'Man Utd are still in the last century!' - Sir Jim Ratcliffe promises more 'unpopular decisions' as INEOS chief aims to develop world's best recruitment system at Old Trafford

Ratcliffe is approaching the one year anniversary of his INEOS firm purchasing a 27.7 percent stake in the club. He has made huge changes, including overhauling the club's board of directors and sacking coach Erik ten Hag, replacing him with Ruben Amorim. He has also made unpopular calls, such as making 250 staff members redundant, ending Sir Alex Ferguson's ambassadorial role and most recently hiking ticket prices in the middle of the season.

But he has claimed tough decisions were needed to end a decade of stagnation since Ferguson's departure in 2013, taking aim at how the club was run before he took the reins last year. He said the club was way behind its rivals when it came to recruitment and data analysis.

"We have to make some difficult and unpopular decisions. If you shy away from the difficult decisions then nothing much is going to change," Ratcliffe said in an interview with the United We Stand fanzine, via The Athletic. "We still have a long way to go and we still have a number of difficult decisions to make but we have to do that for the better. The club has drifted for a long period of time, a decade or so. Manchester United has become mediocre. It’s not elite and it is supposed to be one of the best football clubs in the world. That’s what it used to be under Alex."

He added: "We’ve not been good enough at recruitment. And until we’re as good as anyone in the world, then it’s not good enough for Manchester United. We must have the best recruitment in the world. Data Analysis comes alongside recruitment. It doesn’t really exist here. We’re still in the last century on data analysis here. There’s an immense amount of useful data that we can get from data analysis and we’re in the ‘very poor’ bracket with data analysis here. These things don’t happen overnight. You can’t just flick a light switch and sort out recruitment. It’s all about people and we need to find the right people."

Ratcliffe also appeared to defend the decision to sack 250 people earlier this year. "The other big one is we need to run the club efficiently and well. We need to sweat every pound so that we have more capacity for the investment in players. Those are the big-ticket items which take up time. The other point here is how you grow the amount of money that you can spend on players. You can run the business more efficiently. And you can grow the top line."

United have failed to win the Premier League since Ferguson retired and last season they posted their lowest league finish since 1990. Chief executive Omar Berrada has said the club should be aiming to win the league by 2028 and Ratcliffe defended that timescale. "We have to set ourselves a timeframe and by 2028 we need to be in a much, much better place."