Johnny Phillips: Can Sir Jim Ratcliffe really make change at Man United with 25 per cent?
The Manchester United takeover saga is rumbling on and it is hard to envisage what the conclusion will look like.
Put simply, we have never seen anything like this put on the table before.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who is the chairman and chief executive of chemical powerhouse INEOS Group, is proposing a new Manchester United football committee of himself, United CEO Joel Glazer and Sir Dave Brailsford, who oversaw seven Tour de France wins in charge of Team Sky and then the rebranded INEOS Grenadiers.
If Ratcliffe’s deal to acquire 25 per cent of the club is agreed, it would herald the beginning of a new ownership model where the investor takes control of football operations but not the wider business. And it sparks the obvious question... Can that actually work?
The Glazer family would retain control of the commercial side of the business, but Ratcliffe would also have a say on those matters due to his minority stake in the club.
It is the football operations side, and what comes under that vague umbrella, which is up for debate.
As part of the £1.3bn deal for a quarter of the Premier League club, Ratcliffe would have control in this area, but it is a legal minefield and will take a lot of paperwork before the nuts and bolts of it all are sorted.
In the event the deal goes through, Ratcliffe would look at performance levels over the entire football operation, not just the first team.
Ratcliffe’s colleagues from INEOS visited Manchester several months ago for an initial perusal of the business, but it was certainly not a forensic examination of the operation.
Brailsford will be a key figure in the new structure.
