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Ruthless Ratcliffe prepares to sack more long-serving staff

 

Manchester United staff have been shaken after learning the club have told their longest-serving employee, and their main point of contact with Uefa and the Premier League for match operations, that her job is at risk of redundancy.

Marie Marron has been at Old Trafford for 47 years, initially serving as the personal assistant to the club secretary at the time, Ken Merrett, but becoming a key figure in first-team logistics, acting as the liaison with Uefa and the Premier League as well as the FA and opposing teams before matches. She is also the voice of VAR on match days at Old Trafford.

Marron was the chief co-ordinator for United’s historic Treble in 1999 and was among five long-serving staff who were honoured by the club sponsors in 2013 for their “exceptional dedication and commitment” to the United team.

But in a week when United moved a significant step closer to reaching another major European final with their stunning 3-0 victory in Bilbao, The Times understands the news was broken to Marron in a face-to-face meeting that she was expected to leave at the end of the season.

The new co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has made no secret of the need to make significant savings to ease United’s financial problems, with widespread redundancies aimed at reducing the club’s overall workforce from 1,250 to about 700. In a recent interview with The Times, the British billionaire said the Premier League club needed to make these savings to avoid the risk of “insolvency”.

Ratcliffe is exploring the sale of French side Nice.   New York-based investment bank Lazard has been tasked with finding a buyer for the Ligue 1 club and is looking for a price of €250m ($283.2m, £213m at current exchange rates).

INEOS has invested significantly in Nice, with accounting showing it has put in €216million ($245m) in shares, which does not include other loans they may have made. However, INEOS’ ownership has not always been hugely popular with the Nice fan base, who have viewed themselves as an afterthought in the company’s multi-club model.

Speaking in March, Ratcliffe said he did not enjoy watching Nice due to the standard of football and conceded the club had been running successfully this season without the input of INEOS.  “I don’t particularly enjoy going to watch Nice because there are some good players, but the level of football is not high enough for me to get excited,” Ratcliffe told The Times.

When both United and Nice qualified for the 2024-25 Europa League, UEFA rules required a temporary arrangement which saw a “blind trust” operating Nice. As a result, Nice describes neither INEOS or Ratcliffe having “control or decisive influence” at the club. This was only a temporary solution to enable Nice to play in the same UEFA club competition as Manchester United this season.

 

 

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