Manchester United director of football Jason Wilcox has urged co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe to remain patient on his quest to rebuild the club.
Ratcliffe and INEOS have overseen drastic changes on both the pitch and in the boardroom. Wilcox has joined as a key part of daily operations alongside Omar Berrada, who left Manchester City to become the new CEO.
Plenty of money has been spent on new players but, as of yet, United are yet to see rewards on the pitch. Manager Ruben Amorim, himself an expensive acquisition, recently met with a number of United’s decision-makers, including Ratcliffe and Wilcox, to discuss all that is going wrong with the club.
“This club is just a wonderful football club and I’m extremely privileged,” Wilcox said during a Q&A at a dinner celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Association of Manchester United Players. “I just pray that we get the opportunity to turn it around. I really feel that it’s not ‘will we win again?’ it’s ‘when we are going to win again?’
“It’s going to take time, it's not a quick fix, especially now with the [profitability and sustainability] regulations. We needed to change the playing squad. We’ve now made some really good additions this summer.
“Sometimes taking players out of the squad is just as important as the players that you bring in. We’ve got to try and bring the culture and the respect back to Man Utd. Whether you work for Man Utd or you play against Man Utd, you feel like you’re part of something special.
“That’s what we’re trying to bring. I’m extremely proud, I’m extremely privileged, but I’m extremely frustrated as well because we can’t fix it quick enough.”
Among the biggest criticisms levelled at United’s ownership has been the level of staff redundancies. Hundreds of non-playing staff were relieved of their duties as part of a strict cost-cutting operation which Wilcox insisted were both brutal and necessary.
“It has been a rollercoaster,” the director of football continued. “I came in last April so I’ve been in just now over 18 months and it’s been a real challenge. I’m not going to lie, I thought the club was in a much better place than what it was. We had no football identity, we lacked alignment between ownership and the CEO on football and the academy.
“We’ve just been working so hard behind the scenes, there’s an awful lot of work that’s gone on to change the staff. I know in the media there’s an awful lot of coverage around redundancies and things like this, but the football club needed to go through a period of transformation. without doubt. Forget the redundancies, the whole structure of Manchester United needed to change.
“It’s really sad to see people lose their jobs, but it was an exercise that needed to be done. Now we’ve got a platform to rebuild.”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as ‘Real Challenge’—Man Utd Director Pleads for More Time to Fix Red Devils.