Michael Carrick is under serious pressure as Manchester United manager after losing 4-1 to Como in the Champions League on Wednesday night, with the club sitting 20th in the Champions League table and 13th in the Premier League after a disastrous start to the season.
Despite only being appointed full-time in the summer, Carrick is already facing calls for the sack. If he were relieved of his duties, he would become the third manager to depart since INEOS bought a minority stake in the club in February 2024.
INEOS era fails to deliver
INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe's agreement to buy a 27.5 per cent stake in United - since increased to 29.4 per cent - was supposed to usher in a new era after more than a decade of underperformance under the Glazer family, yet results have been inconsistent and controversy has followed off the pitch.
Carrick will likely be the fall guy for United's poor start to the season, but the club's issues extend far beyond the manager's responsibilities, and supporters have become increasingly disillusioned. From an all-time low Premier League finish to major redundancies, Standard Sport has assessed the biggest mistakes INEOS have made since arriving at Old Trafford.
Redundancies and scrapped staff perks
Ratcliffe has overseen two major restructuring waves since taking over day-to-day control of United. The club made losses in five consecutive years from 2019 to 2024 before INEOS arrived, and cuts were seen as an inevitable, if unpopular, measure.
Redundancies were viewed by some as par for the course after years of financial mismanagement and poor results on the pitch. But the scale of INEOS' cuts has been vast, with 322 jobs made redundant and a number of staff perks removed, including free travel to the 2024 FA Cup final and free lunches for non-playing employees at Old Trafford and the club's Carrington training ground.
Dan Ashworth's short stint as sporting director
Managerial flip-flopping and poor player recruitment were issues at United long before INEOS came to the club. But their protracted and ultimately short-lived appointment of Dan Ashworth as sporting director showed change was not going to be as straightforward as they had hoped.
Culturally, United have been in a rut since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013, but Ashworth's appointment in July 2024 was seen as a statement, intended to overhaul how the club operated in the transfer market. Just five months later, though, Ashworth left the club, having overseen a £200million summer spend on new players for manager Erik ten Hag, only to sack him 13 games into the season and replace him with Ruben Amorim - who himself only lasted 14 months before the call went out to Carrick.
Ticket fiasco leads to protests
United's performances may be a source of continuing concern, but INEOS' treatment of the club's longstanding, long-suffering supporters has reached fever pitch this season. After the club issued hundreds of season-ticket bans for "significant misuse of the ticketing system for financial gain", supporters protested ahead of last month's Manchester derby.
The protests followed United's decision to remove historical ticket discounts for children and senior citizens in 2024 and introduce a blanket flat rate of £66 per matchday ticket. Some disillusioned fan groups have even called for a boycott of INEOS products in an attempt to hurt the petrochemical company financially and get them to listen to their concerns.
Women's team not a priority
United made their stance clear when Ratcliffe publicly admitted the club were prioritising fixing the men's team while describing the women's team as an "opportunity" rather than a focus. United's women's team were temporarily displaced from training facilities at Carrington in June 2024 and placed into temporary cabins to accommodate building modernisation for the men's team.
A general lack of investment in the playing squad has left United's women's team at a crossroads, and despite winning each of their last six games, their future remains uncertain.
