At least we can all return to our original seats now. No, Manchester United have no intention of being serious.
It was fun while it lasted, that FA Cup final triumph and those really earnest supplications from manager Marc Skinner – now wearing a gold medal, not a lousy silver one – that now United will start taking this women’s football thing seriously. Ta-ra, you chimeric Red Devil dream, you.
I mean, look, are you surprised? Are you? On a scale of 1 to totally shook that United have reportedly told their women’s team to skedaddle for a season to let the Real Footballers – the First Team – train and prepare and win while their facilities are under the hammer – is it a 2? 3? A degree of incredulity, maybe an eyebrow raise. Because this isManchester United. There’s a reputation beginning to brew here.
Maybe now we should return to the words of Sir Jim Ratcliffe during his United unveiling in February. The 71-year-old INEOS billionaire, now fully in charge of football operations at the club, said a lot. He spoke – in that classic sultry entrepreneur lilt – about restoration. About bringing back the golden days.
And doing so without grandiose extravagance and waste and plunder and woke things like working from home and high email traffic. But rather with methodical planning. Rolling up the sleeves, using sweat, patience and, yeah fine, money. But also sweat and patience and shrewd business plans and excel sheets and look, no emails!
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In an alternative universe not that distant from ours, Ratcliffe might have pulled out a red baseball cap (which you can buy for just £24.99 from the Official Club Shop) and declared to Make Manchester United Great Again (MMUGA). Of course, that’s MMU(FT)GA: Make Manchester United’s First Team Great Again. Not the women’s team. Not the side that also lifted a FA Cup trophy at Wembley Stadium last season and produced its worst top-flight finish in history and whose high-profile stars have desperately cried out for signs of ambition and direction.
INEOS declared they were taking a “football first” approach to reroute United to the top in three-to-four years time. Ignoring that this apparently means spending half a month trawling the postseason waters for a new manager, then deciding you’ve got a decent one and just going with it - it also means incremental change. Change that is so incremental and fastidious that it can only comprehend one team at a time, apparently.
INEOS made clear that their main ambition was to stabilise the men’s side first. While women's football continues to grow exponentially, men's football continues to generate the largest revenue. But INEOS also maintained that a similar timescale to establish the women's team as a similar premier force in England also applied.
Marc Skinner shut down insinuations that Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s absence from the Women’s FA Cup final was a sign of inferior treatment of the women' team (James Gill - Danehouse/Getty Images)Ratcliffe seemed to fumble that promise earlier this month as he admitted plainly to Bloomberg that, oh, detailed plans? For the women’s team? Before we’ve officially ushered Dan Ashworth into the building and figured out a way to make money for every time Antony spins in a circle, like TikTok loops? Those plans?
That Ratcliffe seemed so detached in his admission speaks volumes. Ratcliffe, throughout his unveiling interviews, referred to the women’s team as “Ladies”, an old-school moniker that almost every women’s team has dropped due to its connotations of delicacy.
Asked about a stadium for the women’s team – who currently play at the 12,000-capacity Leigh Sports Village, shared with rugby league team Leigh Leopards and residing 25 kilometres from Manchester city centre – Ratcliffe revealed he'd like to build a brand new ‘main’ stadium, while creating a smaller facility for “community things, be it a concert or whatever”.
Ratcliffe added: “The ladies’ teams, academy teams, some of the local teams could play there. Old Trafford could become a community asset and then you’d have this world-class stadium next door.”
High-profile players such as Ella Toone and Mary Earps have been made to make room for United's men's team (2024 Getty Images)Indeed, the signs have been there, piling atop each other like junk and general human castoff in the broom cupboard next to the water heater and the mop: Ratcliffe opting to entertain Sir Keir Starmer at a drowning Old Trafford rather than at Wembley for United Women’s FA Cup final; Mary Earps calling on the hierarchy to provide her assurances of the club’s direction; Ratcliffe admitting openly that strategies for the women’s team were TBC; Earps reportedly preparing to depart for Paris Saint-Germain, not for finances but because of the promise to compete for trophies, a promise that Alessia Russo and Ona Batlle chased last summer; and now, portable buildings, because the £10million state-of-the-art facility provided the women’s team last year was always seemingly a gift, not a right.
The latter is oddly appropriate for a team that deep down felt transient. It’s worth remembering that the Glazers had scratched United’s women’s team almost two decades ago, citing the money squandered, the team not facilitating in their cash-cowing. Only in 2018, when anyone with a Hargreaves and Lansdown account and a general ability to read graphs could note that a shiny new football toy was on the precipice of taking off, did that change. Get the cheque books out, boys. We’re bringing back the women’s team.
From there, the hierarchy was established: the women’s team as an additional form of financial fodder to feed the furnaces of the creaking Manchester United ghost ship scuffing around and haunting Old Trafford.
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Manchester United's women's team have reportedly been put into portable buildings at Carrington to accommodate the men's team (2023 Manchester United FC)Really, this isn’t even about Manchester United - despite the fact everything seems to be about, and no bigger, than Manchester United. Reading Women, in the WSL just two seasons ago, have no pre-season kits ordered, no word on contracts and no idea whether the team will be competing in the Championship or somewhere in the depths below.
Earlier this month Durham-based Thornaby United – whose senior women’s side finished third in the North East Regional Women’s Football League (tier six) – declared it was ditching its women's set-up from under-7s to the senior side due to finances, only about-facing after the likes of Bethany England and Beth Mead shared their “disgust” and shock.
Which beggars the question: should we be shocked? If a club like United feel safe to skimp, save and sacrifice their women’s set up for the sake of the men’s team’s salvation, then why wouldn’t those further below take up a similar baton and wield it? What is United if not the ultimate influencer club, their reputation preceding them?
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