Manchester United were never going to issue a response to the Ineos spokesman who declared Sir Jim Ratcliffe's interest in buying the club on Wednesday night.
A club source brusquely referred to it as "speculation" when it is actually concrete. "If the club are for sale, Jim is definitely a potential buyer," the spokesman told The Times.
The news caused a tremor on Twitter. One United fan said he was "crying" at the news. Supporters need to be mindful of the Glazer family's ego and whether they are truly inclined to sell.
Also read: Ratcliffe will need more than wealth to end the Glazers' toxic ownership
There is safe distance between siblings Joel, Avram, Bryan, Darcie, Edward and Kevin - the Atlantic Ocean. They pocket their semi-annual dividend, the minority shareholders have minority voting rights and United's share price on the New York Stock Exchange has risen by 15% in the last week.
Twitter struggles to recognise sarcasm, as the irreverent Elon Musk discovered. We have seen how giddy Newcastle supporters got over a takeover, many effectively deifying the regime of Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. At least they got Chris Wood, though.
Mercifully, Manchester's two major football clubs almost certainly will not be under state ownership, although portions of United's fanbase lapped up largely baseless speculation that Saudi investors were circling. It would have been abhorrent had Manchester - the city that gave birth to suffragette pioneer Emmeline Pankhurst - rolled out the red carpet for a country where women were only permitted to drive less than three years ago.
Ratcliffe would be panacea; Failsworth-born, a boyhood United fan who was in Camp Nou in 1999 and who earned his first pocket money selling Golden Goal tickets at Hull City's old Boothferry Park. Most significantly, he is listed 27th on The Sunday Times Rich List with a fortune of £6.075billion.
He has already invested in sport. Ratcliffe funded Eliud Kipchoge's successful effort to run a marathon inside two hours, the Team Sky cycling team have been rebranded as Ineos Grenadiers, Ben Ainslie's neverending quest to win the America's Cup is supported by Ratcliffe and Nice have risen from mid-table Ligue 1 fodder to Champions League qualifying contenders.
Ratcliffe has been mulling over whether to buy a Premier League club for several years and has done his research. “We need to find out how to be successful before you ever want to write a big cheque," he told The Times in November 2019. "It’s quite difficult. United have spent an immense amount since Ferguson left and been poor, to put it mildly. Shockingly poor, to be honest.
“We have a different approach here to be moderately intelligent about it. Try to do it more grassroots, trying to locate young talent. Some clubs seem to have an ability to do that, Southampton, Lille. United have done it really poorly. They have lost the plot there somehow. But figuring that out takes time.”
He described the £52million signing of Fred as "dumb money". If Ratcliffe did convince the Glazers to put their ego and avarice to one side and sell up, the club's structure would likely have to be gutted.
Chief executive Richard Arnold is a Glazer acolyte, brought to United by Ed Woodward in 2007. The football director, John Murtough, joined in late 2013 and was recruited by David Moyes. Murtough has outlasted every permanent United manager post-Ferguson and is enduring a transfer window more chastening than any of Woodward's.
Remarkably, United have negotiated a transfer for a Real Madrid defensive midfielder who is a Brazil international and five-times Champions League winner. If it makes you suspicious about Casemiro, you should be.
Whenever Real want to sell, that is a red flag (Angel di Maria) and they have recruited two young midfielders in the last year to marginalise Casemiro. A source said the coach, Carlo Ancelotti, is "not fussed" about Casemiro leaving.
Casemiro is 30, still a taboo age in football when players' fitness is so regimented five years may as well be tagged on. Casemiro could have a long-term impact.
One would have been tempted to say Scott McTominay is not fit to lace Casemiro's laces but he is; Casemiro's running stats are worse than McTominay's and he is going to be running a lot in the Premier League.
This time last week, Ten Hag thought he could do without recruiting a defensive midfielder. On the 100th day since United moved for Frenkie de Jong, they have moved for a defensive midfielder.
Ratcliffe would not tolerate the Supermarket Sweep sprees United have become synonymous with and it is happening again on the new chief executive's watch. The leadership is so supine no one challenged Ten Hag on his flawed strategy of targeting Dutch-affiliated players, a giveaway he had not fully reprogrammed himself as a United manager.
The dream scenario for United fans would be for Ratcliffe to take ownership, hire Edwin van der Sar as chief executive and Michael Edwards or Paul Mitchell as sporting director. Van der Sar is familiar with two storied academies at United and Ajax, played impeccably for both clubs, studied for a Master's degree, cut his teeth in a marketing role, is the chief executive of Ajax and knows Ten Hag.
Edwards was almost as instrumental to Liverpool's success as Jurgen Klopp while Mitchell, a Ralf Rangnick disciple, has an impressive recruitment hit-rate at Southampton, Tottenham, RB Leipzig and Monaco, where Ratcliffe resides.
Arnold has at least turfed out members of the scouting department who were dismissive of targets coveted or signed by teams in ruder health than United. Two have recently departed for Tottenham and Wolves.
As well-intended as Arnold is in sensibly distancing himself from recruitment and overseeing significant staff changes, he is the man who trumpeted the club's app rating, bragged that Odion Ighalo was the number one worldwide Twitter trend and said Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was bringing "phenomenal success" in the week United went out of the FA Cup.
That's almost enough to make a United fan weep.
READ MORE:
