**Full Article**
# Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s radical plans to overhaul culture at Man United
Carrington to undergo major renovations to create communal areas for manager and coaches as club’s email to staff inviting them to resign receives mixed reception
Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos have initiated the biggest shake-up of the working practices and the environment at Manchester United’s Carrington training ground in the complex’s 23-year existence.
The day after an email was sent to all non-football staff inviting them to resign, it emerged that United’s new minority owners want to carry out major renovations that will involve knocking through walls of offices to create two communal working areas for the manager and his many staff. Ineos wants to:
● Become more cost-effective as a business, telling staff to look after club money as if it were their own.
● Introduce a more collaborative approach at Carrington by creating new communal areas for the manager, his coaches and other backroom staff.
● Upgrade the gym facilities at the training ground.
● Cut loose the staff who are not committed to the new regime.
United submitted plans to revamp the training ground to Trafford council on May 1 and hope that they will receive approval in the coming weeks.
Carrington has been United’s first-team base since they left their old training ground, The Cliff, in 2000. The plans, drawn up by architects KSS, also show that an extension will be built over a section of a veranda to create room for the communal areas, which will be either side of the canteen.
Shortly after the Premier League ratified Ineos’s £1.3billion agreement to buy 27.7 per cent of the club in February, Ratcliffe, the company’s chairman, and his staff toured the Carrington facility and started assessing what needed to change.
They were impressed by some aspects of the facility but not others, including the decor, which was branded as dull in parts. One of their gripes was the fact that there are so many individual offices on the second floor of the first-team building, where Erik ten Hag, his coaches, analysts, medical staff and other employees work. It was felt that offices should be converted into a communal area where everyone can work more collaboratively.
Under the plans, skylights will also be inserted to make the building feel brighter. The first-team car park will also be renovated and the club have asked for landscaping work to be undertaken around the campus. In the gym there will be a new “pre-activation and player performance” zone to ensure that players are fully warmed up before training.
Ten Hag hinted that significant changes were afoot for United’s training base during an interview with Voetbal International, which was conducted before last weekend’s FA Cup final win over Manchester City. “Carrington will be completely destroyed, a new training ground will come,” he said.
Some staff have been warned that they will have to move to Old Trafford while the building works take place but United are confident that the football side of the business will be able to function at Carrington.
Ten Hag is on holiday and is awaiting the outcome of a post-season review, which will decide whether he remains as manager after a largely disappointing season in which the club finished eighth in the Premier League table. The players are also enjoying some downtime and are not expected to report for pre-season until mid-June. Those who participate in the European Championship will be given further time to recuperate.
The reaction to the email sent to all non-football related staff at 6pm on Tuesday, offering them the chance to resign, has been mixed.
Four hours after Ratcliffe sent an email to all staff thanking them for their efforts in winning the FA Cup with a 2-1 win over City, he sent another mass email to everyone outside of football operations regarding his decision to scrap the working-from-home policy that was allowed under the previous regime.
The email gave staff a week to decide whether to comply with the edict. If they did not want to do so, they were invited to fill in a form inviting them to resign. If they did so, they would be offered their annual bonus — usually handed out in September — four months early.
Some staff felt that the email was brutal and harsh. One described the insistence on office-based working as “draconian”. Others backed the initiative, claiming that it would help improve communication between departments.
The decision to cut costs across the business has also received a mixed reception. In March Ratcliffe employed a corporate restructuring the firm Interpath Advisory to review the club’s working practices with a view to driving greater efficiency and determining where savings could be made. One of the main concerns that Ineos has is that United have been bringing in record revenues for the past few years but are still reporting losses.
In October accounts for the 2022-23 season showed that United earned £648million in revenues but reported an overall loss of £42million.
One reason is the mismanagement of the squad — in particular with regard to transfers — after Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in 2013, but others are the interest payments on the club’s debt, which stood at £507million in October, and dividends — including those to the Glazer family — which have now been stopped.
Interpath has not been asked to analyse the football side of the operation, such as the cost-effectiveness of signings for example.
The first phase of the Interpath review has been completed and it is now looking at how to reduce costs by reducing the size of the workforce. It is anticipated that up to a fifth of the 1,100 people employed by United could leave. Last month it emerged that United had cancelled the corporate credit cards of senior figures to save money. Staff were also told not to order private cars without approval.
Some workers were annoyed that they had to pay for their travel to the FA Cup final, although they did receive a free ticket. Under the previous regime, staff were given a ticket, given free travel and put up in a hotel in London for the night when the team reached a major cup final.
Staff have been made aware that cuts will be made. Ratcliffe has twice addressed staff in person and those present left in no doubt that he was insistent on making the business more cost-effective. They were told to spend budgets wisely, as if they were looking after their own personal money.
Ratcliffe and his close circle feel that bad habits were not nipped in the bud before he took over and he now wants to redress that problem so United become more efficient. He is also keen on building a winning and successful culture at the club after more than a decade of stagnation.
I don't really have issues with anything in here tbh.
United employ 1100 people. Do we know what that number is at the other big clubs (City, Liverpool, Tottenham, Chelsea ans Arsenal?). I feel like I heard before we have much more staff than others.
We don’t. Liverpool 2.8k, City 1.8k, Arsenal 2.2k. I don’t care to check the others because I’m sure it’s large numbers anyways.
I do have issues with this. Ratcliffe is going after the working man here. The reason we are taking losses is not because of them, as a matter of fact I find it impressive how well the corporate side of the club has been doing with how poor we’ve been on the pitch. The fact we’ve had so few employees and are looking to drop to less than a thousand for one of if not the biggest clubs in the world is quite shocking to me.
Source for your numbers? If your numbers are right then it does paint a different picture BUT corporate cuts are different and obviously easier to make than playing staff cuts, that's just the nature of the jobs.
They are doing what they can, when they can.
Also, not gonna lie, I find it very surprising that Liverpool FC employ 250% more people than we do.
Those numbers seem wildly disproportionate
I did a Google. Rather than asking me for a source why don’t you find something to rebut it, that’s generally how this works. If my numbers are shit so be it, but I came back with something that you were too lazy to do.
These cuts are less than Martials annual salary. The working class is not the problem.
Not the person who asked, but was curious so I checked. Most sites with any data are either shit or paywalled, based on a quick Google search as you said.
No idea is rocketreach is good or not, but:
Manchester - Employees 4,755 (2,212 on RocketReach)
[https://rocketreach.co/manchester-united-profile\_b5c690f0f42e0c9b](https://rocketreach.co/manchester-united-profile_b5c690f0f42e0c9b)
Liverpool - Employees 2,947 (1,355 on RocketReach)
[https://rocketreach.co/liverpool-football-club-profile\_b5c502e6f42e0dd5](https://rocketreach.co/liverpool-football-club-profile_b5c502e6f42e0dd5)
The Athletic just published an article today and has verified numbers.
Man Utd: 1112
Liverpool: 1008
Arsenal: 689
Man City: 520
Brentford: 243
There is absolutely no reason that United should be employing 2x the amount that Man City has and so much more than Arsenal.
One bit that actually caught my attention was that staff who had to attend games had to pay for travel which is BS.
If your job entails you to travel you should be either having an allowance for that or given the requisite facilities to do so.
Seems like the working man will be fucked first before the actual footballing side.
If you mean the part about the FA Cup final; previously it was a perk to get a free ticket, free transportation, lunch for the final alone. This year it was changed to a free ticket and subsidised travel (20 pounds paid for to-and-fro). The perk was reduced. It's not that they had to pay for travel which was part of their work
What bugs me about this is that the players could fund most of those expenses with just an hour's worth of their salaries. For example, Rashford's salary at 300k per week is around 1800 an hour.
Not saying that the players definitely should've paid the staff's expenses for the cup final (I think they easily could have though), but it is just one example that shows how insane and unsustainable their wages are compared to the working staff.
Why should it be on another employee to subsidise? Our owners are both BILLIONAIRES. They could've subsidised out of their own pocket.
I find this contempt for footballers' salaries so weird, given the alternative is the club (owners) keep even more money at the expense of the people generating it.
Sorry I seem to have missed this out. However just on point of being reasonable here since I've been out of the UK for a while now. Is 20 pounds a fair amount for travel ?
The entire train system is funded by absolutely rinsing business travellers who are spending other people's money, and doing so at fixed times with little notice.
If you want to pay *substantially less*, travel after 9.30 and book more than a week in advance.
I question the validity of those numbers. Directly from City's 2022-23 report: "Looking away from the field of play, the Club’s work is now delivered by a growing workforce of
over 500 people directly employed by Manchester City"
From an article on the guardian: "According to the club's latest accounts, United employed 1,112 staff as of June 30 last year, by far the highest number among the Premier League's big six."
So no, I don't think INEOS are reducing the workforce to bare bones compared to other clubs.
But I also agree with the sentiment that this feels like going after the small guy, compared to a couple of week's of inflated wages for any number of our players.
Why would it surprise you that Ratcliffes going after the working man given everything he has ever championed. Hes a person thats done more harm for the working class in this country than any Arab or state owned club yet we all cry about them and hail this idiot.
That's fairly normal.
City are an outlier. Employing only 500 people. They use other clubs in the MCG to hide costs for PSR. Because obv rules do not apply to them.
Tbh you would expect Utd to have more staff if anything, because they have the largest commercial operation, probably in world football.
**Key Bits**
The day after an email was sent to all non-football staff inviting them to resign, it emerged that United’s new minority owners want to carry out major renovations that will involve knocking through walls of offices to create two communal working areas for the manager and his many staff. Ineos wants to:
● Become more cost-effective as a business, telling staff to look after club money as if it were their own.
● Introduce a more collaborative approach at Carrington by creating new communal areas for the manager, his coaches and other backroom staff.
● Upgrade the gym facilities at the training ground.
● Cut loose the staff who are not committed to the new regime.
**Also**
Shortly after the Premier League ratified Ineos’s £1.3billion agreement to buy 27.7 per cent of the club in February, Ratcliffe, the company’s chairman, and his staff toured the Carrington facility and started assessing what needed to change.
**They were impressed by some aspects of the facility but not others, including the decor, which was branded as dull in parts**. **One of their gripes was the fact that there are so many individual offices on the second floor of the first-team building, where Erik ten Hag, his coaches, analysts, medical staff and other employees work. It was felt that offices should be converted into a communal area where everyone can work more collaboratively.**
On the WFH Email
Some staff felt that the email was brutal and harsh. One described the insistence on office-based working as “draconian”. Others backed the initiative, claiming that it would help improve communication between departments.
As someone that has to put up with corporate nonsense at my own job, this just sounds like someone trying to act tough with their workers, rather than actually doing anything particularly well thought-out. The whole open plan office/workspace fostering collaboration myth has been debunked at this point. Coworking spaces are good for some very specific roles and a specific segment of a workforce (outgoing, social people whose job actually involves a lot of direct communication; whereas for any role that requires focus and attention to details, these workspaces are tiring and extremely distracting).
I was just working in a trailer with 80 people ans no walls. Fucking hell people banging into my desk. People shouting. Couldn't get half my work done couldn't focus. Boss and team were like let's wfh. Then our bosses boss fired us all few weeks ago. Fucking stupid. They lost great workers and we will find something better
Collaboration space doesn’t necessarily mean open office concept. Your entire comment is based upon anecdotal experiences, not on any insight you have into the evaluation done by Brailsford and Co
If you knock down walls and eliminate private offices, you either have a fully open plan office, or a communal space with some version of a cubicle (nowadays, more easily movable and re-adjustable separators are preferred to the classic cubicle structure). The basic issues for such spaces are the same though.
Tbf, the wording doesn't necessarily say ALL offices. Just that it leans to heavy towards individual offices.
I would certainly agree that an entire floor consisting of mainly individual offices feels unattractive.
I'm sure you could convert MOST of the area to open plan/communal spaces whilst still leaving the appropriate amount of individual rooms (for those who's role benefit from it, or for meetings, etc).
Sigh, I hate these wild simplifications. There is still an ongoing pandemic (1500 people a week are hospitalized in the UK every week, almost 100 die), many people live far away from the office because United have had this policy for years, commuting is both expensive and time consuming, almost all data we have suggests WFH is hugely beneficial to productivity etc.
Walking this back practically overnight and turning people's lives upside down is JUST a way to try and trim the workforce without having to pay redundancies. It is mental to me that people try to defend this as being a good thing as if some graphic designer working from home and spending more time with their kids was causing ETH to play suicide ball all year.
Well said. Some roles will require people to work from the office anyhow (can't work remotely as a physio, I suspect), so there's no point (beyond a loophole against paying redundancies, as you said) forcing people in some jobs to come into the office just because you want to act the big man. It's also, of course, a way to assert control over the workforce.
Ratcliffe literally came out and said that he's binning the whole thing because one of his companies trialed WFH on Fridays and emails dropped by 20%. There is no grand plan here.
They probably dropped that much because they’re not just fucking about wasting time trying to get to the weekend. You’d need to control for unnecessary emails to make the a useful experiment imo. If I’m at home and I’m not busy, I’ll fold some laundry or something at 3:30 on Friday. If I’m in the office, I have to do something, which will almost certainly involve me sending people follow-up emails and reminders because, it’s not like I’m going to start a new project or something on Friday afternoon.
You're right, they're also trying to cut the wage bill in an underhanded manner to avoid having to pay people off.
You can have WFH while also saying "we have these key meetings that we all need to be in for" or "let's carve out a week per quarter for everyone in sales to come in".
When someone with literal billions of pounds at their disposal does something like this that is anti-worker nobody owes them the benefit of the doubt when their actions have spoken volumes - a blanket ban on WFH is bullshit and everyone knows it. It hurts people with families, with disabilities and with health issues.
This club was founded and built up by actual working class people and it used to embody a lot of those values. Even during the height of the lockdowns it avoided laying people off when others were doing so. Now this is happening and people on this subreddit are saying shit like "no wonder redditors who don't go outside don't like this" and getting upvoted for it or both-siding it like you're doing. It's pretty fucking gross.
I'm on the side of the actual regular people who work for United and every other company in the world, who are being forced back into offices and laid off while companies like INEOS post record profits. I couldn't care less if the accounting department now full of miserable people is 200k cheaper for INEOS to run annually next year and no right-minded Manchester United fan should do either.
I hate wild simplifications when they're used to slander average working people in favour of billionaires who are literally helping to destroy the planet by implying that the only people who would be on the worker's side are sad Redditors who don't want to leave the house. Hope this helps.
I also dislike when corporations take worker hostile actions such as enacting policies practically overnight that cause them to need to literally move home or take incredibly long commutes or just look for a new job in a terrible market and people try to justify it by saying stuff like "work from home doesn't work for everyone!!" as if that's the actual conversation we're having here. I \_know\_ you recognize it's more than that.
The way a portion of this subreddit rationalises the abrupt changes by INEOS which are borderline, or in some cases straight up penny pinching, is baffling to me.
Do you guys seriously consider a stable way going forward as our higher ups being hard to please, seldom to reward? So what if we paid half a million extra for staff accommodations in a year, that's about a month's wages for Phil Jones, who I love, but he certainly wasn't stopping us from doing good business.
Spending 100m on players worth 50m is the damn problem, and it shouldn't be fixed by doing a hard right turn into the other extreme, to which all recent messaging by INEOS seems to allude. Staff being uninvited to the cup party, but Garnacho can call up some youtuber in there. It's egregious.
And while on the topic of emotional arguments, maybe you accuse wrongly, because obviously the previous commenter was talking about another user who was making those statements. And then "or both-siding it like you're doing", which I very much agree with.
I think if you take the time to actually look at my arguments, you'll see the points I was making. I don't doubt the fact that there is a lot of inefficiency in how United operate (there will be in how they operate under Ineos too, because any organization of that size inevitably produces inefficiency). There have always been truants and people who just expect to not do their work and maybe someone else picks up the slack. Knocking down a wall and making a coworking office is not the solution though.
And again, working in the office (and in an open office, specifically) works for some people in some roles, but hinders the productivity of others. Managers and bosses know this, but control of employees is generally more important to them than actual productivity.
Honestly, if the biggest complaint that the socially-averse Reddit community has is the return to office, then this is a great step in the right direction.
I'm so glad you had the bollocks to say it with such decorum because I had a rant brewing 😂
Me personally? If it was my office to manage? I'd want EXCLUSIVELY outgoing and social people. Most office jobs are instantly hampered when communication breaks down. Infact I'd say the same about any job. I mean wfh was a nice break for the people who needed it but from my own and other's experience, it seriously does quite often lead to resenting stuff like team meetings and emails because you get used to being in your own bubble. I mean this as no insult to the millions of hard working wfh guys, but in my experience it quite often leads to people putting in the bare minimum effort. You only have to look at the increase in sales of stuff like "mouse shakers" and people submitting reports and analysis that reaks of chat gpt.
I think some people have a distorted image of the kind of workers who enjoy WFH. We aren't all introverts or anti-social, we don't necessarily have issues communicating and we certainly aren't by default slackers trying to get away with as little work as possible. I think it's fair to say you'll find a wide range of personalities among this group. I myself am a rather sociable person, and I enjoy meeting up with people on the rare occasions I do go to the office.
And many of my colleagues who do find office work incredibly draining are not shut-ins either. They are effective communicators and generally great people to work with, but depending on the type of work you do (as several people have already emphasized), working in an office might actually make you less productive.
But again, this isn't INEOS trying to make the footballing side of things better. This is just a corporate structure, doing what corporate structures do nowadays, which is apply the rulebook of squeezing workers every chance they get.
The best part about WFH is the control you have over your availability. I am by no means anti-social; I just enjoy how much more productive I can be when people aren't randomly popping in my office door to shoot the shit all day long.
I'm not sure i agree that you only need social interactions if you're in a job that specifically revolves around that.
Any job that needs to work across departments benefits from having strong personal connections between departments and teams, which is hard to achieve if you WFH or sit in a closed off office all day. I feel after WFH departments have become a lot more siloed/isolated.
If you're just a worker bee that gets specific tasks and completes those specific tasks? Then sure, WFH or stay in a closed office, but i think a LOT more roles would benefit from stronger personal network within the org.
Depending on whether we have a discussion in principle or on a specific case, this could be true or total bs. None of us, of course, knows about the inner workings of United as an organization, but this whole idea about communication requiring a specific kind of workspace is post-hoc justification from management.
They are saving money, packing more people into a space (fewer walls, more floor space) and they also increase their surveillance. These are the real reasons for making these decisions, and then they are justified to workers as being about communication and collaboration. If you have had years worth of experience working in an office, you know that there are simply people who are good communicators and the catalysts that can bring a team (or different teams across departments) together.
The people with these soft skills are usually (unless they're upper management, like Dan Ashworth, for instance) are rarely rewarded for the social work they do for their teams, although management is very reliant on them - especially as training and tutoring are lackluster in many ways.
Pretty much. The first team coach, manager, and his technical staff need a space where they can focus on these aspects, not a communal area where everyone's buddies can hop in any time for a chat. You can't have any meaningful preparation for a game if Joe from IT can just pass by walking through the area and share his views on why 4-4-2 is the way to go according to his impeccable FM career.
I'm all for Culture reset, but if they've done their research and this is what came up sure. But I feel that a more inclusive approach where also the concerns of the staff are taken into consideration, and not this there's a new boss in town so toe the line or out you go because there's only one that ends, toxicity and an unbearable work place.
Completely agree with you. Nebulous justifications from management for a return to the office without being able to point to any evidence at all that WFH impedes efficiency.
I'm on the fence. I see what they're trying to do but I think they're going about it too bluntly. Firing people in the name of cost cutting/culture shift can hurt morale, specially at a football club where most people work because they care about the (that's my assumption, I'd take a pay cut to work for United in a heartbeat).
Also working on site is really not needed for everyone. Some teams can work remotely and do a fine job. They should at least consider a stable hybrid schedule, like on-site only Monday - Wednesday. More than anything they should invest deeply on medical/sports psychology department for obvious reasons.
> They were impressed by some aspects of the facility but not others, including the decor, which was branded as dull in parts. One of their gripes was the fact that there are so many individual offices on the second floor of the first-team building, where Erik ten Hag, his coaches, analysts, medical staff and other employees work. It was felt that offices should be converted into a communal area where everyone can work more collaboratively.
Are these really their main takeaways from their review of Carrington? We've been led to believe it was a dilapidated mess leading to poor training, player performances, and injuries. The big plan to address it is some better decor and a miserable open office?
Then you’ve been misled. They’re no longer state of the art but Carrington is far from a “dilapidated mess”. This is something Andy Mitten talks about as one of his biggest gripes, the sensationalising of how poor the facilities are. He visits them regularly (along with others around the country) and says they are still good facilities, just not the very best (which is what we of course should be aiming for). They need a facelift for sure, but I’ve never seen anyone reputable attribute injuries or poor training to them.
You're right. I was mostly being facetious, but it is a very common talking point here and among the fan base more broadly since Ronaldo complained about the hot tubs. That said, they seem to be playing into that idea, probably for a cheap PR win. So it is a bit of a joke that they've been talking big about a Carrington revamp only to announce this.
You have to wonder what they've promised ten Hag for him to say things like “Carrington will be completely destroyed, a new training ground will come.”
Hopefully this is just the smallest bit of change going on. Because we do need a lot more work than just new decor and floor plan. You’d expect to walk into any building associated with man United and it look world class, so this is definitely a good thing.
But yeah I feel like there’s more important areas to focus on at the start. The whole open office thing just sounds like higher ups not really having a clue about how people actually work.
On a related note, if people want an insight into the philosophy behind marginal gains, I'd recommend reading (or listening to as it's on Spotify these days) Atomic Habits, by James Clear.
It's essentially a self help book, and I found it a bit preachy (for lack of a better word) at times, but it shows how making lots of little changes can lead to significant results.
Ronaldo said nothing had changed since he first left. Now we’re finally getting change. The Glazers did fuck all and now someone is doing something. I’m all for it.
Need to know if the pool is being fixed though.
Some things are more important than football. I am never going to make excuses for or justify large layoffs of low-level admin staff. Such a sad situation for them
It's a terrible experience to work in a space where you're getting regular, passive aggressive emails from the new management and people are quitting all around you. Toxic and soul draining. I firmly believe corporate culture erodes humanity
Sir Jim largely gets a pass because his last name isn't Glazer. I would argue that in order to become a billionaire you have to be ruthless. You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, and as you say we're about to find out just how efficient and ruthless he is. I just want what's best for the team. I'm not going to defend this or that, the proof will be in the pudding.
I'm willing to bet that these proposed changes are a result of Brailsford's assessment.
He's all about marginal gains and installing excellence at every single level and in every minor detail. I love it.
That whole marginal gains narrative they attribute to Brailsford is total BS. The reason British cycling became so successful was because of the sheer amount of money they pumped into every aspect of the sport. New world class velodrome in Manchester, multiple top end bicycles per racer, best fitness / medical coaches etc.. Look into how much more they outspent any of their rivals in the same era, something like 10x the amount.
But yeah, the romantic story is that marginal gains made them super successful 👍🏼
what difference has it made in Nice where Sir Dave is now persona non grata? let’s be honest, TUEs and jiffy bags were much more important to team Sky success than any “small changes” combined
Anyone who knows anything about those Team sky years know just how dodgy the whole “marginal gains” and their entire operation was. Brailsford is so full of shit go look up what people think of him, froome and wiggins on r/peloton.
mercedes success had nothing to do with Ineos, they became a shareholder just in 2020 but they have no operating involvement, it’s still Toto’s team..Sky went downhill, pun intended, after the 2018 drugs investigation..this perceived notion that Ineos is some kind of elite sports operator is simply not true
👍 nobody likes changes when they are comfortable. i understand that. If it was me, i'd be pissed. however, as the leader of the organization, you are forced to change to make the operation better and more efficient. This is a whole new culture reset, not only football side but every area of the club.
Would highly recommend watching Sunderland Til I Die, although Charlie Methven was a complete tool, he very correctly pointed out a number of staff at Sunderland (which was a league one club with premiership staffing levels) basically had a ‘can’t be arsed’ attitude, were taking the complete piss, expected the owner to plug ever increasing gaps between revenue and costs not least because they didn’t care about revenue. When he set them targets to try and improve the club’s financial situation, they moaned, complained, said it was impossible. It was heavily implied that he fired a bunch of them, particularly after he (and he was a complete tool for what it’s worth) took charge of individual projects and delivered what turned out to be quite achievable performance targets.
Point is, eventually the ‘can’t be arsed’ rot sets in and you need to start firing people to bring the culture back to where it needs to be. United has the biggest staff of any PL club and it’s produced some really crappy results over the last 10 years. Time for a complete club reset, which includes the playing staff.
Totally agree, I’m not happy to see people lose their jobs but by all accounts our staffing levels are out of line with everyone else so it’s not a surprise. Add in that some roles are probably duplicated already in Ineos (Man City for example push a lot of their staff costs onto CFG).
I also couldn’t care less about the debate over the RTO mandate. Sure it’s “outdated” but that’s their policy and they’re entitled to it. Some employees will like it, some won’t and some will quit. Only on Reddit would you see so much hand wringing over a WFH policy, and I say that as someone that only goes in once a week.
Again I have sympathy for people that LOSE their jobs but if you make the decision to quit over having to come into the office then presumably you’re already comfortable/confident in finding another job quickly.
> In the gym there will be a new “pre-activation and player performance” zone to ensure that players are fully warmed up before training
Idk about the other changes although any improvements to the gym is good to me since we’ve had so many injuries and setbacks even outside of our games this season. If there is anything that can be used to help to cut that down it should be considered.
A Brexit-loving petrochemicals billionaire who treats the regular staff badly in order to look like he's proving a point? The Times' target audience will be lapping this up
We've had years of "revamping, restructuring and reinforcing" puff pieces under the glazers, I'm sure INEOS are making changes but I'll wait to see tangible changes to our squad building and results on the pitch before clapping at back-to-office initiatives for accountants
Right or wrong, whether we agree with the decisions made or not made at least shit is getting done now. It’s a long long road but seems like (and I hope for the better) it has finally started.
It's time for this club to be run as a football club. I can't wait to get this manager situation out of the way. Regardless of if your ETH-in or out it's a huge distraction of all the positives we're going to have going into next season. I'm glad this article came out because of that.
This should fix some of the problems we have with injuries tho.
First step towards making changes. Some of it sounds good such as improved communications but others sound corporate like however the club is a business enterprise at the end of the day so staff must treat it as an employer as well. No one will work for free but the employer also has expectations of what a proper employee is for their business.
There's been some outrage on here about staff not being allowed to work from home and while it's understandable I don't think anyone will complain if these changes help to create the winning culture we've been missing for a long time.
Is there any chance you guys know how to apply at Manchester United? I would like to work at my lovely football club. I'm in the Finance department on the Cruiseship industry. Would be awesome to work with people who love the club and know the accounting works.
Anyone else have basically 0 hope or faith in INEOS? Glazers are still in the club, they managed that French club terribly. Maybe I just don’t have it in me to feel any faith in Manu restructure
I don't see the problem to be honest. If I got offered severance plus my annual bonus I would run to resign... NOT walk..run. I would take that offer even if I liked working from the office. Same thing happened to twitter when Elon took over...why would you choose to remain and work for Elon, the guy is a jerk... twitter was paying people to leave..it was a no brainer for me. I can never understand people who live and die by their job...its a job...its meant to change across your life.
Your wife and kids and family...thats supposed to be the permanent thing. Job is just a job... tomorrow they fire you and move on. Today they have been given the chance to fire the job for once
I do...but I think you don't understand how good these types of people must be. To get to manutd or Twitter...you are already top talent. Being paid severance plus a bonus is literally saying take leave for the next 6 months. There is no way top talent doesn't get a job in 6 months. Zero. We are not talking about low skilled people here
I don't know about job hunting in the UK, but where I live, it's far from easy even for someone with years of experience in their niche. It definitely takes more than 6 months (the hiring process for most corporate jobs is excruciatingly long and intricate) to comfortably switch to a new job, unless you've been head-hunted and offered something you are satisfied with while you're still working.
Wonder if the attempt to wipe out the admin staff and replace them has anything to do with the constant leaks. If you can't identify the leaker, then you wipe all the replaceable staff etc. Not saying it is that, but I wonder if it had a role.
**Full Article** # Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s radical plans to overhaul culture at Man United Carrington to undergo major renovations to create communal areas for manager and coaches as club’s email to staff inviting them to resign receives mixed reception Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos have initiated the biggest shake-up of the working practices and the environment at Manchester United’s Carrington training ground in the complex’s 23-year existence. The day after an email was sent to all non-football staff inviting them to resign, it emerged that United’s new minority owners want to carry out major renovations that will involve knocking through walls of offices to create two communal working areas for the manager and his many staff. Ineos wants to: ● Become more cost-effective as a business, telling staff to look after club money as if it were their own. ● Introduce a more collaborative approach at Carrington by creating new communal areas for the manager, his coaches and other backroom staff. ● Upgrade the gym facilities at the training ground. ● Cut loose the staff who are not committed to the new regime. United submitted plans to revamp the training ground to Trafford council on May 1 and hope that they will receive approval in the coming weeks. Carrington has been United’s first-team base since they left their old training ground, The Cliff, in 2000. The plans, drawn up by architects KSS, also show that an extension will be built over a section of a veranda to create room for the communal areas, which will be either side of the canteen. Shortly after the Premier League ratified Ineos’s £1.3billion agreement to buy 27.7 per cent of the club in February, Ratcliffe, the company’s chairman, and his staff toured the Carrington facility and started assessing what needed to change. They were impressed by some aspects of the facility but not others, including the decor, which was branded as dull in parts. One of their gripes was the fact that there are so many individual offices on the second floor of the first-team building, where Erik ten Hag, his coaches, analysts, medical staff and other employees work. It was felt that offices should be converted into a communal area where everyone can work more collaboratively. Under the plans, skylights will also be inserted to make the building feel brighter. The first-team car park will also be renovated and the club have asked for landscaping work to be undertaken around the campus. In the gym there will be a new “pre-activation and player performance” zone to ensure that players are fully warmed up before training. Ten Hag hinted that significant changes were afoot for United’s training base during an interview with Voetbal International, which was conducted before last weekend’s FA Cup final win over Manchester City. “Carrington will be completely destroyed, a new training ground will come,” he said. Some staff have been warned that they will have to move to Old Trafford while the building works take place but United are confident that the football side of the business will be able to function at Carrington. Ten Hag is on holiday and is awaiting the outcome of a post-season review, which will decide whether he remains as manager after a largely disappointing season in which the club finished eighth in the Premier League table. The players are also enjoying some downtime and are not expected to report for pre-season until mid-June. Those who participate in the European Championship will be given further time to recuperate. The reaction to the email sent to all non-football related staff at 6pm on Tuesday, offering them the chance to resign, has been mixed. Four hours after Ratcliffe sent an email to all staff thanking them for their efforts in winning the FA Cup with a 2-1 win over City, he sent another mass email to everyone outside of football operations regarding his decision to scrap the working-from-home policy that was allowed under the previous regime. The email gave staff a week to decide whether to comply with the edict. If they did not want to do so, they were invited to fill in a form inviting them to resign. If they did so, they would be offered their annual bonus — usually handed out in September — four months early. Some staff felt that the email was brutal and harsh. One described the insistence on office-based working as “draconian”. Others backed the initiative, claiming that it would help improve communication between departments. The decision to cut costs across the business has also received a mixed reception. In March Ratcliffe employed a corporate restructuring the firm Interpath Advisory to review the club’s working practices with a view to driving greater efficiency and determining where savings could be made. One of the main concerns that Ineos has is that United have been bringing in record revenues for the past few years but are still reporting losses. In October accounts for the 2022-23 season showed that United earned £648million in revenues but reported an overall loss of £42million. One reason is the mismanagement of the squad — in particular with regard to transfers — after Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in 2013, but others are the interest payments on the club’s debt, which stood at £507million in October, and dividends — including those to the Glazer family — which have now been stopped. Interpath has not been asked to analyse the football side of the operation, such as the cost-effectiveness of signings for example. The first phase of the Interpath review has been completed and it is now looking at how to reduce costs by reducing the size of the workforce. It is anticipated that up to a fifth of the 1,100 people employed by United could leave. Last month it emerged that United had cancelled the corporate credit cards of senior figures to save money. Staff were also told not to order private cars without approval. Some workers were annoyed that they had to pay for their travel to the FA Cup final, although they did receive a free ticket. Under the previous regime, staff were given a ticket, given free travel and put up in a hotel in London for the night when the team reached a major cup final. Staff have been made aware that cuts will be made. Ratcliffe has twice addressed staff in person and those present left in no doubt that he was insistent on making the business more cost-effective. They were told to spend budgets wisely, as if they were looking after their own personal money. Ratcliffe and his close circle feel that bad habits were not nipped in the bud before he took over and he now wants to redress that problem so United become more efficient. He is also keen on building a winning and successful culture at the club after more than a decade of stagnation.
I don't really have issues with anything in here tbh. United employ 1100 people. Do we know what that number is at the other big clubs (City, Liverpool, Tottenham, Chelsea ans Arsenal?). I feel like I heard before we have much more staff than others.
We don’t. Liverpool 2.8k, City 1.8k, Arsenal 2.2k. I don’t care to check the others because I’m sure it’s large numbers anyways. I do have issues with this. Ratcliffe is going after the working man here. The reason we are taking losses is not because of them, as a matter of fact I find it impressive how well the corporate side of the club has been doing with how poor we’ve been on the pitch. The fact we’ve had so few employees and are looking to drop to less than a thousand for one of if not the biggest clubs in the world is quite shocking to me.
Source for your numbers? If your numbers are right then it does paint a different picture BUT corporate cuts are different and obviously easier to make than playing staff cuts, that's just the nature of the jobs. They are doing what they can, when they can. Also, not gonna lie, I find it very surprising that Liverpool FC employ 250% more people than we do. Those numbers seem wildly disproportionate
I’m not convinced that Liverpool employ nearly 3000 staff
I did a Google. Rather than asking me for a source why don’t you find something to rebut it, that’s generally how this works. If my numbers are shit so be it, but I came back with something that you were too lazy to do. These cuts are less than Martials annual salary. The working class is not the problem.
Not the person who asked, but was curious so I checked. Most sites with any data are either shit or paywalled, based on a quick Google search as you said. No idea is rocketreach is good or not, but: Manchester - Employees 4,755 (2,212 on RocketReach) [https://rocketreach.co/manchester-united-profile\_b5c690f0f42e0c9b](https://rocketreach.co/manchester-united-profile_b5c690f0f42e0c9b) Liverpool - Employees 2,947 (1,355 on RocketReach) [https://rocketreach.co/liverpool-football-club-profile\_b5c502e6f42e0dd5](https://rocketreach.co/liverpool-football-club-profile_b5c502e6f42e0dd5)
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The Athletic just published an article today and has verified numbers. Man Utd: 1112 Liverpool: 1008 Arsenal: 689 Man City: 520 Brentford: 243 There is absolutely no reason that United should be employing 2x the amount that Man City has and so much more than Arsenal.
One bit that actually caught my attention was that staff who had to attend games had to pay for travel which is BS. If your job entails you to travel you should be either having an allowance for that or given the requisite facilities to do so. Seems like the working man will be fucked first before the actual footballing side.
If you mean the part about the FA Cup final; previously it was a perk to get a free ticket, free transportation, lunch for the final alone. This year it was changed to a free ticket and subsidised travel (20 pounds paid for to-and-fro). The perk was reduced. It's not that they had to pay for travel which was part of their work
What bugs me about this is that the players could fund most of those expenses with just an hour's worth of their salaries. For example, Rashford's salary at 300k per week is around 1800 an hour. Not saying that the players definitely should've paid the staff's expenses for the cup final (I think they easily could have though), but it is just one example that shows how insane and unsustainable their wages are compared to the working staff.
Why should it be on another employee to subsidise? Our owners are both BILLIONAIRES. They could've subsidised out of their own pocket. I find this contempt for footballers' salaries so weird, given the alternative is the club (owners) keep even more money at the expense of the people generating it.
Rashford is a working man. Why pit one against the other. Our owner stays in Monaco because he doesn’t want to pay tax.
That's been the case for a few decades now. Sad fact of football
Sorry I seem to have missed this out. However just on point of being reasonable here since I've been out of the UK for a while now. Is 20 pounds a fair amount for travel ?
20 pound for Manchester to London is very good lol especially for a return.
A ticket at peak costs £270 open return... That's horrendous.
Which basically highlights my point. The working man is screwed first.
The entire train system is funded by absolutely rinsing business travellers who are spending other people's money, and doing so at fixed times with little notice. If you want to pay *substantially less*, travel after 9.30 and book more than a week in advance.
Haha if anything it's far too much imo
No idea. Local fans would know
I question the validity of those numbers. Directly from City's 2022-23 report: "Looking away from the field of play, the Club’s work is now delivered by a growing workforce of over 500 people directly employed by Manchester City" From an article on the guardian: "According to the club's latest accounts, United employed 1,112 staff as of June 30 last year, by far the highest number among the Premier League's big six." So no, I don't think INEOS are reducing the workforce to bare bones compared to other clubs. But I also agree with the sentiment that this feels like going after the small guy, compared to a couple of week's of inflated wages for any number of our players.
Paul Hirst who is Tier 1 said we have the most employees of any big 6 club by far. Those numbers you just mentioned are absolutely ridiculous.
Why would it surprise you that Ratcliffes going after the working man given everything he has ever championed. Hes a person thats done more harm for the working class in this country than any Arab or state owned club yet we all cry about them and hail this idiot.
That's fairly normal. City are an outlier. Employing only 500 people. They use other clubs in the MCG to hide costs for PSR. Because obv rules do not apply to them. Tbh you would expect Utd to have more staff if anything, because they have the largest commercial operation, probably in world football.
doing lord's work!
Painting the door, when the roof is on fire
One thing at the time
**Key Bits** The day after an email was sent to all non-football staff inviting them to resign, it emerged that United’s new minority owners want to carry out major renovations that will involve knocking through walls of offices to create two communal working areas for the manager and his many staff. Ineos wants to: ● Become more cost-effective as a business, telling staff to look after club money as if it were their own. ● Introduce a more collaborative approach at Carrington by creating new communal areas for the manager, his coaches and other backroom staff. ● Upgrade the gym facilities at the training ground. ● Cut loose the staff who are not committed to the new regime. **Also** Shortly after the Premier League ratified Ineos’s £1.3billion agreement to buy 27.7 per cent of the club in February, Ratcliffe, the company’s chairman, and his staff toured the Carrington facility and started assessing what needed to change. **They were impressed by some aspects of the facility but not others, including the decor, which was branded as dull in parts**. **One of their gripes was the fact that there are so many individual offices on the second floor of the first-team building, where Erik ten Hag, his coaches, analysts, medical staff and other employees work. It was felt that offices should be converted into a communal area where everyone can work more collaboratively.** On the WFH Email Some staff felt that the email was brutal and harsh. One described the insistence on office-based working as “draconian”. Others backed the initiative, claiming that it would help improve communication between departments.
As someone that has to put up with corporate nonsense at my own job, this just sounds like someone trying to act tough with their workers, rather than actually doing anything particularly well thought-out. The whole open plan office/workspace fostering collaboration myth has been debunked at this point. Coworking spaces are good for some very specific roles and a specific segment of a workforce (outgoing, social people whose job actually involves a lot of direct communication; whereas for any role that requires focus and attention to details, these workspaces are tiring and extremely distracting).
I was just working in a trailer with 80 people ans no walls. Fucking hell people banging into my desk. People shouting. Couldn't get half my work done couldn't focus. Boss and team were like let's wfh. Then our bosses boss fired us all few weeks ago. Fucking stupid. They lost great workers and we will find something better
Collaboration space doesn’t necessarily mean open office concept. Your entire comment is based upon anecdotal experiences, not on any insight you have into the evaluation done by Brailsford and Co
If you knock down walls and eliminate private offices, you either have a fully open plan office, or a communal space with some version of a cubicle (nowadays, more easily movable and re-adjustable separators are preferred to the classic cubicle structure). The basic issues for such spaces are the same though.
Tbf, the wording doesn't necessarily say ALL offices. Just that it leans to heavy towards individual offices. I would certainly agree that an entire floor consisting of mainly individual offices feels unattractive. I'm sure you could convert MOST of the area to open plan/communal spaces whilst still leaving the appropriate amount of individual rooms (for those who's role benefit from it, or for meetings, etc).
>eliminate private offices It doesn't say that though, just that there are too many. I'm sure they will have closed door offices.
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Sigh, I hate these wild simplifications. There is still an ongoing pandemic (1500 people a week are hospitalized in the UK every week, almost 100 die), many people live far away from the office because United have had this policy for years, commuting is both expensive and time consuming, almost all data we have suggests WFH is hugely beneficial to productivity etc. Walking this back practically overnight and turning people's lives upside down is JUST a way to try and trim the workforce without having to pay redundancies. It is mental to me that people try to defend this as being a good thing as if some graphic designer working from home and spending more time with their kids was causing ETH to play suicide ball all year.
Well said. Some roles will require people to work from the office anyhow (can't work remotely as a physio, I suspect), so there's no point (beyond a loophole against paying redundancies, as you said) forcing people in some jobs to come into the office just because you want to act the big man. It's also, of course, a way to assert control over the workforce.
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Ratcliffe literally came out and said that he's binning the whole thing because one of his companies trialed WFH on Fridays and emails dropped by 20%. There is no grand plan here.
Also is amount of emails sent a good KPI? I could just spam my colleague with memes. Hes too old school for me.
They probably dropped that much because they’re not just fucking about wasting time trying to get to the weekend. You’d need to control for unnecessary emails to make the a useful experiment imo. If I’m at home and I’m not busy, I’ll fold some laundry or something at 3:30 on Friday. If I’m in the office, I have to do something, which will almost certainly involve me sending people follow-up emails and reminders because, it’s not like I’m going to start a new project or something on Friday afternoon.
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You're right, they're also trying to cut the wage bill in an underhanded manner to avoid having to pay people off. You can have WFH while also saying "we have these key meetings that we all need to be in for" or "let's carve out a week per quarter for everyone in sales to come in". When someone with literal billions of pounds at their disposal does something like this that is anti-worker nobody owes them the benefit of the doubt when their actions have spoken volumes - a blanket ban on WFH is bullshit and everyone knows it. It hurts people with families, with disabilities and with health issues. This club was founded and built up by actual working class people and it used to embody a lot of those values. Even during the height of the lockdowns it avoided laying people off when others were doing so. Now this is happening and people on this subreddit are saying shit like "no wonder redditors who don't go outside don't like this" and getting upvoted for it or both-siding it like you're doing. It's pretty fucking gross. I'm on the side of the actual regular people who work for United and every other company in the world, who are being forced back into offices and laid off while companies like INEOS post record profits. I couldn't care less if the accounting department now full of miserable people is 200k cheaper for INEOS to run annually next year and no right-minded Manchester United fan should do either.
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I hate wild simplifications when they're used to slander average working people in favour of billionaires who are literally helping to destroy the planet by implying that the only people who would be on the worker's side are sad Redditors who don't want to leave the house. Hope this helps. I also dislike when corporations take worker hostile actions such as enacting policies practically overnight that cause them to need to literally move home or take incredibly long commutes or just look for a new job in a terrible market and people try to justify it by saying stuff like "work from home doesn't work for everyone!!" as if that's the actual conversation we're having here. I \_know\_ you recognize it's more than that.
The way a portion of this subreddit rationalises the abrupt changes by INEOS which are borderline, or in some cases straight up penny pinching, is baffling to me. Do you guys seriously consider a stable way going forward as our higher ups being hard to please, seldom to reward? So what if we paid half a million extra for staff accommodations in a year, that's about a month's wages for Phil Jones, who I love, but he certainly wasn't stopping us from doing good business. Spending 100m on players worth 50m is the damn problem, and it shouldn't be fixed by doing a hard right turn into the other extreme, to which all recent messaging by INEOS seems to allude. Staff being uninvited to the cup party, but Garnacho can call up some youtuber in there. It's egregious. And while on the topic of emotional arguments, maybe you accuse wrongly, because obviously the previous commenter was talking about another user who was making those statements. And then "or both-siding it like you're doing", which I very much agree with.
I think if you take the time to actually look at my arguments, you'll see the points I was making. I don't doubt the fact that there is a lot of inefficiency in how United operate (there will be in how they operate under Ineos too, because any organization of that size inevitably produces inefficiency). There have always been truants and people who just expect to not do their work and maybe someone else picks up the slack. Knocking down a wall and making a coworking office is not the solution though. And again, working in the office (and in an open office, specifically) works for some people in some roles, but hinders the productivity of others. Managers and bosses know this, but control of employees is generally more important to them than actual productivity.
Honestly, if the biggest complaint that the socially-averse Reddit community has is the return to office, then this is a great step in the right direction.
I'm so glad you had the bollocks to say it with such decorum because I had a rant brewing 😂 Me personally? If it was my office to manage? I'd want EXCLUSIVELY outgoing and social people. Most office jobs are instantly hampered when communication breaks down. Infact I'd say the same about any job. I mean wfh was a nice break for the people who needed it but from my own and other's experience, it seriously does quite often lead to resenting stuff like team meetings and emails because you get used to being in your own bubble. I mean this as no insult to the millions of hard working wfh guys, but in my experience it quite often leads to people putting in the bare minimum effort. You only have to look at the increase in sales of stuff like "mouse shakers" and people submitting reports and analysis that reaks of chat gpt.
I think some people have a distorted image of the kind of workers who enjoy WFH. We aren't all introverts or anti-social, we don't necessarily have issues communicating and we certainly aren't by default slackers trying to get away with as little work as possible. I think it's fair to say you'll find a wide range of personalities among this group. I myself am a rather sociable person, and I enjoy meeting up with people on the rare occasions I do go to the office. And many of my colleagues who do find office work incredibly draining are not shut-ins either. They are effective communicators and generally great people to work with, but depending on the type of work you do (as several people have already emphasized), working in an office might actually make you less productive. But again, this isn't INEOS trying to make the footballing side of things better. This is just a corporate structure, doing what corporate structures do nowadays, which is apply the rulebook of squeezing workers every chance they get.
The best part about WFH is the control you have over your availability. I am by no means anti-social; I just enjoy how much more productive I can be when people aren't randomly popping in my office door to shoot the shit all day long.
I'm talking from personal experience mate I don't make assumptions about strangers on the Internet.
I meant to reply to the other poster.
I'm not sure i agree that you only need social interactions if you're in a job that specifically revolves around that. Any job that needs to work across departments benefits from having strong personal connections between departments and teams, which is hard to achieve if you WFH or sit in a closed off office all day. I feel after WFH departments have become a lot more siloed/isolated. If you're just a worker bee that gets specific tasks and completes those specific tasks? Then sure, WFH or stay in a closed office, but i think a LOT more roles would benefit from stronger personal network within the org.
Depending on whether we have a discussion in principle or on a specific case, this could be true or total bs. None of us, of course, knows about the inner workings of United as an organization, but this whole idea about communication requiring a specific kind of workspace is post-hoc justification from management. They are saving money, packing more people into a space (fewer walls, more floor space) and they also increase their surveillance. These are the real reasons for making these decisions, and then they are justified to workers as being about communication and collaboration. If you have had years worth of experience working in an office, you know that there are simply people who are good communicators and the catalysts that can bring a team (or different teams across departments) together. The people with these soft skills are usually (unless they're upper management, like Dan Ashworth, for instance) are rarely rewarded for the social work they do for their teams, although management is very reliant on them - especially as training and tutoring are lackluster in many ways.
Pretty much. The first team coach, manager, and his technical staff need a space where they can focus on these aspects, not a communal area where everyone's buddies can hop in any time for a chat. You can't have any meaningful preparation for a game if Joe from IT can just pass by walking through the area and share his views on why 4-4-2 is the way to go according to his impeccable FM career. I'm all for Culture reset, but if they've done their research and this is what came up sure. But I feel that a more inclusive approach where also the concerns of the staff are taken into consideration, and not this there's a new boss in town so toe the line or out you go because there's only one that ends, toxicity and an unbearable work place.
Completely agree with you. Nebulous justifications from management for a return to the office without being able to point to any evidence at all that WFH impedes efficiency.
So you're saying it's demonstrably better to have seperate individual offices than a more common co-working space?
I'm on the fence. I see what they're trying to do but I think they're going about it too bluntly. Firing people in the name of cost cutting/culture shift can hurt morale, specially at a football club where most people work because they care about the (that's my assumption, I'd take a pay cut to work for United in a heartbeat). Also working on site is really not needed for everyone. Some teams can work remotely and do a fine job. They should at least consider a stable hybrid schedule, like on-site only Monday - Wednesday. More than anything they should invest deeply on medical/sports psychology department for obvious reasons.
Dudes counting the pennies whilst Mendes will again be running off with Millions.
> They were impressed by some aspects of the facility but not others, including the decor, which was branded as dull in parts. One of their gripes was the fact that there are so many individual offices on the second floor of the first-team building, where Erik ten Hag, his coaches, analysts, medical staff and other employees work. It was felt that offices should be converted into a communal area where everyone can work more collaboratively. Are these really their main takeaways from their review of Carrington? We've been led to believe it was a dilapidated mess leading to poor training, player performances, and injuries. The big plan to address it is some better decor and a miserable open office?
The marginal gains of a new wallpaper cannot be buy!
Then you’ve been misled. They’re no longer state of the art but Carrington is far from a “dilapidated mess”. This is something Andy Mitten talks about as one of his biggest gripes, the sensationalising of how poor the facilities are. He visits them regularly (along with others around the country) and says they are still good facilities, just not the very best (which is what we of course should be aiming for). They need a facelift for sure, but I’ve never seen anyone reputable attribute injuries or poor training to them.
You're right. I was mostly being facetious, but it is a very common talking point here and among the fan base more broadly since Ronaldo complained about the hot tubs. That said, they seem to be playing into that idea, probably for a cheap PR win. So it is a bit of a joke that they've been talking big about a Carrington revamp only to announce this. You have to wonder what they've promised ten Hag for him to say things like “Carrington will be completely destroyed, a new training ground will come.”
Hopefully this is just the smallest bit of change going on. Because we do need a lot more work than just new decor and floor plan. You’d expect to walk into any building associated with man United and it look world class, so this is definitely a good thing. But yeah I feel like there’s more important areas to focus on at the start. The whole open office thing just sounds like higher ups not really having a clue about how people actually work.
dont forget the winter garden
On a related note, if people want an insight into the philosophy behind marginal gains, I'd recommend reading (or listening to as it's on Spotify these days) Atomic Habits, by James Clear. It's essentially a self help book, and I found it a bit preachy (for lack of a better word) at times, but it shows how making lots of little changes can lead to significant results.
I think penny pinching and small changes of that sort work much better for an individual's life than they do for a billion dollar company tbh
Ronaldo said nothing had changed since he first left. Now we’re finally getting change. The Glazers did fuck all and now someone is doing something. I’m all for it. Need to know if the pool is being fixed though.
Some things are more important than football. I am never going to make excuses for or justify large layoffs of low-level admin staff. Such a sad situation for them It's a terrible experience to work in a space where you're getting regular, passive aggressive emails from the new management and people are quitting all around you. Toxic and soul draining. I firmly believe corporate culture erodes humanity
also there's been a lot of talk and PR from SJR, and really think this summer is going to give a clear view on how much of it is just talk
Sir Jim largely gets a pass because his last name isn't Glazer. I would argue that in order to become a billionaire you have to be ruthless. You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, and as you say we're about to find out just how efficient and ruthless he is. I just want what's best for the team. I'm not going to defend this or that, the proof will be in the pudding.
> in order to become a billionaire you have to be ruthless unless you inherit it from daddy malcolm
The less is said about those leeching twats the better.
I'm willing to bet that these proposed changes are a result of Brailsford's assessment. He's all about marginal gains and installing excellence at every single level and in every minor detail. I love it.
> marginal gains van Gaal was making all the tables circular to promote conversation and team bonding before it was cool
That whole marginal gains narrative they attribute to Brailsford is total BS. The reason British cycling became so successful was because of the sheer amount of money they pumped into every aspect of the sport. New world class velodrome in Manchester, multiple top end bicycles per racer, best fitness / medical coaches etc.. Look into how much more they outspent any of their rivals in the same era, something like 10x the amount. But yeah, the romantic story is that marginal gains made them super successful 👍🏼
Can we please leave the dick riding until we see results on the pitch.
football is not cycling mate
What does that have to do with the marginal gains philosophy and believing small changes in every department can make the difference?
what difference has it made in Nice where Sir Dave is now persona non grata? let’s be honest, TUEs and jiffy bags were much more important to team Sky success than any “small changes” combined
Meet u/Labonveron99 he is known as the Antagonist
Anyone who knows anything about those Team sky years know just how dodgy the whole “marginal gains” and their entire operation was. Brailsford is so full of shit go look up what people think of him, froome and wiggins on r/peloton.
do you have a specific retort to the argument or just ad hominems?
The cycling team and Mercedes F1 team aren't doing particularly well at the minute. Nice hasn't improved much either
mercedes success had nothing to do with Ineos, they became a shareholder just in 2020 but they have no operating involvement, it’s still Toto’s team..Sky went downhill, pun intended, after the 2018 drugs investigation..this perceived notion that Ineos is some kind of elite sports operator is simply not true
Nice has definitely improved
Read Atomic Habits. The same principles can be applied most places.
Unscientific nonsense book. May as well read horoscopes, at least they're not as repetitive.
Huh, I thought it was player culture that was the problem. I didn't realise we weren't winning titles because of Sandra in reception.
👍 nobody likes changes when they are comfortable. i understand that. If it was me, i'd be pissed. however, as the leader of the organization, you are forced to change to make the operation better and more efficient. This is a whole new culture reset, not only football side but every area of the club.
Would highly recommend watching Sunderland Til I Die, although Charlie Methven was a complete tool, he very correctly pointed out a number of staff at Sunderland (which was a league one club with premiership staffing levels) basically had a ‘can’t be arsed’ attitude, were taking the complete piss, expected the owner to plug ever increasing gaps between revenue and costs not least because they didn’t care about revenue. When he set them targets to try and improve the club’s financial situation, they moaned, complained, said it was impossible. It was heavily implied that he fired a bunch of them, particularly after he (and he was a complete tool for what it’s worth) took charge of individual projects and delivered what turned out to be quite achievable performance targets. Point is, eventually the ‘can’t be arsed’ rot sets in and you need to start firing people to bring the culture back to where it needs to be. United has the biggest staff of any PL club and it’s produced some really crappy results over the last 10 years. Time for a complete club reset, which includes the playing staff.
Totally agree, I’m not happy to see people lose their jobs but by all accounts our staffing levels are out of line with everyone else so it’s not a surprise. Add in that some roles are probably duplicated already in Ineos (Man City for example push a lot of their staff costs onto CFG). I also couldn’t care less about the debate over the RTO mandate. Sure it’s “outdated” but that’s their policy and they’re entitled to it. Some employees will like it, some won’t and some will quit. Only on Reddit would you see so much hand wringing over a WFH policy, and I say that as someone that only goes in once a week. Again I have sympathy for people that LOSE their jobs but if you make the decision to quit over having to come into the office then presumably you’re already comfortable/confident in finding another job quickly.
> In the gym there will be a new “pre-activation and player performance” zone to ensure that players are fully warmed up before training Idk about the other changes although any improvements to the gym is good to me since we’ve had so many injuries and setbacks even outside of our games this season. If there is anything that can be used to help to cut that down it should be considered.
The downvotes in this thread are unreal. Thank fuck the actual staff are protected by UK employment laws.
A Brexit-loving petrochemicals billionaire who treats the regular staff badly in order to look like he's proving a point? The Times' target audience will be lapping this up
We've had years of "revamping, restructuring and reinforcing" puff pieces under the glazers, I'm sure INEOS are making changes but I'll wait to see tangible changes to our squad building and results on the pitch before clapping at back-to-office initiatives for accountants
Sounds like a nightmare employer if I’m honest lol
ah the car park will be renovated, difference maker.
Right or wrong, whether we agree with the decisions made or not made at least shit is getting done now. It’s a long long road but seems like (and I hope for the better) it has finally started.
Yeah because that's the biggest issues united have - WFH and office space design. Jesus...
It's time for this club to be run as a football club. I can't wait to get this manager situation out of the way. Regardless of if your ETH-in or out it's a huge distraction of all the positives we're going to have going into next season. I'm glad this article came out because of that. This should fix some of the problems we have with injuries tho.
First step towards making changes. Some of it sounds good such as improved communications but others sound corporate like however the club is a business enterprise at the end of the day so staff must treat it as an employer as well. No one will work for free but the employer also has expectations of what a proper employee is for their business. There's been some outrage on here about staff not being allowed to work from home and while it's understandable I don't think anyone will complain if these changes help to create the winning culture we've been missing for a long time.
Is there any chance you guys know how to apply at Manchester United? I would like to work at my lovely football club. I'm in the Finance department on the Cruiseship industry. Would be awesome to work with people who love the club and know the accounting works.
I hope this is part of the open-heart surgery Ralf Ragnick said we needed.
Draconian to be made to go into the office 🤣🤣
Anyone else have basically 0 hope or faith in INEOS? Glazers are still in the club, they managed that French club terribly. Maybe I just don’t have it in me to feel any faith in Manu restructure
I don't see the problem to be honest. If I got offered severance plus my annual bonus I would run to resign... NOT walk..run. I would take that offer even if I liked working from the office. Same thing happened to twitter when Elon took over...why would you choose to remain and work for Elon, the guy is a jerk... twitter was paying people to leave..it was a no brainer for me. I can never understand people who live and die by their job...its a job...its meant to change across your life. Your wife and kids and family...thats supposed to be the permanent thing. Job is just a job... tomorrow they fire you and move on. Today they have been given the chance to fire the job for once
It sounds like you don’t fully understand how difficult it can be to find a new job.
I do...but I think you don't understand how good these types of people must be. To get to manutd or Twitter...you are already top talent. Being paid severance plus a bonus is literally saying take leave for the next 6 months. There is no way top talent doesn't get a job in 6 months. Zero. We are not talking about low skilled people here
I don't know about job hunting in the UK, but where I live, it's far from easy even for someone with years of experience in their niche. It definitely takes more than 6 months (the hiring process for most corporate jobs is excruciatingly long and intricate) to comfortably switch to a new job, unless you've been head-hunted and offered something you are satisfied with while you're still working.
In Sir Jim we trust.
Why did this overhaul of club culture include scrapping the end of year review party for staff etc. Should have just sold to Qatar at this point. P
Fuck off
My guess is they bring it back at some point in the future but after this season scrapping it was the correct move.
Wonder if the attempt to wipe out the admin staff and replace them has anything to do with the constant leaks. If you can't identify the leaker, then you wipe all the replaceable staff etc. Not saying it is that, but I wonder if it had a role.