When anti-fracking demonstrators protested against Ineos six years ago, they carried masks depicting Sir Jim Ratcliffe as the devil. Ratcliffe hasn't been afraid to upset people throughout his career and his decision-making at Manchester United has seen his reputation plummet.
Ratcliffe has only been in charge of football operations at Old Trafford for a year, but he's overseen a disastrous 12 months by making several bad decisions on the pitch and away from it.
The British billionaire has made headlines again this week because of his decision to clamp down on more staff perks. There will be no more free lunches for staff at Old Trafford and assurances for catering arrangements to remain the same at Carrington have only been given for the remainder of the season.
The morale at United has been described as being at "rock-bottom", but the classless decision to remove free lunches will find out whether the mood among staff can possibly get even lower.
That is for the staff who remain after another round of redundancies, which were confirmed on Monday afternoon when United bizarrely announced job losses as a “transformation plan”.
A snippet of the official statement from the club read: "As part of these measures, the club anticipates that approximately 150-200 jobs may be made redundant, subject to a consultation process with employees. These would be in addition to the 250 roles removed last year."
When the changes are made, 450 staff could have left United within the space of a year and CEO Omar Berrada explained: "We deeply regret the impact on those affected colleagues. However, these hard choices are necessary to put the club back on a stable financial footing."
Last summer, Ratcliffe's review of the club's operations
Read more on manchestereveningnews.co.uk
manchestereveningnews.co.uk
