United’s accounts lay bare the scale of Ratcliffe’s cost-cutting revolution
Manchester United’s newly published 2025-26 financial accounts have put hard numbers on something supporters have felt building for the past two years: a workforce stripped back by almost a third under Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS ownership.
The headline figures
The club’s employee headcount fell from 1,127 to 805 over the two years to June 30 this year — a reduction of 322 jobs, or 28.6% of staff. It’s the clearest evidence yet of how aggressively INEOS has moved to reshape United’s operations since Ratcliffe’s minority stake deal completed in February 2024.
The cuts haven’t landed evenly across the club. United’s in-house media department lost 45% of its staff, while the commercial department was cut by 44% — by far the two hardest-hit areas. Administrative functions, including the ticketing department, accounted for 161 job losses, and a further 60 roles disappeared from the football side of the operation, among them scouts and academy coaches.
How we got here
This isn’t a single announcement — it’s the cumulative result of at least two distinct waves of redundancies. The first came in the summer of 2024, shortly after Ratcliffe’s arrival, when around 250 staff were let go as part of an initial restructuring advised by consultancy firm Interpath. At the time, INEOS pointed to United’s workforce being bloated relative to rivals — citing Arsenal’s roughly 689 average monthly employees and Manchester City’s 520, both well below United’s pre-cut numbers.
A second wave followed in early 2025, with CEO Omar Berrada confirming a further 150 to 200 redundancies as part of what the club called a “transformation plan.” Berrada said the goal was to “put Manchester United in the strongest position to win” across the men’s, women’s, and academy set-ups, while acknowledging the human cost: “We deeply regret the impact on those affected colleagues… these hard choices are necessary to put the club back on a stable financial footing.”
The cuts have gone well beyond headcount too. Reports at the time described reduced catering options for staff at the Carrington training ground and the closure of the employee canteen at Old Trafford — details that became symbolic of how far-reaching the cost discipline has been.
The financial backdrop
The redundancies sit inside a wider picture of financial strain. United’s accounts confirm the club spent £191.7m on new signings this past summer — including Andrey Santos, Youri Tielemans and Carlos Baleba — once agents’ fees and Premier League levies are included. To help fund that, the club took on an additional £90m in borrowing, confirmed in a filing to the New York Stock Exchange, meaning £200m of United’s £400m credit facility is now drawn down.
There is a silver lining in the numbers: total transfer-fee liabilities have actually fallen £72.1m year-on-year, down to £375m from £447.1m the previous year. The accounts follow five consecutive years of financial losses for the club, which is the underlying pressure driving the entire cost-cutting programme.
The reaction
Unsurprisingly, the scale of the cuts — set against continued heavy investment in the playing squad — has reignited debate among supporters. Critics argue it’s hard to reconcile mass layoffs in media, commercial and administrative roles with nine-figure summer spending on new players, while INEOS’s defenders point out that transfer spend and operational overheads are different problems requiring different fixes.
Whatever side of that argument fans fall on, the accounts confirm what had long been rumoured: United’s off-pitch operation looks structurally different than it did before Ratcliffe arrived, and the restructuring shows no clear sign of being finished.