MANCHESTER UNITED supremo Sir Jim Ratcliffe is accused of being a football incompetent wrecking a club with a glorious past.
Not by the hordes of fans who angrily suffered the indignity of an early FA Cup defeat by Brighton on their own ground.
But by a passionate supporter of French club Nice, another Ratcliffe acquisition, who tells him: “Please get out of our club NOW.”
Fan club leader Solange Claude adds: “Ratcliffe may be an expert in the chemicals industry, but he has shown he knows nothing about football. He is an incompetent.
“I can understand how all those United fans must be feeling. What he is doing to their club he has already done to ours.
“He bought us for €100million in 2019 and promised we would rival PSG as a regular European competitor. There are Sunday morning teams who play ten times better than us at times.”
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Ratcliffe, who has a home just next door in Monaco, doesn’t think much of Nice either. He promised a bright future, but doesn’t go to watch them now because he reckons they are not good enough.
“Who’s fault is that?”, says Solange. “He got us into Europe alright. Result, we are bottom of the Europa League after losing all six games.
“It didn’t help that he sold some of our best players as soon as we had qualified and has not replaced them.”
United fans have called for a vote of no confidence in Ratcliffe and around 400 Nice supporters went a lot further recently.
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They mobbed the team at the training ground, threw missiles and scuffled with players. Police are investigating complaints from two players that they were kicked, punched and spat on.
Solange, president of the Nice Supporters Club founded in 1947, said: “They were not our members. They were the ultras who have been banned from travelling.
“We are more reasonable people, but we have reached the end of our tether.
“We have become the clowns of Europe – a laughing stock because Ratcliffe has not brought in new players, not even one or two from United. The whole thing has been a fiasco.”
Nice were four times French champions in the 1950s and twice went deep into the old European Cup. They have had former Premier League stars like Mario Balotelli and Hatem Ben Arfa in their colours in recent years.
Solange continued: “We now fear relegation and, if that happened, it would be the end of us.
“There was plenty of optimism when Ratcliffe’s brother Bob was first appointed to run us. He did not last too long, nor did Dave Brailsford, the cycling man out of his depth in football.
“That sums up the whole approach. Now people from the past have been put in charge, A bit like what is happening at United, I hear.”
Ratcliffe is now looking for a buyer with an asking price of €250m.
Solange concluded: “He’ll be lucky. He is not used to losing money with his chemicals, but he will have to, now he has devalued us so much.”