The Pitch: €12bn man Jim Ratcliffe is no fool – so why does he appear so confused about United?

It’s approximately €474m.

By this time ‘Sir Jim’ had already worked himself into such a tizz about staged payments and the tricks of player amortisation - a practice he has leaned on during his early custody of the club.

Such an admission begged for a follow-up inquiry, along the lines of ‘how can you cannot know such basic economic details?’, but the interviewer was Gary Neville, who in fairness exposed more fault lines in Jim Ratcliffe than was likely agreed beforehand.

But Neville was never going to pick too hard at any of the financial scabs exposed, for very good reason.

Hours after his ‘The Overlap’ interview, the pundit and former player turned up as the sporting and celebrity face of the INEOS Group’s €2.37bn stadium project, an ambition quick on the heels of Ratcliffe’s claim the club was almost broke.

Despite the subjective connection between interrogator and interviewee Neville’s 43 minute interview was good, but it wasn’t forensic enough, particularly in moments which required deep examination and probing financial scrutiny.

Ratcliffie, let’s not forget, is a commercial titan with INEOS chemicals a company he remortgaged his house to fund, a trick which has since returned a €12.45bn dollar fortune to the Mancunian.

But for someone with such wealth and business creditability, Jim Ratcliffe looked unimpressive and at times incompetent, turning a PR tap-in into more negative publicity.

Throughout, Ratcliffe gave extraordinary insights into his own shortcomings, while trying to bemoan how everything that has gone wrong at Manchester United was not his fault, and the bits that were: “Well, mea culpa.” At times you wondered if Jim Ratcliffe actually knew what he was getting into when he paid approximately £1bn for his 28% share of the club, more than one year ago.

His pronouncement that Manchester United will run out cash by the end of the year is patently not true, an extraordinary admission from the man who approved €210m in transfers during the last summer window.

His subsequent claim that the Premier League was the most successful sporting league in the world was another wrong ‘un – it’s not.

Certainly amongst European football leagues the €7.1bn it generates is the richest, almost as valuable as the combined wealth of La Liga (€3.6bn) and Serie A (€3.6bn).

The most successful sporting league in the world is the American Football’s NFL which generated €18bn for the last financial year, while the MLB in Baseball reported €11bn with Basketball’s NBA accounting for €10.5bn.

There was some honesty about his own failings, including the highly damaging removal of an ex-players fund of just €47,000 which provided limited income to stars from the 70s and 80s who give their time to the club for matchday duties.

Giving Eric ten Hag a new contract and not firing him was a mistake he admitted, even if the explanation was muddled.

“It was quite difficult to extract, in that season when we arrived, Eric’s performance from the structure around him, because obviously the structure around him (Amorin) is completely different,” said Ratcliffe.

“It was quite difficult to see what environment Eric was operating in – in other words was it a function of Eric or of the organisation?

“We gave Eric the benefit of doubt (and a new contract) – but it was the wrong decision.” 

The chasing of Dan Ashworth and payment to Newcastle in compensation for the change and transformation leader was another disaster, and one which cost the club £15m in exit payments to him (and ten Hag).

“At the end of the day it was chemistry, maybe a bit more than chemistry, but let’s say chemistry,” he said.

“It didn’t work. It was an error.” 

Dan Ashworth and his legal team will also be examining this week if Ratcliffe has made another error speaking so publicly about a matter which will be absolutely protected by Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).

The former sporting director and Manchester United will have agreed strict terms about not revealing anything about his effective firing and that may now be tested legally.

Another potential issue to come from the YouTube chat could arrive from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

By effectively assuming charge and managerial control of United – he stated many times what he had done at the club – Ratcliffe may have overreached NYSE governance rules, as he is neither Chairman, Chief Executive Officer or a listed Board Director.

There are strict laws about how a shareholder can interfere with the running of a stock exchange listed asset, and there may be repercussions down the line.

Another extraordinary claim by Ratcliffe was that the current Manchester United team is exactly where it should be (languishing in the bottom half of the table) due to the value of the available team.

Ruben Amorim’s poor performance as a coach is justified, because in Ratcliffe’s view it is directly linked to the salary bill of the current squad, where if you take out the players who are on loan or injured, then United should rank in the lower half of the table.

That salary bill (of players currently available) is circa £130m (€154m) according to Ratcliffe, which he says compares with the likes of Everton – it doesn’t, the Toffees' entire squad salary fees sit at approximately £77m (€91m), so not an accurate comparison.

By that reckoning then Brighton and Bournemouth, each with a total annual wages cost of approximately £60m (€71m), should not be where they are, currently riding high inside the top half of the table.

Then Ratcliffe headed down an extraordinary avenue where he spoke about “the players we will buy this summer, that we did not buy, in other words that we’re paying for” - Anthony, Sancho, Højlund, Casemiro and Onana, amongst others.

This is amortisation, a facility whereby all top level football clubs pay for new players through a vehicle which allows them to stage payments over the next five year period, which also allows the reporting of a more positive financial position.

He will have used the same strategy for the €200m+ purchases of Zirkzee, de Ligt, Ugarte and others, but that fact seemed to escape Jim Ratcliffe, as did the overall cost still owed on player purchases.

He did reveal that these ongoing transfer payments for purchased players will cost the club £89m this year - a high number, but nothing like Chelsea’s €237m spread payments.

Ratcliffe’s said that his first year has “gone as we anticipated it would” but then added that maybe he wasn’t quite aware of just how much attention his part ownership would bring, saying that “the scrutiny is bigger than you anticipate”.

A strange admission for someone who keeps talking about Manchester United being the biggest club in the world, and who looked bewildered when he spoke of the daily media reports that are shared by the club’s communications teams which index press coverage.

In Ratcliffe’s defence, the decision to get rid of free lunches for Manchester United staff was a good one, saving the club a million every year, for a perk which practically no other workforce enjoys.

Ushering Alex Ferguson and his multi-million euro fees out the door was a good call. The mass redundancy programmes at United, while hard on those affected, is a good way to cut bloated costs. But his claims of not knowing much about the shredding of the ex-players fund was unimpressive.

This points to a common thread under the INEOS part ownership, where lapses in PR awareness are a constant thread, and point to either a lack of care or judgement by the shareholder.

The interview also failed to question Ratcliffe on what his ultimate ownership ambition is, and while understandably careful not to attack the majority owners, the Glazers’ it must be an eventual buyout.

Before that can even be considered, the INEOS Group have a way to go, and that includes figuring out the business of football, something which is perplexing and confusing to Jim Ratcliffe and his team.