Sir Jim Ratcliffe issues direct Man United warning to Premier League as message to regulators is sent

Sir Jim Ratcliffe has warned the Premier League it could end up “spending more time in court” than working out what’s best for the league.

The INEOS founder has co-owned Manchester United since February and Ratcliffe controls football operations at Old Trafford. The 71-year-old brought in Jason Wilcox as technical director, with Omar Berrada following from Manchester City as CEO in July.

And Ratcliffe shared his belief that the people running the Premier League are in danger of ruining the world’s richest football competition.

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“We have more accountants than sports people at Manchester United,” he told Bloomberg. “If you’re not careful, the Premier League will end up spending more time in court than it thinks about what’s good for the league.”

Of a government regulator, he said: “I can understand why they challenge it. You can understand why they would say they want an open market, a free market.

“If you have a government regulator, at the end of the day, they’re going to regulate, and that’s not going to be good. Also under attack was the system of so-called “anchoring”, due to be trialled next season, which would tie spending to a factor of lower clubs’ income.

“What would anchoring do? It would inhibit the top Premiership clubs. The last thing you want in the Premiership is for the top Premiership clubs not to be able to compete with Real Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Bayern Munich and PSG.”

When asked for his advice to the Premier League to try even more rules, he replied: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”