How Sir Alex Ferguson reacted to losing his £2million Man Utd role  | Football

Sir Jim Ratcliffe has opened up on his decision to cull Sir Alex Ferguson’s ambassadorial role as part of his brutal cost-cutting measures at Manchester United.

The club’s most successful ever manager, now 83, lost his £2million-a-year position back in October.

INEOS chief Ratcliffe has made some hugely unpopular decisions since he bought a minority stake in the club and assumed control of all football operations.

Fans protested against both Ratcliffe and the Glazer family ahead of Sunday’s Premier League game against Arsenal at Old Trafford where misery on the pitch is mirrored by a sense of doom and gloom off it.

Ratcliffe got rid of 200 jobs last year and more redundancies are on the way with long-serving club staff fearing for their livelihoods.

Ousting Ferguson from his position, meanwhile, demonstrated that almost nobody is safe from the axe at United these days but the legendary Scot is said to have understood the motives behind Ratcliffe’s most divisive moves so far.

Speaking to the BBC, Ratcliffe said: ‘I take my hat off to Alex.

‘I sat down with Alex, just the two of us in the room. And I said ‘Look, the club isn’t where you may think it is’.

‘It is spending more than it’s earning and we’re going to finish up in some difficulties.

‘Honestly, we can’t really afford to continue to pay you £2 million a year’.

‘I said “I’m going to leave it with you, let you have a think about it’.

‘It was very grown up. Maybe a little bit grumpy at the beginning but he got it.

‘He came back three days later, after talking to his son, and said ‘Fine, I’m going to step away from it. My decision’.

‘I think it reflects really well on Alex, because he put the club before himself.’

The dire nature of United’s perilous financial position was outlined by Ratcliffe in a number of detailed interviews on Monday evening where he claimed the club could be bust by Christmas were he to avoid more difficult decisions.

He said: ‘It’s a simple equation. If you spend more than you earn eventually that’s the road to ruin. So for the last seven seasons, if you include this season, the club would have lost money. Seven consecutive seasons.

‘I think that totals about £330m, so about a third of a billion of cash that’s gone out of the club in the last four or five seasons.

‘The costs of running the club in the last seven years have increased by £100m. The cost of the player wage bill in the last seven years or so is £100m. The increase in the revenue during that period is £100m. And that sum doesn’t work.

‘If you are losing money every year, and at the same time you are increasing your costs of running the club, it doesn’t work and it ends in trouble. And that’s where this club would have finished up at the end of this year.

‘All of the things that we are doing are essential, are necessary to the club. They are not easy things to do, but we’ll get through that process and we will come out of the other side in the summer. Some of that is all finished and done with now.’

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