Sir Jim Ratcliffe, co-owner of Manchester United and owner of the Ineos company, recently unveiled an ambitious plan to build a new home for Manchester United, with an estimated construction cost of around 2 billion pounds. The stadium is expected to be ultra-modern, with a capacity of 100,000 seats, and its construction is projected to take at least five years. However, given the club’s ongoing financial struggles and the mounting debt accumulated by the Glazer family over the years, the feasibility of such a project seems somewhat unrealistic.Ratcliffe opens up about Manchester debts, overpaid players and managersOne of the few voices publicly expressing skepticism about its realization is former United midfielder Paul Scholes.”You can sometimes be gullible and believe what Jim Ratcliffe is saying, simply because you’ve never heard anyone else talk about it. You don’t actually know how realistic it is—it’s all still up in the air. Words are cheap. You can say anything about anyone. You can say that in ten years, we’ll have the biggest and best stadium in the world. You can say anything! For a long time, we were considered the richest club in the world, but now I feel like we’re almost begging—asking for funding to build a stadium that will cost two billion while selling players just to buy new ones” he said.Barcelona revival: Lukaku added to the shopping listUnited plans to finance the construction of the stadium and surrounding facilities that would benefit the club directly but is relying on public funds for the wider regeneration of the Old Trafford area. Ratcliffe’s tenure at United over the past 12 months has been marked by tough and unpopular decisions, including raising ticket prices and reducing staff numbers. Out of the 1,140 employees at the club when he arrived, 450 have already been laid off. The first wave of redundancies happened last August, and the second round is expected to take place in May. According to Ratcliffe, the goal is to streamline operations by reducing the workforce to around 700 employees, making the club more efficient while cutting costs.##NAJAVA_MECA_8789783##
