Andrew

🔥WATCH THIS: Kaveh Solhekol absolutely TORCHED Jim Ratcliffe on @SkySportsNews! He’s to blame. Full stop. Solhekol didn’t hedge or soft-soap it. He laid out exactly how Ratcliffe’s arrival, buying only 29%, bailing out the Glazers, and seizing control of football operations, has wrecked the club. He was ruthless in his assessment: “I’m going to tell you who’s to blame for this situation at the moment. The person to blame is Jim Ratcliffe. He bought the club almost three years ago. He bought 29% of it, when the Glazer family put the club up for sale. He didn’t buy the whole club, he only bought 29% of it. And by buying 29%, it meant that the Glazers stayed in place and Jim Ratcliffe got to run the football operations.” That’s the original sin. He didn’t clean house. He just propped up the Glazers. Then the arrogance of the man who thought he knew better: “He’s come in and he said, ‘I know better than anyone else how to run this club. We’re going to do things my way’. And look what it’s turned out to be over the past two and a half years.” The managerial mess followed immediately: “First of all, he said, ‘I’m going to back Erik ten Hag. We’ve been chopping and changing managers too much’. Then he went off and started meeting Thomas Tuchel and any other manager who was available behind Erik ten Hag’s back.” “When they couldn’t find somebody else, they gave Ten Hag a new contract and money to spend. A couple of games later, Ten Hag loses his job.” “In the middle of the season, they beg Ruben Amorim to come to United. He doesn’t even want to go there in the middle of the season, he wants to wait until the summer. They pay a fortune to get him, even though he plays three at the back, a totally different kind of football.” “Dan Ashworth doesn’t want him. Dan Ashworth leaves, Ruben Amorim comes in, they go all in on Ruben Amorim. That doesn’t work out. They get rid of him.” “They bring in Carrick as an interim. Okay, results are better. Then they give him the full-time job.” And then the transfer policy that locked the club into mediocrity: “In the meantime, Ratcliffe has come in and said, ‘We’re going to do things my way. No player is going to get paid 250, 300 grand a week here anymore. That’s not going to happen. We’re not going to sign any players for more than 60, 70 million pounds’.” “‘So Mateus Fernandes, Elliot Anderson, Harry Kane, Declan Rice, all these players, we ain’t going to be signing them. And also, we’re only going to be signing players with Premier League experience. And we’re going to sign forwards one window, then the following summer we’re just going to sign midfielders, then next summer we’re just going to sign defenders’.” “So this is Jim Ratcliffe’s way of doing things. So he is to blame for this situation.” He’s right. Ratcliffe rode in as the saviour and has made things measurably worse. It was a mistake from the start and I said so at the time. It was NEVER going to work. The only people who benefited were the Glazers. I’m still surprised so many fans backed this and thought it could succeed. Kaveh just laid bare how damaging Ratcliffe has been for Manchester United. And unfortunately, there’s no end in sight.