Man Utd fans are fuming over sky-high ticket prices and prospect of selling academy stars - Sir Jim Ratcliffe cannot let them pay the price for club's self-inflicted PSR problem

The fans who spotted Ratcliffe's car were not alone in voicing their disapproval over the way they have been treated by the INEOS regime. During the scrappy 1-0 win at Craven Cottage the away fans were heard chanting "£66 quid, taking the p**s". A spicier ditty, containing the words "Just like the Glazers, Jim Ratcliffe's a c**t" was also aired.

Ratcliffe would not have taken kindly to such abusive language when he heard it in the stands or from the back of the car. So, it was a good thing that the Manchester United Supporters Trust, MUST, penned a considered letter addressed to the Manchester-born billionaire on Monday morning on the subject of ticketing policies.

The MUST letter warned that raising prices would create a hostile atmosphere at Old Trafford which could further harm the team and ultimately damage the club as a business, while "poisoning the well" over the plans to build a new 100,000-seater stadium.

"With the team struggling on the pitch and fan sentiment already at a low ebb, we all need to pull together to lift the team’s performance, not risk deepening divisions or creating further dissatisfaction," read the letter.

MUST also warned that, with the team in such a dire state on the pitch, it was the worst possible time to hike prices.

MUST are not the only fan group to have had correspondence with United recently.

The 1958 and Fan Coalition 1958 groups had previously written to CEO Omar Berrada on the issue of ticket prices and the response from the club's chief, who was headhunted from Manchester City, was truly astounding. The response merely paid lip service to the supporters' concerns over affordability and, worst of all, appeared to suggest that fans will have to foot the bill for the club's problems trying to comply with the Premier League's Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR).

Berrada's letter read: "We are determined to ensure that our current fans can continue to afford to attend games and that tickets are accessible for future generations of fans. As previously communicated, we are however currently making a significant loss each year – totalling over £300 million ($370m) in the past three years.

"This is not sustainable and if we do not act now we are in danger of failing to comply with PSR/FFP [financial fair play] requirements in future years and significantly impacting our ability to compete on the pitch. We do not expect fans to make up all the current shortfall - but we do need to look at our ticketing strategy to ensure we are charging the right amount, and offering the right discounts, across our products for our fans."

The £300m ($375m) loss is both shockingly high and yet unsurprising given how woeful the club's recruitment has been lately, both before Ratcliffe showed up and under the INEOS chief's stewardship. The club's transfer activity since 2022 has been a museum of costly blunders, none more so than paying £86m ($107m) for Antony, who has just departed for Real Betis on loan after contributing 12 goals plus three assists in 96 appearances.

The Brazilian was also on astronomical wages of £200,000 ($250,000) per week, putting him among the top five earners at the club. Less than a year before United signed him, Antony was initially valued at just £25m ($31m) by United scouts. He was not exactly a star before he moved to the Premier League, scoring eight Eredivisie goals in his last season at Ajax, hardly prolific given the standard of the Dutch top flight.

Antony was not the exception, though, or one bad egg. He has been merely part of an overall pattern of squandering money like it's going out of fashion. That same summer United splurged up to £70m ($87m) on Casemiro, who has not played since December 30 despite not being injured, and made him the club's top earner on £350,000 ($435,000) per week.

The following year they paid up to £60m ($75m) to sign Mason Mount, who has been injured for the majority of his time at the club, making just nine Premier League starts. Then they paid up to £72m ($90m) for Rasmus Hojlund, who has scored two league goals this season, and £47m ($58m) for Andre Onana, who has made a laughable amount of serious errors in his one-and-a-half seasons.

Ratcliffe, in fairness, was not at the club when those decisions were made. And it has been revealed that the billionaire was highly critical of the Casemiro deal when he went through the club's accounts. But the Glazer family, who still control 67.9% of voting rights and 48.9% of shares, were.

The American family have not invested any money in the club since the club was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012. Taking into account the £432m ($537m) in dividends the family have received while owning the club, they have invested a grand total of £45m ($56m) of their own money over the past 20 years. How about Ratcliffe and Berrada encourage the majority owners to contribute to "make up some of the current shortfall" rather than the fans who have supported the club through thick and thin?

Yet Ratcliffe, who decried United as "the dumb money" long before purchasing his stake in the club, has also presided over mistake after mistake in just one year in charge of the football operation. He and his colleagues did not have the courage to sack Erik ten Hag after the FA Cup triumph over Manchester City and instead handed him an extended contract, raising the cost of sacking him four months later to more than £10m (£12m).

The dilly-dallying over Ten Hag meant they had limited options when it came to replacing the Dutchman, leading them to spend £11m ($14m) to release Ruben Amorim from his contract with Sporting CP. Anyone with even basic knowledge of the Portuguese's track record should have known that he needed plenty of time on the training ground to implement his 3-4-2-1 formation and a certain profile of players, namely young energetic athletes, to make it work. In effect, the opposite of the squad he was about to take charge of. United's results are even worse under Amorim than they were under Ten Hag and winning the Europa League is their only realistic hope of qualifying for the Champions League and getting a slice of the highly lucrative prize money.

United have also made big transfer mistakes on Ratcliffe's watch, spending £180m ($224m) last summer, the third largest amount in the Premier League after Chelsea and Brighton. Noussair Mazraoui looks to be the best signing of the four that came in although his performances have declined sharply in the last two months. Joshua Zirkzee has been booed by his own supporters and scored just three Premier League goals, while Matthijs de Ligt has been inconsistent and Leny Yoro is still finding his way in a new league after picking up a serious ankle injury in pre-season.

But the most embarrassing mistake of Ratcliffe's year at the helm was the saga surrounding sporting director Dan Ashworth, who United paid around £5m ($6m) to hire from Newcastle, waited five months for him to start work and then sacked five months into the job, likely paying out a considerable sum in compensation fees.

Yet rather than take responsibility for these mistakes, Ratcliffe wants the lifeblood of the club, match-going fans, to pay for them. The billionaire, who moved his residency from Hampshire to Monaco to avoid having to pay an estimated £4 billion ($5bn) in tax, showed his disdain for United supporters in a brazen interview with fanzine United We Stand in December.

"I don’t think it makes sense for a Manchester United ticket to cost less than a ticket to see Fulham," Ratcliffe remarked, while having the cheek to add: "We must make sure that we look after the community because at the end of the day it’s their football club. We need to make sure that people who are genuine supporters can afford to go."

Fulham charge the highest prices in the Premier League, with face-value tickets for Sunday's game with United, an unspeakably dull match until Lisandro Martinez struck, costing up to £160 ($200). Fulham is also one of the richest boroughs in London, with average house prices more than triple what they are in Manchester. As Paul Scholes put it: "How can you ask Manchester United fans to pay more money with what’s on the football pitch? £66 for a ticket is ridiculous. If you think of Manchester, there are so many deprived areas and Sir Jim Ratcliffe himself is from Failsworth - which is a deprived area.

"If you take one kid with you, that’s £120, if you take a family, you’re looking at £300-400 - it’s not right. Where do these owners get the front to put ticket prices up? For the value - we’re probably having our worst ever Premier League season and they’ve got the cheek to put the prices up."

Ticketing is not the only issue where Ratcliffe has gone against the wishes of fans and against the club's traditions. He ordered that 250 staff were made redundant, paying a consultancy firm £8m ($10m) to carry out a process which is only expected to save the club £30m ($37m) in the next two years. He has also cut funding from the club's charitable foundation and its association for former players, many of whom retired in the 1980s or earlier and never got a share of the riches that modern players enjoy. Not even Sir Alex Ferguson, the man who made United the global phenomenon it is today, was exempt from Ratcliffe's cutbacks.

Ratcliffe is also attempting to use one of fans' biggest sources of pride, the club's academy, as a means to get out of the financial mess he and the Glazers got them into. Watching Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo go from FA Youth Cup winners to first-team regulars last season was one of the few memorable things about last year's disastrous seasons and it was fitting that they each scored in the FA Cup final win over City.

But now both players are up for sale, with Chelsea circling around Garnacho. The midfielder and winger formed part of an iconic photo last season with Rasmus Hojlund but they have been reduced to saleable assets, offering a 'pure profit' incentive in the PSR battle.

Ratcliffe was seen as a knight in shining armour when he emerged as the main contender to purchase the club, a locally-born antidote to the poison of the absentee Glazer owners. It has taken just one year for him to be seen, in the words of one of the furious fans outside Craven Cottage, to be "worse than the Glazers".

But it doesn't have to stay this way. And Ratcliffe could take some advice from United's arch rivals Liverpool, whose owner John Henry has listened to fan criticism in the past. Reds' supporters were up in arms when, in the middle of the testing 2015-16 season when Jurgen Klopp had recently replaced Brendan Rodgers, the club announced that the most expensive match ticket would rise from £59 ($73) to £77 ($96) while season tickets in the Main Stand would leap from £869 ($1080) to £1029 ($1280).

Fan groups organised a walk-out in the 77th minute during a home game with Sunderland and around 10,000 took part. The show of solidarity prompted a U-turn from the club and an apology from Henry, who apologised for "the distress caused by our ticket pricing plan" and admitted "part of the ticketing plan we got wrong".

Liverpool's owners are far from perfect and, like the Glazers, Henry played a big role in the shameful move towards the European Super League before it was quickly abandoned by all six English clubs. On the whole, however, Henry is seen as a good owner and, harnessed by Klopp, there has been a real sense of unity at Liverpool in the last decade which has helped spur the club's huge success on the pitch and massive commercial growth off it.

United's fans are asking Ratcliffe, who has previously talked up his working class roots in Failsworth in north Manchester and went to Old Trafford as a child, to row back on his plans in the club's best interests. "This is not simply about protecting supporters’ pockets. We understand the financial realities of running the club.

However, there is a strong correlation between fan relations and both financial and on-field outcomes," read the MUST statement. "Poorly timed changes to ticketing policies risk undermining the very atmosphere and support that drive success on the pitch, leading to far greater losses in revenue than any gains from ticket price increases or policy changes.

"By freezing prices and avoiding major disruptive policy changes now, you have the opportunity to signal that you value the unique role of fans in Manchester United’s success. Together, we can build a stronger future for the club. The consequences of ignoring this are significant, but the benefits of getting it right are immeasurable."

Liverpool are not the only top club that have listened to supporters over ticket prices and kept them low in order to ensure, as Ratcliffe puts it, the genuine fans can still afford to go. Bayern Munich's cheapest season ticket is £142 ($177), while Real Madrid's is £249 ($310). Those clubs aren't doing too badly.

There are plenty of ways for United to get back to being financially healthy without angering and alienating fans. Having a sensible transfer policy, knowing when to fire and hire managers, and doing due diligence on the sporting director you have long coveted would be good places to start.