The boardroom mistakes and footballing failure that cost Man Utd’s staff their jobs

Ruben Amorim cut through the corporate speak. “We are initiating a wide-ranging series of measures which will transform and renew the club,” said Manchester United’s chief executive Omar Berrada while announcing a plan to transform 200 members of staff into former employees.

Amorim can have a disarming honesty. He is better at admitting failure than winning Premier League games. United’s second cull in less than a year, meaning around 40 per cent of the workforce will lose their jobs, stems from footballing as well as financial results.

“It has a lot to do with the lack of success of the football team because we are the engine of any football club,” said Amorim. Fifteenth in the Premier League, on course for their lowest finish for half a century, United’s engine seems to have broken down. They are stuck on the hard shoulder after a failed pursuit of rivals in the fast lane.

“We as a club have to understand what we did wrong to get to this situation,” said Amorim. How a club with the highest operating profit in the division last year, some €165m, still made a loss of £113m, how a money-making machine has turned in losses of £373m over five years. In one sense, they are suffering from long Covid.

The lessons for United may be unpleasant. How did they get here? The Glazers lumped debt on the club, currently over £700m, while over two decades they have paid more than £1bn in interest and refinancing costs, and now a rise in interest rates could add to their annual repayments.

Now they are in a world where Sir Jim Ratcliffe paid above the share price on the stock exchange for his stake in the club and has sought to cut costs, seemingly modelling his approach on Elon Musk wielding the axe to departments of the American government, while bringing in ever increasing numbers of his own hires.Meanwhile, for the fourth time in seven seasons, United are not even competing in the Champions League; that loss of revenue was compounded by crashing out in the group stages last season. Fail to qualify for it next season – and their only remaining route is via winning the Europa League – and the value of some of their commercial deals will drop.

Meanwhile, their struggles in the Premier League come at a separate cost. Each finishing position is worth around £3m; stay in 15th and that means a £21m drop on last season’s underachievement of eighth. Amorim’s many defeats will affect the turnover. United might be higher up the table had they kept Ruud van Nistelrooy on as caretaker.

There is, as the Portuguese accepted, their terrible record in the transfer market, rendered worse by a habit of paying what a former executive at the club called ‘the United tax’, way over the odds: look at the £85m fee for Antony or the £72m cost of Rasmus Hojlund. Amorim at least accepts some responsibility. Erik ten Hag spent £600m and always seemed to think he should be given more money.

“We have to improve recruitment, I think that is crucial, and we need to improve the team,” said Amorim. “We need to perform better and we need to be in Europe and not in our position this season. I have empathy for everybody but it’s easy to feel empathy with all the situations that have occurred. And then the second feeling is that I need to improve my job. They [the staff affected] are paying the price for our lack of success and I can’t say anything now that is going to convince the fans and all the staff that we’re going to do it.”

It wasn’t a promise; perhaps one would have been meaningless anyway, given that none of United’s managerial appointments since Sir Alex Ferguson retired have been genuine successes, perhaps none the correct choice. So far Amorim, the man who said they could get relegated and are the worst team in their history, is shaping up as the poorest of all, at least in terms of results.And managerial appointments, which have drained United of funds. Amorim’s compensation from Sporting CP amounted to €11m. Paying off Erik ten Hag and his backroom staff, four months after the Dutchman got a new deal, came to £10.4m. The sporting director Dan Ashworth got £4.1m to go away, five months after United paid Newcastle for him.

Meanwhile, former CEO Richard Arnold got a £5.5m golden goodbye. The legal fees for Ratcliffe’s investment, lumped on the club by the Glazers, was £30.3m. Ferguson had a £2m-a-year ambassadorial deal which rarely seemed to entail doing very much.

The unlucky 200 could wonder if they would be sacrificed with better decision-making. How many of those 200 could be paid using Casemiro’s wages of over £300,000 a week? Or even the £80,000 a week United are paying Marcus Rashford while he plays for Aston Villa? How many of those on relatively normal wages would keep their jobs had they never bought Antony? As Amorim accepted, footballing choices have had a real-life impact.

“It’s easy for me to be here and say all the pretty stuff,” he said. But these are ugly times. Amorim may have been too honest for his own good, accidentally undiplomatic, when he argued the team may not be distracted by the troubles behind the scenes.“The players don’t feel it too much, they have one life, they live in a bubble,” he said. “It’s completely different for them than it is for me, for everybody in the club. They don’t feel that pressure of people losing their job, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing – they are young kids that live in a different world – but they suffer a different pressure.”