Former Manchester United chief executive Peter Kenyon has told Sir Jim Ratcliffe that he is making the Old Trafford crisis caused by the Glazer family even worse.
In an explosive explanation of what has gone wrong at the club he helped build into the Premier League ’s most dominant force, the 71-year-old adviser to the Williams Formula One racing team, has described Ratcliffe’s decision to replace manager Erik ten Hag with Ruben Amorim just a few months after handing the Dutchman £200million to spend in the transfer market as “stupidity”.
Kenyon has also warned Britain’s richest man that the INEOS group that took control of football operations at United when Ratcliffe paid the Glazer’s £1.2billion for just over a quarter of the club a year ago aren’t doing their job properly if they have to pay the biggest wages in the game to lure players to Manchester.
The man who spent six years at Old Trafford, when United were a powerhouse on the pitch under the guidance of Sir Alex Ferguson and a commercial juggernaut off it, insists the American family that took over in 2005 started the slide by allowing the club’s greatest-ever manager to quit at the same time as chief executive David Gill in 2013.
With United continuing to flounder under Amorim, Kenyon’s words will resonate with fans who are currently living their worst nightmare.
Kenyon said: “How many times have we seen a team that has spent a fortune in the summer with a coach that plays one way, and when it comes to October, they bring in another coach who plays completely different football and it isn’t going to work?
“That’s not about money. That’s stupidity. There is way more to it than spending money to become successful. You don’t have to pay somebody £400,000-a-week. That’s your choice - but you can’t buy success.
“One thing I learned from Ferguson was that if anyone said ‘I’ve been offered more money by Real Madrid ’, he would tell them to go to Real Madrid. You don’t come to United because we pay the most money. We paid good money. We were more than competitive - but we never ever paid the most.
“If you aren’t smart enough to get players to come to Manchester United for less money than somebody else then you’re not doing your job properly.”
United were champions 13 times under Ferguson. They never finished outside the top three in the first 21 years of the Premier League.
Kenyon was replaced by Gill when he decided to take up Roman Abramovich’s offer to build a dynasty at Chelsea - and within two years United were taken over by Malcolm Glazer in a highly-controversial leveraged buy-out.
The Glazer family have stripped £2.1billion from the club servicing debts and dividend payments. And although United have spent more than £1.5billion in the transfer market in the last 12 years, Kenyon believes it was the Americans’ failure to put a succession plan into place for when Ferguson and Gill resigned their positions in 2013 that United’s decline was inevitable.
United have blown a fortune on big-money flops and have burned through a succession of managers like David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Ten Hag. Amorim's team lie 14th in the Premier League - but face Fulham in the fifth round of the FA Cup before meeting Real Sociedad in the Europa League.
Kenyon, speaking on the Business of Sport podcast, said: “The downfall of United was the success of United in that they didn’t have a succession plan.
“You don’t let the two people who have influenced the club for many years, the manager and the CEO, to leave at the same time. It’s a joke. You should be shot for that.
“What business would let their two key employees walk out of the door on the same day? You don’t even know where the plug sockets are to plug stuff in! Don’t get me on that. It really annoys me.”
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