Shortly before 2.30pm on Monday, hundreds of worried staff filed into the Manchester Suite at Old Trafford to hear about the latest threat to their jobs.
Employees who had survived the initial round of 250 redundancies under Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos last year were back to face another cull that will see up to 200 more cuts made to Manchester United’s workforce.
Some were said to have been left in an emotional state after being told that they will learn their fate in April, meaning another month of upset and uncertainty.
The grim news was delivered by chief executive Omar Berrada who apologised for spreading yet more gloom but explained that other top clubs had been significantly more successful than United with a smaller staff.
Berrada spoke about the importance of making United profitable after five years of losses and referred to Project 150, the bold plan to make the club Premier League champions again by 2028.
He introduced Marc Armstrong, who started work as chief business officer on Monday after switching from Paris Saint-Germain. United’s newest executive didn’t speak which was perhaps a wise move in the circumstances.
Manchester United announced on Monday how they plan to make another 200 redundancies
It brings the total number of redundancies since Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s partial takeover up to 450
The grim news was delivered by chief executive Omar Berrada, who apologised for spreading yet more gloom but urged that it is vital to make Man United profitable after five years of losses
Staff did hear from human resources director Annie Hale and chief financial officer Roger Bell as the painful reality of the club’s position was spelt out.
Those fortunate enough to survive the latest cuts have been told that some staff will relocate to the Carrington training ground, and anyone staying to work at Old Trafford will no longer benefit from free lunches from the canteen. Instead, they will offered fruit from next week.
‘It was the only perk left,’ grumbled one staffer who revealed that free meals on Mondays were usually made up of leftover food from the matchday that weekend anyway.
Meanwhile, staff based at Carrington will continue to eat off the same menu for the rest of the season, but will not have the same lunch choices as the players and coaches from the summer onwards amid reports that they must be satisfied with soup and sandwiches.
At Monday’s meeting, pies and chips were made available along with jugs of water and plastic cups. So much for the big spenders of English football.
This has been a humiliating wake-up call for United as Ineos have begun clearing up a mess created by two decades of ownership by the Glazer family.
There is little doubt that United’s 1,100-strong staff was bloated, but the bitterness and resentment among the rank and file is that they are paying the price for mistakes made far higher up the chain of command.
Compared to the obscene waste of money at the club in recent years, the £1m saved by scrapping staff lunches is a drop in the ocean.
Those fortunate enough to survive the latest cuts have been told that some staff will relocate to the Carrington training ground, where they won’t have the same lunch choices as players
Pies and chips were made available along with jugs of water and plastic cups at the meeting
Last week, United’s financial results showed that interest payments on the Glazers’ leveraged takeover have now topped £1billion, while United owe £391m in transfer fees.
Of the £14.5m paid out in compensation to football staff sacked by Ratcliffe, there was a bill of £4.1m for Dan Ashworth who lasted 159 days as sporting director and has already found work at Warwickshire Cricket Club as a freelance consultant.
On Monday, the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust released new analysis of the results which they claim shows that the interest payments on United’s debt will rise to £50m-a-year in 2027.
It also indicated that the amount owing on transfers has risen by £52m in the last 12 months with £211m of it due this year.
Calling on the club to resist raising ticket prices, MUST said: ‘The Glazers debt mountain is the original sin in the recent decline of Manchester United. The only way out of this is for the owners to invest their own money, reducing the debt and interest payments.’
Until then, it appears as though staff will continue to feel the squeeze caused by a combination of mis-management and failure on the pitch.
No sooner had head coach Ruben Amorim acknowledged that link a few days ago – ‘people are losing their jobs so we have to acknowledge that and the biggest problem is the football’ – than Casemiro gave an interview insisting that he is no hurry to leave Old Trafford and rip up a £375,00-a-week contract that still has 16 months to run.
Imagine how many lunches that would buy. There is a bitter irony about the fact the money saved by job cuts will be reinvested into the first-team, as if it hasn’t swallowed enough of the pie already.
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Little wonder then that morale at United has reached its lowest point. Staff were dismissed from the Manchester Suite on Monday with another warning that leaking details of the meeting was a sackable offence.
By the time many had even reached their cars, the club had already issued a press release.
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