Ratcliffe takes aim at Premier League: ‘Interfering’ will ‘ruin’ best league in world

Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has urged the Premier League to row back on regulation, arguing that increasing interference could see it “ruin” the competition’s appeal.

Ratcliffe, the boss of chemical giant Ineos who bought a 25 per cent stake in the club in December, also criticised politicians’ plans for a national regulator and European governing body Uefa’s rules.

It comes as the Premier League is engaged in a legal battle with champions Manchester City and following the first season in which clubs were docked points for overspending.

“I just think the Premiership [sic] needs to be careful it doesn’t get itself into an endless legal wrangle with lots and lots of clubs,” Ratcliffe told Bloomberg.

“Because, at the end of the day, the Premiership is probably the most successful sporting league in the world – certainly the most successful football league in the world – and we have this expression in the north of England: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 

“If you start interfering too much, bringing too much regulation in, then you finish up with the Manchester City issue, the Everton issue, the Nottingham Forest issue, and on and on and on. 

“And if you’re not careful the Premiership is going to finish up spending more time in court than it is thinking about what’s good for the league.

“We’ve got the best league in the world. Don’t ruin that league, for heaven’s sake.”

Weakening top Premier League clubs absurd, says Ratcliffe

Ironically, the comments align him with the owners of local rivals Manchester City, whose chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak struck a similar tone earlier this month.

Ratcliffe said he opposed the Premier League’s plans to introduce “anchoring”, a spending cap that would link the budget of the top teams to the income of those at the bottom.

“What would anchoring do? That would inhibit the top clubs in the Premiership,” the Briton added. 

“The last thing you want in the Premiership is the top clubs not being able to compete with Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, PSG – that’s absurd. And if it does, then it ceases to be the finest league in the world. 

“And then you’ve got the government regulator. If you’ve got a government regulator then at the end of the day they will interfere and that won’t be good. 

“So I have a few concerns about the Premiership, in that when Richard Scudamore ran it [from 1999-2018] it was a really fine league and it became extremely successful. Then everybody starts interfering and messing about and in my view that’s not good.”

Ratcliffe: Nice will be feeder club for Manchester United

Ratcliffe said Ineos had no plans to sell Nice and confirmed that he planned to use the French top-flight club as a feeder team for Manchester United.

“It’s not our intention to sell Nice because I quite like the concept of the multi-club [network model]. And I think Nice would be very complementary to Manchester United for two reasons,” he said.

“One, you can blood younger players in Nice than in Manchester United, because Manchester United sits at a higher level. And that would be a benefit to Nice of course. 

“And secondly, in the UK because of Brexit it’s quite difficult now to contract the younger generational talents in Europe, but Nice could do that.

“So if there’s a fantastic 15-year-old in France we could sign him up to Nice and use Nice as a conduit to Manchester United later on.”

The Monaco resident, who backed Brexit, also implied that he found it unnecessary that Uefa required Ineos to set up Chinese walls between Manchester United and Nice. The measure is intended to protect the integrity of results as both will compete in the Europa League next season.

“It just means you have to put Nice into a trust for a year. It’s hands off for a year,” Ratcliffe said. 

“I get some of it. I think the public perception of a common owner owning two different clubs in the same competition, they want to feel comfortable that there’s no interference. 

“Why would you ever interfere? I don’t know.”