Man Utd will give Amorim three years, Ratcliffe promises

Manchester United will give under-fire head coach Ruben Amorim three years to prove himself, according to minority owner Jim Ratcliffe.

Amorim, the first coach to be appointed by INEOS chairman Ratcliffe after he was given control of football operations by the Glazer family in 2023, has failed to halt the club's malaise.  

His first season at the helm brought their lowest-ever Premier League finish of 15th, as well as a humiliating Europa League final defeat to Tottenham.

And this campaign has not started much better. Though United battled to a 2-0 win over Sunderland before the international break, they sit 10th in the table, while they were also dumped out of the EFL Cup by fourth-tier Grimsby Town.

Amorim has repeatedly suggested his job could be at risk, and the club's all-time leading scorer Wayne Rooney recently said he had "no faith" in the former Sporting CP boss.

Amorim has only won 19 of his 50 matches in charge of United. Of the last 10 Red Devils managers to reach a half-century of games, only Tommy Docherty (15) and Dave Sexton (18) had earned fewer victories by that point.

His win rate of 29% is comfortably the worst in United's Premier League history, with Ralf Rangnick's 42% the next-worst figure. And since Amorim took the reins last November, their 37 points won in the top flight rank them 14th among the 17 ever-present teams.

However, Ratcliffe remains determined to give him three years at the helm, which would make him the club's longest-serving manager since Alex Ferguson.

"Ruben needs to demonstrate he is a great coach over three years," he told The Business podcast, by The Times and The Sunday Times.

"That is where I would be. Three years. Because football is not overnight. You also look at Mikel Arteta at Arsenal. He had a miserable time over the first couple of years.

"You can't run a club like Manchester United on knee-jerk reactions to some journalist who goes off on one every week."

David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solksjaer, Rangnick and Erik ten Hag all failed to see out three years at the helm, but Ratcliffe says the Glazers – who still own a majority stake in the club – will not force him to dispense with Amorim if results do not improve. 

"It's not going to happen. We're local and they're on the other side of the pond," he said. "That's a long way away to try and manage a football club as big and complex as Manchester United.

"We're here with feet on the ground. They get a bad rap, but they are really nice people, and they are really passionate about the club."

Last month, United reported record-breaking revenues of £666.5m but said they had lost £33m in their most recent set of yearly accounts, and without Champions League football, the club is likely to record further losses in 2025-26.

United spent over £200m to reconfigure their attack with the signings of Benjamin Sesko, Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo in the recent transfer window, and Ratcliffe believes a continued push to increase revenues will pay dividends on the pitch.

He said: "The biggest correlation, like it or not, between results and any external factor, is profitability. The more cash you have got, the better squad you can build.

"A lot of what we have done in the first year is spend an awful lot of time putting the club on a sustainable, healthy footing.

"Those numbers will get better. Manchester United will become the most profitable football club in the world, in my view, and from that will stem, I hope, a long-term, sustainable, high-level of football."