Manchester United’s director of football Jason Wilcox has called for patience from co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe as the club attempts a long-term rebuild. Significant spending on new players has not yet produced results on the pitch, and manager Ruben Amorim recently met with a number of the club’s decision-makers, including Ratcliffe and Wilcox, to discuss the problems.<\/p>\n
At a Q&A during a dinner marking the 40th anniversary of the Association of Manchester United Players, Wilcox appealed for room to complete the work. “This club is just a wonderful football club and I\u2019m extremely privileged,” he said. “I just pray that we get the opportunity to turn it around. I really feel that it\u2019s not \u2018will we win again?\u2019 it\u2019s \u2018when we are going to win again?'”<\/p>\n
Wilcox stressed the scale of the task ahead. “It\u2019s 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\u2019ve now made some really good additions this summer.”<\/p>\n
He added that reworking the squad has involved both arrivals and departures. “Sometimes taking players out of the squad is just as important as the players that you bring in. We\u2019ve 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\u2019re part of something special.”<\/p>\n
Wilcox was candid about his frustration at the pace of progress. “That\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to bring. I\u2019m extremely proud, I\u2019m extremely privileged, but I\u2019m extremely frustrated as well because we can\u2019t fix it quick enough.”<\/p>\n
He also addressed the cost-cutting and redundancies that have drawn criticism, describing a necessary organisational transformation. “It has been a rollercoaster,” the director of football continued. “I came in last April so I\u2019ve been in just now over 18 months and it\u2019s been a real challenge. I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019ve just been working so hard behind the scenes, there\u2019s an awful lot of work that\u2019s gone on to change the staff. I know in the media there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s really sad to see people lose their jobs, but it was an exercise that needed to be done. Now we\u2019ve got a platform to rebuild.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wilcox urges patience from Ratcliffe as United rebuilds after heavy spending and staff cuts. firmly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2935,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179],"tags":[1038,1021,1041],"class_list":["post-2936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","tag-accounts-2024-25","tag-amorim","tag-amorim-concerns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}