Yahoo News Man United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe fires warning amid Leicester City promotion
New Manchester United co-owner Jim Ratcliffe has suggested the Premier League’s ‘big six’ do not hold enough sway on how the division is run in a warning that might struggle to gain sympathy from neutrals.
The billionaire minority stake holder, who oversees the football side of the operation at Man Utd, has told Bloomberg that “the six clubs who drive interest in the league” should have more influence than clubs like Leicester City or Nottingham Forest.
“I don’t think I have enough experience in understanding quite how Premier League works yet,” he said. “I mean, I think everybody has an equal vote and there used to be, I believe, as was explained to me, there used to be a sort of coalition of the six major clubs who would have a certain level of influence in the Premiership. But that broke down after the Super club, you know, the European Super Club Initiative.
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“And I think they need to be careful that the top six clubs are not disadvantaged because they don’t sort of get a reasonably strong say in the committee. Because at the end of the day it’s those top six or seven clubs that drive the Premiership, and that’s what the world’s interested in.”
Ratcliffe completed his purchase of 27.7 per cent of Man Utd in February and is tasked with turning the club into trophy winners again.
Man Utd have a net spend, by his own calculations, of £1.1 billion in the 10 seasons after Sir Alex Ferguson left and he doesn’t want any Financial Fair Play rules or independent regulator – intended to safeguard the future of football and clubs in England – to interfere with his plans.
“I just think the Premiership needs to be careful it doesn’t get itself into an endless legal wrangle with lots and lots of clubs,” he said.
“Because, at the end of the day, the Premiership is probably the most successful sporting league in the world – certainly the most successful football league in the world – and we have this expression in the north of England: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
“If you start interfering too much, bringing too much regulation in, then you finish up with the Manchester City issue, the Everton issue, the Nottingham Forest issue, and on and on and on. And if you’re not careful the Premiership is going to finish up spending more time in court than it is thinking about what’s good for the league.
“We’ve got the best league in the world. Don’t ruin that league, for heaven’s sake.”
