THIS time last year, ‘lifelong Manchester United fan’ Sir Jim Ratcliffe was trying to buy Chelsea.
Now, by happy accident, the INEOS petrochemicals billionaire at least has a perfect blueprint for how NOT to take over an elite Premier League club.
British INEOS Group chairman Jim Ratcliffe is the preferred bidder to buy Man Utd
Chelsea owner Todd Boehly has made plenty of mistakes since taking charge of Chelsea
Slim Jim, a 70-year-old ironman triathlete, is ready to be crowned King Rat at Old Trafford after being named as the preferred bidder to buy a majority share of the club from the hated Glazer family.
Many successful, wealthy and seemingly sensible businessmen have bought football clubs, lost their minds and a substantial part of their fortunes.
So the fact that Ratcliffe started life in a council house in Failsworth — a small town between Manchester and Oldham — yet ended up as Britain’s richest man is no guarantee of success in club ownership.
When losing out to Todd Boehly and his clear-as-mud Clearlake crew in the bidding for Chelsea last year, Ratcliffe had no idea that the club he claims to support was about to come up for grabs.
His £4.25billion offer for Chelsea matched the amount on the table from the Boehly consortium but, crucially, it arrived after the deadline set by kingmakers Raine — the American bank who dealt with offers for the Blues, and now for United.
Yet Ratcliffe was serious enough about wanting Chelsea that the publicity-shy tax exile gave a rare interview to the BBC.
He claimed he had ‘great intentions’ and ‘long-term commitment’ to the Stamford Bridge club and made a play about the apparent advantage of his ‘Britishness’.
Nobody is pretending that Sir Jim is a diehard Stretford Ender, that he invaded the pitch when United were relegated in 1974 — or that he was to be found roaring ‘Glory, glory Man United’ at the Nou Camp during injury time of the 1999 Champions League final.
But by seeking to make a positive out of his nationality, Ratcliffe was claiming an innate understanding of the basics of English football culture.
And after witnessing the car crash of Boehly’s first year in charge at Stamford Bridge, that must be seen as a potential plus for United.
Boehly has blundered his way into the Premier League, initially appointing himself as interim director of football, then scatter-gunning the best part of £600million on new recruits, leaving a super-sized squad which lacks balance and sufficient motivation.
He sacked a manager, Thomas Tuchel, who knew what he was doing, replaced him with Graham Potter, a man seemingly out of his depth, then appointed Frank Lampard as caretaker in an ill-judged foray into nostalgia.
Boehly has also mouthed off into a TV microphone, predicting a 3-0 win at the Bernabeu when his side were about to play Real Madrid, having already invited ridicule by proposing a North v South Premier League All-Stars match.
It feels inconceivable Ratcliffe will repeat any of those mistakes — and he is sure to be Erik ten Hag’s preferred bidder, over his rival, the Qatari royal Sheikh Jassim.
United’s Dutch manager — who ditched Cristiano Ronaldo to improve morale — would not have enjoyed life under anything like the Galactico model employed by the Qataris at Paris Saint-Germain.
Yet that enthusiasm is not shared by many fans.
If Ratcliffe’s takeover is completed, he will keep on the Glazer brothers as minority shareholders, which is anathema to most supporters, whose green-and-gold protests have been raging intermittently for more than a decade.
Under the Qataris, though, United would have suffered similar scrutiny over alleged human-rights abuses as Newcastle’s Saudi ownership and Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi paymasters.
Ratcliffe is a fracker — the controversial process of extracting gas and oil which is hated by environmentalists — and lives in income tax-free Monaco.
Yet where are the ethical billionaires who made their fortunes by running petting zoos? If there are any, they haven’t got on the blower to Raine and made a bid for United.
Ratcliffe, who has dipped into club ownership with limited success at French club Nice and Swiss outfit Lausanne, says success in business depends on appointing the right people.
Given the mess of United’s player recruitment since Sir Alex Ferguson’s 2013 retirement, this surely means an overhaul of that department.
Hiring elite people to oversee recruitment must be Ratcliffe’s priority, rather than a Boehly-style splurge in the transfer market.
The INEOS boss is likely to stick with Ten Hag, whose first year in charge has been a qualified success.
A slick corporate operator, Ratcliffe will know the importance of long-term strategy, with an overhaul of the crumbling Old Trafford stadium at the centre of it.
But he will not be gobbing off to the microphones, making idle boasts and proposals as Boehly has done.
His regime is likely to provide a quiet evolution, as opposed to Boehly’s botched and noisy revolution — and that might be what United need.
