How much have managerial sackings cost United?

Manchester United have more than footballing reasons to bear in mind when considering whether or not to bring the Amorim experiment to an abrupt end. Sacking managers/head coaches costs money and, at United, financial concerns have been a prominent topic since Sir Jim Ratcliffe acquired a stake in the club in February 2024.

For almost 27 years from the late 1980s, United didn’t need to worry about what changing their manager would cost. Sir Alex Ferguson’s lengthy and wildly successful time in charge ensured any problems tended to reside away from the Old Trafford dugout. Much has changed since his 2013 retirement. Amorim is that dugout’s sixth permanent occupant in the subsequent 12 years.

All that flux comes at a price. Ferguson’s own departure, while plainly not a sacking, brought about £2.4million ($3.2m at the current rate) in costs to remove coaching staff not wanted by his successor, David Moyes. Just 10 months into a six-year deal, Moyes was out by the following April. Removing him and his own backroom team set United back £4.9m.  That was the cheapest of their recent sackings.

Louis van Gaal lasted two years in Moyes’ wake before his own ousting, with £8.4million the cost to remove the Dutchman and his assistants. Next came Jose Mourinho, whose December 2018 dismissal netted him and his entourage £19.6m (the largest managerial payout in United’s history). Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (£9.1m) and Erik ten Hag (£10.4m) hardly left for pennies either, not least because the latter was dismissed less than four months after United triggered a one-year extension to his contract.

The big uncertainty is Ralf Rangnick, who was appointed as interim manager when Solskjaer went, with a two-year consultancy role lined up for the German once that 2021-22 season ended. He never took up the latter position, but his departure in May 2022 coincided with a further £14.7million in compensation costs landing on United’s books.

Per information briefed by the club at the time, that £14.7million was not exclusively paid to Rangnick and his team. Instead, elements of it went on wider staffing changes within both football and non-football departments at United. The exact amount paid to the German and his staff upon departure is therefore unknown.

The cost to United of sacking managers over the years stands at £54.9million. On its own, for a club of their stature, that’s not a huge amount: less than one per cent of revenues since Ferguson stepped down just over 12 years ago.

 The cost of Ten Hag’s departure was accompanied by the £4.1million United shelled out to remove sporting director Dan Ashworth after just five months in post. Taken together, the costs to remove Ashworth, Ten Hag and the latter’s assistants were equal to two-fifths of the costs incurred on staffing changes at United last season. When it comes to football personnel, one or two mistakes have a big impact.

United shed £51.5million from their wage bill in 2024-25, a big (14 per cent) drop reflective of 176 staff being removed from administrative posts, itself a 22 per cent reduction in headcount. Yet those football sackings ate up 28 per cent of their wage bill savings, and came at a time when the club is still incurring the costs of its sizeable downsizing.

Other payments for loss of office and restructuring and redundancy have hit United’s bottom line to the tune of £34.5million since Ratcliffe arrived and while savings will be felt without the impact of dismissal costs in the future, it still stands that the club could do without expensive errors limiting the positives.

Sacking Amorim and his backroom team would bring further immediate costs. How much is unclear, but with the Portuguese’s contract not due to expire until June 2027, the amounts won’t be miserly, but some would argue that sacking him would pay for itself in better performance.

No European-football income this season is a contributing factor to United already projecting a small drop in revenues in 2025-26, at a time when rivals’ turnover is surging. Those projections include a minimum Premier League finish, too. Fail to achieve that and there’ll be another financial hit.