Manchester United’s minority owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, has admitted that focusing on the men’s side means he has not gone into detail on the women’s team yet, despite the women’s transfer window opening on Monday.
In an interview with Bloomberg, when asked what they are doing with the women’s team, Ratcliffe replied: “Well they’ve just won the FA Cup.” Questioned on whether they have looked at spinning off the women’s team, with Chelsea having recently announced that their side will become a standalone entity, sitting alongside the men’s team and with the club ownership group as the controlling shareholder, Ratcliffe conceded: “We haven’t gone into that level of detail with the women’s football team yet. We’ve been pretty much focused on how do we resolve the first-team issues, in that environment, and that’s been pretty full time for the first six months.”
He then responded “correct” when asked whether plans were TBC. His comments have had a frosty reception from many fans, with the decision to describe the men’s team as “the first team” seen as disappointing as there had been hopes that the women’s team would be taken more seriously under the new stewardship.
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Ratcliffe, who completed the purchase of his 27.7% stake in the club in February, gave Marc Skinner a one-year contract extension as women’s team manager in May. The announcement of the new deal came shortly after United’s triumph over Tottenham in the Women’s FA Cup final at Wembley.
However, despite that success, Manchester United’s fifth-place finish in the Women’s Super League was disappointing. Skinner’s side fail to build on the impressive second place achieved in 2022-23 and recorded their worst WSL finish in their five years in the top flight, with seven losses and five draws.
Ratcliffe’s comments about the lack of a strategy for the women’s team are also concerning as United have a number of players out of contract this summer, including their captain, Katie Zelem, plus Mary Earps, Nikita Parris and Lucía García.
