What a squalid, despicable piece of penny-pinching it would be for Man United chiefs to cut £40,000-a-year payment to the club's disabled supporters association, writes IAN HERBERT
- Sir Jim Ratcliffe's arrival has prompted a number of cost-cutting measures
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It costs a few quid when you run Manchester United the way Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his joyless apparatchiks do.
You blow £200million on players for Erik ten Hag, having dithered over whether to sack him. You blow another £15m to remove him and his entourage, and then splash a further £10m to bring in Ruben Amorim.
All that wasted cash. Enough to force Sir Jim into a cold sweat, even at a club which not long ago announced record annual revenues of £662m.
It’s all OK though, because he and his Ineos efficiency people are going through United — the real, beating heart of Manchester United — like a dose of salts. So people such as John Allan and Les Parry and Steve Brown — decent, gracious, uncomplaining staff who you’ve probably not heard of but who gave that club some of the best years of their lives — are out in the cold.
And now the cost-cutters have their sights set on the modest little sum apportioned each year to the Manchester United Disabled Supporters’ Association, who support those fans for whom the very act of turning out to games, week-in, week-out, is a challenge.
That £40,000 — a couple of days’ pay for the top earners on the players’ payroll — subsidises the Christmas Party, an event so popular and oversubscribed that association members only get the chance to go every four years.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe's arrival has seen officials identifying areas where savings could be made
Manchester United are considering halving the amount of money they give to their disabled supports association
United blew £200million on players for Erik ten Hag (left), another £15m to remove him and his entourage, and then splash a further £10m to bring in Ruben Amorim (right)
It subsidises disabled fans’ trips to Champions League games and Wembley finals. It funds the Rollin’ Reds disabled fans’ free magazine.
A decision on whether to halve that £40,000 allocation is under consideration. No one wants to say too much. People don’t want to rock the boat.
There was not unbridled outrage three months ago when United, one of the wealthiest clubs on the planet, increased the price for disabled season-ticket holders to park at Old Trafford by 20 per cent, from £276 to £330. A vicious little move against those for whom attending football matches presents real struggles.
But you only have to speak to those who would be on the receiving end to sense their anxiety about what, if implemented, would be a squalid and despicable piece of penny-pinching.
Who, you have to ask, is Sir Jim listening to, if he is even contemplating this? Does this knight of the realm, who only this summer was lording his credentials as a son of Manchester’s working-class Failsworth district and self-styled saviour of his ‘local’ team, have the remotest grasp of the ordinary folk who are football’s lifeblood? The folk who, in this case, have been fighting for years to improve access.
On Friday night, several of the disabled fans’ association will join the ‘Big Sleep Out’ at Old Trafford, to raise funds for vulnerable people across Manchester ‘It’s important we do our bit,’ one of them says.
For a real sense of how those in the eye of his cutbacks feel, Sir Jim would do well to attend, take in some views, and engage in some conversations.
No one will be banking on it, though. The billionaire owner and his cost-cutters are far away, in a different universe.
