Sir Jim Ratcliffe has criticised former chief , insisting he "didn't have the credentials to manage the club".

Woodward served as United's executive vice-chairman between 2012 and 2022, having been brought to the club by the Glazer family after helping them buy the club in 2005. Woodward worked as an accountant and a banker before joining United and he oversaw their post- decline.

And , who has bought a stake in the club, believes that neither Woodward nor his replacement should have been appointed. When asked about the Glazer family's ownership, Ratcliffe told the : "To be fair to the Glazers, they're really good on the commercial side.

"The people who advise me say the fans don't want to hear it. So I've got to be cautious. I get a lot of criticism if I support the Glazers, but the fact is they're really decent people. They're East Coast, you know — that old East Coast America, they're very polite, they're very civilized, they're the nicest people on the planet.

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"I mean, there isn't a bad bone in Joel Glazer's body. I mean, part of the problem is there isn't a bad bone in his body, which is why he didn't bloody… I mean, I wouldn't have tolerated Ed Woodward, or Richard Arnold.

"Richard was a rugby man, he didn't even understand football. Ed didn't have the credentials to manage the club. He was a merchant banker, an accountant. He wasn't the chief executive."

Arnold left United after Ratcliffe purchased his stake, with Omar Berrada poached from rivals to replace him. "The way I look at it is that you had two management teams at Manchester United for the past 12 years who did a poor job because the owners weren't like, say, Steve Parish [] and Daniel Levy [], they weren't really into the details," Ratcliffe added.

"Those two know what's going on. They're there every day and the management at their clubs are on a short leash. The management of Manchester United have been given a huge amount of rope.

"The owners just managed the club and left the football side alone and they've made a lot of very poor decisions over 12 years, stupid things. They made a complete cock-up of it, shocking really. They couldn't see where they were headed.

"The first management group [Woodward], they thought they understood and wanted to get involved in buying footballers but they didn't have the knowledge to buy footballers, you know, so they went in the marketplace, spraying money around and it was just random, wasn't it?"

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