Out with the Old Trafford - but will Manchester United's new stadium be a game-changing substitute?

Sir Jim Ratcliffe does not hold back. In short order, the petrochemicals billionaire, one of Britain’s richest men and part-owner of Manchester United, has promised the club will become the most profitable in the world inside three years, they will win the Premier League by 2028 and a new, £2 billion ($2.6 billion) stadium housing 100,000 will be financed and built within five years.

For Ratcliffe, who has followed the "Red Devils" since childhood, watching the likes of George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton, this represents a dream come true.

But the club has lost £300 million over the last three years, has debts of £773 million and owes a further £315 million in transfer fees to other clubs. Currently, United lie 14th in the Premier League. Today’s team is not a patch on United teams of old – along with the "Holy Trinity", as the fans calls them, of Best, Law and Charlton, there were the "Class of ‘92" of David Beckham, Ryan Giggs et al, and Eric Cantona.

Ratcliffe provides no clue as to how the spectacular new home will be paid for and how the requisite planning permission will be achieved and the ground constructed in what would, for Britain, be super-quick time.

Still, Ratcliffe, 72, did not get where he is today by aiming low. As he told the BBC: "I don’t think it’s mission impossible. I think it’s good to have goals and objectives."

Even so, further context is required. He also said United would be "bust at Christmas" were it not for the cost-cutting measures he has introduced. This, in the very week he revealed plans for a new venue next door to the existing, iconic but dated Old Trafford.

To say the artist impressions are glorious is an understatement. The stadium will be covered by a vast "umbrella", a sweeping glass and steel canopy suspended from three giant towers. The adjacent public plaza is to be twice the size of Trafalgar Square in London. The scoreboard will be huge and wraparound; the three-storey club museum and restaurants will form part of an enormous "fan village".

On the Norman Foster design extends, taking in a tree-lined avenue from the Holy Trinity statue to the new ground, similar to the famous Wembley Way at the national venue in London. It’s deliberate: Ratcliffe sees his Manchester showpiece as the "Wembley of the North".

Gary Neville, the ex-United captain and England star and now a property magnate himself and commentator, intoned on the promotional video: "Where workers once grafted, a new landmark will arise." Referencing Old Trafford’s label as the Theatre of Dreams, Neville added: "A new theatre, for dreams to come alive."

The ambition does not stop there. The stadium will act as the centrepiece of a colossal regeneration project, which Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham hails as "bigger and better than London 2012", referring to regeneration for the Olympic Games that summer. According to a report commissioned from economic experts, the scheme to transform a blighted, mostly post-industrial area will deliver £7.3 billion to the UK economy, create 92,000 jobs and attract 1.8 million visitors a year.

It's imaginative, brilliant and transfixing. "The government has identified infrastructure investment as a strategic priority, particularly in the north of England, and we are proud to be supporting that mission with this project of national as well as local, significance," said Ratcliffe. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, called the package a "shining example" of the government’s vision for economic growth.

Sir Alex Ferguson, the legendary United former manager, voiced his acclaim. "Manchester United should always strive for the best in everything it does, on and off the pitch," Ferguson said. "We must be brave and seize this opportunity."

Visitors to the headquarters of Ratcliffe’s Ineos group in Knightsbridge, west London, are greeted by the Ineos Compass, a circular graphic of more than 100 words and phrases, similar to a compass, with "words we like" at the top and "words we don’t like" at the bottom. It was devised by Ratcliffe himself and is intended to be "a fun way of attempting to capture how Ineos works, and why".

The preferred phrases include "kids and sport", and "wood for trees". Among those discouraged are "making the same mistake twice", "lukewarm cappuccino" and "awesome".

As an embodiment of what makes a successful corporate culture, it’s impressive. The compass says a lot about the plain-speaking, direct Ratcliffe and how he drove Ineos to the top of a fiercely competitive international industry.

He was born on the outskirts of Manchester, living in a council house. When he was 10, his father, a joiner, and mother, who worked in an accounts office, moved the family to Yorkshire. He went to the local grammar school and then to Birmingham University to study chemical engineering.

Ratcliffe subsequently worked briefly for BP, then in pharmaceuticals, before joining Esso. He obtained an MBA at London Business School, and went to Courtaulds, the fabric and chemicals producer. Then came private equity with Advent International.

His big break was leasing a former BP Chemicals site in Antwerp, Belgium. He formed Ineos to buy-out the freehold. That lead to him borrowing heavily to finance a succession of acquisitions of unwanted operations from large groups such as ICI and BP. They had to be capable of doubling their earnings in five years. Ineos grew in scale, adding BP’s Innovene refining and petrochemical subsidiary, which gave it refineries and plants across Europe and North America. Similarly, Ratcliffe picked up polymers production from Norsk Hydro. He was a tax exile but returned to live in the UK after Brexit.

MORE recently, Ratcliffe has turned his compass towards sport. It’s always been a passion – he is a fitness fanatic, running the London Marathon in four-and-a-half hours at 71, completing an Ironman triathlon and trekking to the North and South Poles. He desired more, however, believing he could apply his experience in business to top-class professional sport.

He bought Lausanne and Nice football clubs. He took over the Team Sky cycling team. Ratcliffe sponsored Britain’s entry in the America’s Cup yacht race. In rugby, he backed New Zealand's All Blacks. He went into motor racing, partnering Mercedes AMG in F1. Also, in football, he endorsed Tottenham Hotspur.

Currently, Nice sit third in the French league, the highest they’ve been during his ownership. Lausanne, which has been Ratcliffe’s since 2017, are eighth in Switzerland. Team Sky regularly won the Tour de France and other major races, but the now rebranded Ineos outfit struggles. The America’s Cup ended in failure and Ratcliffe is in dispute with the British head, Sir Ben Ainslie. He’s withdrawn his support for the All Blacks. He reportedly tried to exit Formula One but Mercedes AMG insist the partnership remains. Ratcliffe is moving, though, to extricate himself early from the Tottenham contract.

After buying 25 per cent of United, with the American Glazer family holding the rest, Ratcliffe entered on a wave of optimism. The Glazers were loathed by the club’s followers, having burdened the club with debt they used to make their purchase and netting a fortune from their 20-year tenure.

Add to that, results on the pitch have been indifferent. In Ratcliffe, here was someone who professed to love United and knew how to achieve results.

It has not happened. The former manager had his contract renewed, only to be fired at considerable extra cost. The replacement is still feeling his way. Backroom staff have also been and gone. Other employees have been cut and costs slashed. Even the staff canteen was not spared. Meanwhile, fans are braced for imminent news of rising season ticket prices.

This is against a backdrop, too, of Ineos running into difficulty. Two leading credit agencies, Fitch and Moody’s, have downgraded their outlook for the company, pointing to a debt mountain of almost £10 billion, five to six times larger than annual earnings. Ratcliffe also launched another venture, to build and sell his own SUV, similar to the Land Rover Defender. He called it the Ineos Grenadier, after his favourite pub near the Ineos office. So far, sales have not taken off.

In interviews, ahead of the stadium unveiling and the new ticket charges, Ratcliffe has been starkly open about the state of the club’s finances and admitted to making errors.

On hearing this, Simon Jordan, the businessman and former Crystal Palace owner, said there was an "elephant in the room" regarding Ratcliffe’s plans, which was the £50 million a year the club pays to service the Glazer debt. There was more than one. No clue was given as to where Ratcliffe will find the £2 billion for the stadium. One suggestion is that he adds to the club’s existing borrowing but that would take them to Himalayan proportions of debt and almost certainly provoke protests from fans on a scale not hitherto seen. It’s possible he may suppose by building a state-of-the-art alternative to a smaller, rundown Old Trafford, he believes they will be placated. In which case he is playing with fire – if the price of the new stadium means the club cannot also acquire the best players, the supporters will revolt.

Neither is it apparent where the public money for the surrounding urban improvements will originate. The government is busy saying money is tight and now it has a raised defence budget to finance.

In "words we like" on Ratcliffe’s compass is "walk the talk". He is going to have to show he means it.

Chris Blackhurst is the author of The World’s Biggest Cash Machine - Manchester United, the Glazers and the Struggle for Football’s Soul (Macmillan)

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