PERUSING THE COMPASS
Should you ever read comments below assorted lines or on social media abominations, there’s a growing trend of readers asking to stop hearing about Manchester United. No longer a big club, they say. Rubbish at football, they say, quite reasonably. Many of them may be actual United fans. But the fall of a giant will always be a story. Beyond wars, what story from the 20th century was bigger than the sinking of the Titanic? So on Football Daily rolls, because frankly, United are giving this stuff away. But not free lunches to staff. Certainly not rolls, fruit only.
You’ve probably read on Big Website about the latest cost-cutting/penny-pinching measures. Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the local working-class hero returned, via Beverley, Hampshire and Monaco, is following 2025’s billionaire class in making sure the little man scrabbles for his coin. For Elon Musk and his dodgy Doge, read BSJ. Only billionaires ever work hard, see. It was pure hard work that got them there. Put aside your ideas of birthplace, opportunity, patronage and good fortune, please. Worried about your job, the axe after several of your mates got tinned? Good, we run a tight ship here. Fear rules OK. Don’t share any internal emails. Are you chewing? Would you like to share that joke with the rest of the class?
The image increasingly portrayed of life behind the scenes at Old Trafford and Carrington has come to resemble a Dickensian workhouse rather than what might be expected under a blue-chip billionaire, hero of the chino-clad LinkedIn generation. Take BSJ in 2015: “Ineos is a friendly organisation. Very few people leave. It’s collegiate. There’s not much politics, and we like decent people. We don’t like arrogance or bullies.” Perhaps where he went wrong was getting involved in football, famously a graveyard for previous business geniuses’s popularity ratings. From being viewed as saviour at Christmas 2023 when his minority ownership was confirmed, Ratcliffe is now portrayed like Mike Ashley, hollowing out a club into little more than a spreadsheet. All cuts, no glory.
Sharp practices become dreadful optics when thrown into the public glare of the United soap opera. “The club believe £1m will be saved by ending free lunches,” reads the latest report. Rewind to last Wednesday: “Manchester United have revealed hiring Dan Ashworth and parting ways five months later cost them £4.1m.” If all is numbers, then such wastage damns the Ratcliffe regime. As BSJ et al bungle away, the Glazers, whom he paid $1.6bn to do this, will celebrate 20 years of using United as a cash machine in May. Reports suggest the Ineos mothership may not be watertight, that BSJ’s business empire faces financial woes. Time to consult the “Ineos compass” that he himself devised. It hinges on “rigour, grit and humour”. Words we like include “northerners; work hard play hard; wood for trees; hydrogen; a beer.” Words we don’t? “Moaners, quitters, gloating.” Oof. Yes, perhaps football just isn’t for you, Jim.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Daniel Harris from 7.30pm GMT for hot Premier League clockwatch updates, including those from Chelsea 4-1 Southampton.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“[He has] persistently issued derogatory statements directed towards the Turkish people. Today, his discourse has escalated beyond merely immoral comments into unequivocally inhumane rhetoric. We hereby formally declare our intention to initiate criminal proceedings concerning the racist statements made by José Mourinho, and shall accordingly submit official complaints to Uefa and Fifa” – Galatasaray denounce Fenerbahce’s José Mourinho after the rivals’ 0-0 draw on Monday night. The club statement followed Mourinho’s comments that Galatasaray’s bench had been “jumping like monkeys” and that the match would have been a disaster if a Turkish referee had been in charge of the fractious Istanbul derby.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
Presumably Mike Glogower (yesterday’s Footballl Daily letters) had the famous French comic album series Asterix the Gaul in mind when declaring Manchester City to be ‘Atrocius’, since he sounds like a likely ally of main antagonist Julius Caesar. There is however a football connection since the story is that, when Caesar returned from a campaign over the Alps and falsely claimed to have killed 20,000 Gauls, Asterix asserted that he had fact-checked the claim and that the true figure was only 10,000. Caesar however countered: ‘You are forgetting, Asterix, that, in Europe, away Gauls count double!’” – Adrian Irving.
Tottenham Hotspur want to be known as ‘Tottenham Hotspur’, eh (yesterday’s Football Daily, full email edition)? That’s not going to be hard for long-time readers of this tea-timely email. For example, I’ve been referring to Noble Francis as ‘Noble Francis’ – not ‘Noble’, not ‘Francis’ – from the first time I read a Noble Francis letter from Noble Francis” – Mike Wilner.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … Adrian Irving, who gets some Football Weekly merch. We’ll be in touch. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here.
This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
