This, of course, came hard on the heels of the shambles surrounding the sacking of his predecessor Erik ten Hag in October 2024, the Dutchman handed a contract extension and £200m in transfer funds on the basis of beating Manchester City in the FA Cup final, only for the folly of that decision to be confirmed when he was out only months later.
United’s pay off to Ten Hag and his staff was £10.4m.
One of the men in on the face-to-face meeting at United’s Carrington training complex in which Ten Hag discovered his fate was then sporting director Dan Ashworth.
And thereby hangs another tale of the mismanagement Ratcliffe has presided over.
Ashworth’s glittering reputation as one of the game’s shrewdest operators meant he was regarded as a prized, crucial acquisition but left in December 2024 after only five months at Old Trafford.
To underscore the shambolic nature of the situation, Ashworth actually spent as long on gardening leave waiting to join from Newcastle United as he did in post at Manchester United.
It was suggested Ashworth had been held responsible for Ten Hag staying, but another theory was that he wanted to target English managers such as Graham Potter and Sir Gareth Southgate rather than Amorim.
The cost of Ashworth’s appointment, taking in compensation to Newcastle and his own pay-off, was revealed to be £4.1m.
For a club earning a reputation for savage cost-cutting under Ratcliffe, with many staff leaving among other “efficiencies”, United were not just making mistakes, but making very expensive mistakes.
Ratcliffe admitted events surrounding Ten Hag and Ashworth were “errors”, calling the latter’s exit “a chemistry issue”.
Amorim, when targeted by United, was regarded as one of European football’s hottest coaching properties for his work in Portugal. He was on Liverpool’s radar, but his fixation on a 3-4-3 system counted against him and they eventually turned – with Premier League title-winning success – to Arne Slot.
It was a strategic approach Amorim could not tear himself away from. The less charitable would call it inflexibility, a constant topic of debate that ultimately also played a part in his downfall.
He was also unproven at Premier League level, actually wanting to wait until last summer to take over with a clean slate. It was a case of “now or never” for Amorim when United came calling.
Amorim was a box office mix of headline-grabbing emotional outbursts and ruthless decision-making, which saw Marcus Rashford shipped off to Barcelona on loan and Alejandro Garnacho sold to Chelsea.
