Sir Jim Ratcliffe has a god complex gone wrong. The Man United co-owner is guilty of making bad decisions time and time again across multiple sports, writes RIATH AL-SAMARRAI

If Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s hunches on fossil fuels are anything like his instincts in football, then we can only imagine how many pointless holes he has punched into the ground. For now, Manchester United’s ownership is better buried in the deepest of these.

While the sacking of Ruben Amorim could reasonably be seen as the right choice, Ratcliffe’s decision to stick with the Portuguese after his shortcomings became too strong must be challenged.

At this point, we might choose to rewind to October 2025, when Ratcliffe comes out of hiding for an interview.

“He hadn’t had his best seasons,” Ratcliffe said at the time. ‘Ruben needs to show that he is a great coach for three years. I’d be there too.”

But he had more to say and found himself targeting the skeptical.

‘Press, sometimes I don’t understand. They want overnight success. You know, if you push a button, everything will be roses tomorrow.

But just three months later the ax fell on the Portuguese coach; This was also a long overdue move.

‘You can’t manage a club like Manchester United with split-second reactions going to a journalist every week.’

It looks like Ratcliffe’s knees weren’t as strong as he’d like us to believe. Three years? Amorim was given three months. To look at it another way, there was an eerily similar amount of time between Erik ten Hag’s new contract and sacking and Dan Ashworth’s entire tenure.

And this begs the question which should we trust less: Ratcliffe’s word or his judgment?

Whichever way United choose to overturn this latest decision, Amorim’s reign has been a messy one. He was too committed to a single system of play, too emotionally immature for the job and too quick to hide behind institutional failings at United when his own mistakes were just as obvious. It was right to dismiss him.

But the problem is that we knew all of the above for the vast majority of Amorim’s 14 months at the club.

We also know that he largely succumbed to her whims; United supported Amorim as he purged those perceived as bad apples or those who did not fit his strict methodology. Goodness me, the club somehow managed to bolster him with £250m of reinforcements after last season’s poor efforts.

We can make a virtue of staying with a manager (or head coach). But we can also question the stubbornness that combines bad decisions with worse ones. This is what Ratcliffe is repeatedly guilty of; A god complex gone wrong.

A sense of faith is a good thing, but so is humility, and perhaps Ratcliffe needs to ask himself a few questions about that.

Petrochemicals billionaire has set up a hierarchy that oversees some poor decision-making at the club

Following Manchester United’s defeat to Tottenham in the Europa League final, Ratcliffe allowed Amorim to invest in £250 million worth of players rather than sack him

One: Does he really have the skills to vote for himself in this line of work?

Two: beyond Sir David Brailsford’s passion for the nonsense he peddles, how much benefit have they brought to the club from the fortunes he spends on director-level consultants? Do they ever challenge his views, or do they just nod and smile?

Three: Would Amorim have been given so much time if the decision to give the Ten Witch a new contract had not aged so shamefully?

At this stage when Ratcliffe is part owner of United, it is difficult to determine what he is doing right beyond having a non-Glazer surname.

We can extend this assessment to include their efforts in sports, which largely share two characteristics: the stubborn rise of paymasters and returns miles below generous investment levels.

I have been following Ratcliffe’s travels in various forms since he began diversifying about seven years ago. There was a breathtaking arrogance about some aspects of his job, dating back to when Eliud Kipchoge first planned to run a marathon in under two hours.

I was there in 2019 when he expressed his hope that London would implement this initiative. Where it shook was the expectation that the capital would close its busy road network for three consecutive weekends to ensure optimal conditions. When asked somewhat sarcastically if this was possible, he spoke like a man accustomed to getting his own way: ‘There are other places where they can do it. They need to think about it.’

A handful of Ratcliffe’s compelling sporting partnerships (including Sir Ben Ainslie) have since broken down

The mayor of London thought for a moment; The event ended in Vienna.

This mission finally ended with success. But Ratcliffe’s cycling team has weakened dramatically since his emergence and the matchup with the All Blacks came to an ugly conclusion last year. The same goes for the sailing adventure with Sir Ben Ainslie.

I remember visiting the team base in Barcelona and being struck by how many copies of Ratcliffe’s own book were on display in reception.

As always, he felt that the people needed his wisdom. In a sports context he could get away with using a single A4 sheet of paper.