Sir Jim Ratcliffe says would not have appointed David Moyes as Sir Alex Ferguson’s successor if he’d been in charge of Man Utd decisions at the time.
The Red Devils are having a nightmare season with Ruben Amorim appointed as Erik ten Hag’s successor in November after a poor start to the campaign.
However, the Portuguese head coach has actually made things worse at Old Trafford with Man Utd currently 14th in the Premier League with ten games left of the season.
Amorim has won just five of his first 17 Premier League matches in charge of the Red Devils and Man Utd are at risk of having no European football next term unless they win the Europa League.
Ratcliffe conducted a series of interviews on Monday to address a number of issues at the club, including the current terrible results and performances on the pitch, as well as the terrible recruitment over the last few years.
And, in another interview, this time with The Times, Ratcliffe has claimed that Man Utd should never have appointed current Everton boss Moyes, who succeeded Ferguson after the Scot left the club in 2013.
Ratcliffe said: “The way I look at it is that you had two management teams at Manchester United for the past 12 years who did a poor job because the owners weren’t like, say, Steve Parish [Crystal Palace] and Daniel Levy [Tottenham Hotspur], they weren’t really into the details.
“Those two know what’s going on. They’re there every day and the management at their clubs are on a short leash.
“The management of Manchester United have been given a huge amount of rope. The owners just managed the club and left the football side alone and they’ve made a lot of very poor decisions over 12 years, stupid things. They made a complete cock-up of it, shocking really. They couldn’t see where they were headed.
“The first management group, they thought they understood and wanted to get involved in buying footballers but they didn’t have the knowledge to buy footballers, you know, so they went in the marketplace, spraying money around and it was just random, wasn’t it?
“I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that says, well, that’s just life in football, ups and downs, these things happen, because if I look at Real Madrid and Barcelona and Bayern Munich, they don’t do that. They just stay at the top. And it’s not like that here because it’s been poorly managed and they’ve made poor decisions.
“Look, I like David Moyes, and I think he’s a really good manager, but to go from Sir Alex Ferguson to Moyes is not where I would have gone.
“Moyes stepped into the shoes of Ferguson, who’s won the Premier League 13 times, who won the Champions League twice and then you’re handing over to a guy that has never managed big players and had never won anything. He’s not necessarily got the personality to stand in front of them all.
“And I don’t think Real Madrid would have made that choice as coach. If you look at coaches, a club can’t always get it right, but they should have found the best chief executive in the world, and the best coach in the world, because Manchester United is the best club in the world. Instead they got both of those decisions wrong.
“So, in my mind, we have a very professional partnership with the Glazer family. But have you met them? They’re really honest, straightforward, not what you expect when you read about them in the press. And they’re both [Avram and Joel — the most involved in the club] passionate about Manchester United. I like them as people — to be honest, they could have given us a bloody hard time, couldn’t they, after we cocked up with Dan Ashworth and Erik ten Hag? Could have, but didn’t.”