“Ruben Amorim’s exit is the latest example of Manchester United’s chaos under Sir Jim Ratcliffe.”

This of course followed the chaos surrounding the sacking of his predecessor Erik Ten Hag in October 2024, with the Dutchman offering a contract extension and £200m in transfer money based on a win over Manchester City in the FA Cup final, only for the folly of that decision to be confirmed when he exited just months later.

United’s salaries for Ten Hag and his staff amounted to £10.4m.

One of the men who attended the face-to-face meeting at United’s Carrington training complex in which Ten Hag discovered his fate was sporting director Dan Ashworth.

Thus hangs another story of mismanagement overseen by Ratcliffe.

Ashworth’s glittering reputation as one of the smartest players in the game meant he was viewed as a valuable and crucial acquisition but he departed in December 2024 after just five months at Old Trafford.

And to underscore the shameful nature of the situation, Ashworth spent as much time on gardening leave waiting to join from Newcastle United as he did in his position at Manchester United.

Ashworth was said to be responsible for Ten Hag’s survival, but another theory is that he wanted to target English managers such as Graham Potter and Sir Gareth Southgate rather than Amorim.

The cost of appointing Ashworth, along with Newcastle’s compensation and his own salary, was revealed to be £4.1m.

For a club that had developed a reputation for brutal cost-cutting under Ratcliffe, with several staff departures among other ‘efficiencies’, United were not just making mistakes, they were making costly mistakes.

Ratcliffe admitted that the events surrounding Ten Hag and Ashworth were “mistakes”, and described the latter’s exit as a “chemical issue”.

Amorim, when targeted by United, was viewed as one of the hottest coaching talents in European football due to his work in Portugal. He was on Liverpool’s radar, but their focus on a 3-4-3 system worked against him, and they eventually turned – after winning the Premier League title – to Arne Slott.

This was a strategic approach that Amorim could not turn away from. The less charitable would call it inflexibility, a constant topic of debate that also ultimately played a role in his downfall.

He has also not proven his quality at Premier League level, and in fact wanted to wait until last summer to take over with a clean record. It was a case of ‘now or never’ for Amorim when United called.

Amorim was a box office mix of headline-grabbing emotional outbursts and tough decision-making, which saw Marcus Rashford move to Barcelona on loan and Alejandro Garnacho sold to Chelsea.