed to challenge for the Premier League title, coming closest when finishing 12 points behind Man City in 2020/21 under Ole.

"I'd rather find the next Mbappe than spend a fortune trying to buy success,," he said. "It's not that clever, is it, buying Mbappe, in a way?
"Anyone could figure that one out. Much more challenging is to find the next Mbappe or Jude Bellingham or the next Roy Keane."

This for me this is code for we won't have money to spend. When we were at our best we sprinkled stardust amidst the young up coming players.
This does not sound like a blueprint for a future title challenge.
What do you think?
Click to expand...
I think him declaring we are looking to break the bank for huge stars would be idiotic.

I think buying huge stars isn't practical in modern football anyways, considering the likes of Declan Rice already cost 100m. Occasionally it's possible but very rarely.
 

Dec9003

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Sensible statements. We need to make smart purchases to make our money go further. It’s better to buy two successful players for 50 million, than a superstar for 100. There will be special circumstances (maybe Harry Kane) but that should only happen if we are pushing for the top spot like when we signed Van Persie.
 

JB08

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Austerity? He's talking about spunking a over a billion on a new stadium.

He's just suggesting we operate a sustainable transfer model and sign players who will improve, a complete contrast to our strategy in most of the past decade.
 

rimaldo

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he’s sitting here, crowing about spending feck all money and people are happy with that? jassim was offering us all bigger dicks.
 

Rojofiam

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I think he just means that we need project players first, before we build a team and reach that status where we can genuinely attract players like Mbappé and Bellingham again.
 

Bertie Wooster

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The thing is, even with our terrible transfer structure of late, we still came very close to signing the likes of Bellingham and Haaland really cheaply much earlier in their careers.

And that's what we're better off aiming at doing - just get more organised so that we get those deals over the line and become the sort of club again when players like that want to choose us over the likes of Dortmund for footballing reasons, not just financial ones.

I completely agree that the most important thing is to get our recruitment team functioning well so that we make the right decisions about getting in the right type of players for the right prices - and have the competency to get those deals compeleted.

That's a far more sustainable and long term way of getting us back to being a competent team challenging for major honours rather than our reactive, shambolic transfer policy of the last decade.
 

LawCharltonBest

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It sounds exactly like the blueprint for a title challenge and historically how United have always built their best teams

I knew Arsenal would become a much better team when they started sensible recruitment targeting young talents with potential such as Odegaard
 

Frosty

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He's saying the precise opposite of austerity, surely? A plan to focus on young talent with potential doesn't mean zero spending or making a profit on transfers.
 

No1_Dave

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Very sensible comments/strategy from Sir Jim, he's trying to follow the Sir Alex blueprint of success, mainly nurture and develop young players and turn them into superstars, and only spend big when truly exceptional talent is spotted and needed by the team/squad, that's proper way to build a team/squad.

I also would rather us find and develop the next Rooneys and Ronaldos when they're young, and have their best/peak years playing for us (well certainly in Rooney's case), than wasting money spending big but badly, like we've done in the last decade.
 

Ali Dia

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Keane bellingham and mbappe all still cost a lot for young players. I am all for scouting smarter and getting talented players in as early as possible but we will probably have to loan them out more aggressively or take even more risks with playing top young talent.
 

spottieottiedopaliscious

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Have no problem with this thought process. The past ten years have been a sporadic approach with no real foresight or plan in place. We just signed big names and just hoped it would work and bring us success. The problem was the team wasn’t ready for those players yet as we didn’t have a good foundation.

You can see his plan is first getting the decision makers and people in place who will help build this vision and foundation. I don’t see it as a we will never go for the big names just at this moment it doesn’t make sense or help his goals for the club. I have no doubt if we can establish a great squad that we will be in for big names as long as they fit the mold.
 

hobbers

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Signing players like Bellingham or Rice for 100m is absolutely fine. It's the 30 year old has beens out for a last pay check we need to put a fecking stop to signing.
 

glazed

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On that basis you have to fancy ETH to keep his job. Can anyone imagine Mainoo, Hojlund, Garnacho thriving under previous managers?
 

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The Glazer dividends have to come from somewhere for years to come
 

spiriticon

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I've truly hated the way we have done business for the past decade so welcome any sort of change.
 

noodlehair

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He's not going to be spending silly money, due to ffp. Nothing he can do about that regardless of if he wants to or not.

I'm a sceptic but don't think he's said anything wrong there? We aren't going to be signing Mbappe or Bellingham. Even if we had the money it wouldn't happen. It'd cripple us, and why would their clubs sell them to us/why would they want to leave better teams to join us?

Not that much is going to change over night and if anything spending will get tighter than pre Ratcliffe, because of the after effects of how poorly we've spent in the last 10 years.

I'm willing to give him time (as long as we don't do something completely idiotic like hire Southgate). If you're expecting miracles or some mad spending spree in the summer you're going to end up disappointed.
 

bosnian_red

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He said the right thing. Looking for who next to spend 100m on isn't the right way to go about building a team. The amount we have spent on transfers hasn't been a problem (in fact the problem has been spending too much if anything)?

If you want a sugar daddy owner and a club who will try to sign all the very best players in the world every year, you're going to be leg down as that isn't Manchester United.
 

Nick7

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The only time we ever tried to sign players of a similar, but not exactly the same, status as Mbappe and Bellingham we ended up with Pogba and Sancho. Moneywise you can add Antony, Maguire, and Lukaku in there. All north of £75m.

Bar one of two missteps the best teams in the league don’t work like that in the transfer windows either. It’s simply not a sustainable approach to squad building.
 

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He doesn’t say we won’t spend big money per se. Nothing in that to suggest that we won’t spend big to try and secure the best young talents for example. I saw what he said as us not spending big on the already established superstars. Real Madrid have spent big on stars of tomorrow for example. They bought Tchouameni for 100m from Monaco. They’ve spent 50m on Brazilians who are het to make their debuts. I think we would be prepared to spend good money on top young players.

Simply refusing to spend more than West Ham would on a footballer would be a ridiculous transfer policy for Manchester United, and will leave us with a squad that can’t compete in all likelihood.
 

DavidDeSchmikes

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"The first thing we need to do is get the right people in the right boxes who are managing and organising the club. And make sure we get recruitment right, it is such a vital part of football today."

He's right

Look at the past 10 years post Ferguson the amount of money spent on players and ask yourself how many of them were successes?
 

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How can you bring in the greatest manager on earth in Sir Gareth and not give him the money to sign superstars? It’s absolutely ridiculous. He must get the funds to sign Henderson and Philips!!
 

tomaldinho1

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hobbers said:
Signing players like Bellingham or Rice for 100m is absolutely fine. It's the 30 year old has beens out for a last pay check we need to put a fecking stop to signing.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure it's ever a good business model in the long run to be honest, you mitigate the risk somewhat with getting younger players but most big transfers don't work out that well Coutinho, Griezmann, Dembele, Enzo, Sancho, Pogba, Caiceido, Neymar, Lukaku...the list goes on and on. I get there is a certain glamour in being able to be linked with and attract the best of the best but I'd much rather see us develop our own core first and then cherry pick a couple of world class players to go on top of that.
 

T00lsh3d

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Entirely sensible. Our scouting and recruitment has been appalling for too long. Then followed by terrible negotiation.

Sorting that out is a much better approach than saying, “we want to spend half a billion on Mbappe”
 

hobbers

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glazed said:
No, every manager since SAF has had a reputation for making players worse.
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You could easily point at Antony, Rashford etc and say the same thing about ETH. Mainoo, Hojlund and Garnacho are improving because they're playing every game, not because they're playing for ETH.
 

glazed

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hobbers said:
You could easily point at Antony, Rashford etc and say the same thing about ETH. Mainoo, Hojlund and Garnacho are improving because they're playing every game, not because they're playing for ETH.
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Well yeah because ETH picks them every game and coaches them in between so they're good enough.
Rashford had the season of his life under ETH and is slowly coming good again this year.

Antony...well Antony was a mistake (so far.)
 

RedRocket08

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sixdwarf said:
What do you think?
Click to expand...
I prefer this approach over the last 10 years of ‘galacticos’/ football manager signings.

What he’s saying doesn’t mean we’ll focus only on youth, what he means is that we need to have a best in class recruitment team that identifies those world beaters before anybody else and get them to United. That’s good business, and this is what we should do whether we have the money or not. I.e. that he’d love a Haaland from Molde type signing than a Haaland from Dortmund/Leipzig type signing or a Garna type of signing - which enables us to buy a few of these types of players and spread our risk as well like a portfolio of stocks.

We have to be shrewd when we sign players, a buying club should love a good bargain as much as a selling club, because we can then allocate more of our profits to other areas of the club that in turn makes us more money.

Also if he comes out and says we’re going to sign Mbappe or Bellingham, that’s just going to add another 20% to our already ludicrous United Tax

He’s giving us fans/ the media or any player agents who might want to listen in, an idea of how we’ll do business going forward here as well - I personally absolutely approve the message he’s putting out, in fact I’m really happy to finally hear it from a United exec, it’s what we should’ve been doing the last 10 years.
 
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cj_sparky

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If it means we aren't chucking £70m at Branthwaite, then I'm all for it.
 

Stadjer

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JB08 said:
Austerity? He's talking about spunking a over a billion on a new stadium.

He's just suggesting we operate a sustainable transfer model and sign players who will improve, a complete contrast to our strategy in most of the past decade.
Click to expand...
Shaw, Maguire, Dalot, Lindelof, Fred, Martial, Antony, Sancho, Lukaku and Pogba all were quite young and had years to improve even more when they signed. They showed their talents at other clubs and really made the step to Manchester United for their step to an elite level club where players hope they end up during their prime. Yes we also signed Matic, Ronaldo, Zlatan, Cavani, Falcao, Casemiro and Varane but it isnt like all we ever did was buying aging player signing their last big contract.

Because of whatever circumstances those younger players didnt develop in the way that they were expected and we had hoped they would. I dont think it is fair to say we didnt try though. We would currently have a world class team if David de Gea, Phil Jones (best ever Manchester United player), Shaw, Pogba (midfielder who could do it all), Martial (former Golden boy) and Sancho (touted as a genertional talent) all became as good as they were touted. Only really David de Gea became the player that he was expected to become and he fell off too.
 
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