‘Mistakes and cock-ups’ - Ineos are doing at Manchester United what they did at Lausanne and Nice

When Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos group purchased Nice in France’s Ligue 1 to add a second club to their ownership portfolio, the billionaire declared: “We made some mistakes at Lausanne, but we are fast learners.”

In February, after he purchased a 27.7% stake in Manchester United, Ratcliffe said: “In Lausanne and Nice we have made a lot of cock-ups.” Maybe it will be third time lucky?

Ineos’ record in sport is an increasingly poor one, and their first 10 months at Old Trafford has done little to make anyone believe things will finally come good at United. Mistakes and cock-ups have been the order of the day.

It is a wretched look for Ineos to have backed Erik ten Hag and Dan Ashworth as the figureheads of football operations at United in July, only to have sacked them both by December. Not only does it suggest that Ratcliffe and the team around him don’t know how they want this club to run, but it’s also a costly exercise at a time when the rank-and-file club staff and supporters are being punished for mistakes made by people who don’t have to worry where the next fiver is coming from.

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This has been a slapdash, sloppy start from Ineos, and the time for cock-ups has to be at an end. Patience is already beginning to wear thin inside and outside the club with Ratcliffe, whose decision to dispense with Ashworth on Sunday changed the narrative from his foolish comment to United We Stand on Saturday, comparing ticket prices at Old Trafford with those of Fulham in West London, a football club bordering a millionaire’s playground and clearly making a play for the