The Manchester United Muslim Supporters’ Club has clarified their recent statement of no confidence against co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
Scathing statement
Last week, the Manchester United Muslim Supporters group released a statement saying Ratcliffe “must go” following his latest controversial remarks on immigration and the state of the UK.
Ratcliffe indicated that the country was in decline due to a combination of high taxes and high immigration. In February, the INEOS chairman was forced to apologise after claiming that the UK was being “colonised by immigrants.”
In their statement, the Manchester United Muslim Supporters Club (MUMSC) said they had hoped Ratcliffe had learned his lesson earlier in the year and were disappointed by his fresh antics.
They labelled his comments “deeply disappointing and completely unacceptable.” The statement added that there is no longer any faith in Ratcliffe and the larger ownership structure.
Now, MUMSC have clarified their statement.
United fan group sets record straight
MUMSC’s chairman Asif Mahmud told the Manchester Evening News, “This has been bubbling for quite some time. It’s not something that’s a knee jerk reaction. We’ve had frustrations at the ownership model for a long, long time.”
“We were very much, genuinely, excited about Jim coming in because he was a Manchester lad, seemed to actually support and care about the club. But since they’ve [Ineos] arrived, it’s just a vicious cycle of hiring and firing, managers not getting backed fully, staff at the club being unhappy, it’s just the overall atmosphere and the feeling around the club, it’s just not good. And that’s been reflected on the pitch.”
According to Mahmud, the writing was on the wall after Michael Carrick was let down in the market and United fell to derby defeat against Manchester City.
“It was actually that evening that I reached out to some of our committee members and said: ‘Look, I feel we should put out a statement about not being happy with the way the club’s being run and how things are going.’ I reached out to a friend who runs another supporters’ club, an official one, and said to them: ‘Look, I think something needs to be done’, and I threw some suggestions, and one of them was that collectively, all supporters’ clubs put out a statement of no confidence.”
“Now, I know it’s just words, and words don’t seem to bother the ownership, but I just felt doing something together would be quite powerful. I also reached out to another fan group and I waited all weekend. There was no interest or anything coming back.”
Mahmud continued, “On that Monday [September 14], a statement was drafted, and it was sent to the two groups that I mentioned. I said: ‘Look, I explicitly stated that it was an idea, it doesn’t have to be our idea. You don’t have to give us any credit. We just feel that something needs to be done. If this is a good idea, then speak to the others and see if they’re interested in doing it’. It wasn’t about speak to the others and see if they want to get in with us and they’ll do it on the back of us. It was, if the other supporters’ club groups think it’s a good idea, let’s just do it.”
“Unfortunately, nothing came back and then on Saturday [September 19], Sir Jim comments about immigration and just the overall ill feeling, again, [that] he brought up comments he’d made previously. We just felt, enough is enough. We need to do something.”
In terms of how the statement was received, Mahmud remarked, “I just feel like a lot of what we’ve said has been lost. All the focus has all been about his comments on immigration, but we can put that to one side. You don’t have to like us, you don’t have to like our religion, you don’t have to like anything about us, but one thing we all have in common is that we hate and we dislike what we’re seeing at Manchester United. Surely we can get behind each other and we can rally and have one voice about what’s going on.”
“We were prepared to put out the statement even before Sir Jim said what he said, risking our official status as a supporters’ club. People have said: ‘Why is there a Muslim supporters’ club?’ And: ‘Why do you need to do this? Do you need to do that?’ Well, to be honest, we were willing to forego even being an official supporters’ club for Man United because we knew that putting out a statement came with risk.”
MEN explain that United currently have no plans to strip MUMSC of their official status.
Featured image Michael Regan via Getty Images
