Manchester United minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe made a number of comments regarding the club's playing squad, recent staff cuts and plans over a new stadium.
In wide-ranging interviews with the BBC and Sky Sports, Ratcliffe said "some players" are not good enough, and that some are "overpaid," while also shelving some accountability for the squad as remnants of a past regime.
He also argued that United needed to make significant cuts -- that included cutting money to former players and making hundreds of redundancies -- claiming the club would be "out of cash" by the end of 2025 had they not acted.
Here's what was said:
On Man United squad: 'Some not good enough'
"Some are not good enough, some are probably overpaid," he told the BBC. "But for us to mould a squad, that we are fully responsible for, and accountable for, will take time.
"We've got this period where we will move from the past to the future and we are in the middle of that period. There are some great players in the squad as we know. The captain is a fabulous footballer. We definitely need Bruno [Fernandes]. Without him it would be really tough."
On club's financial picture: 'Out of cash by Christmas'
"I just think when you are in a period of change, it is disruptive," he told the BBC. "It does, if you will excuse the pun, take people's eye off the ball a bit. We have got a club which was in a level of financial difficulty. Manchester United would have run out of cash by the end of this year -- by the end of 2025 -- after having me put $300m (£232.72m) in and if we buy no new players in the summer.
"If we hadn't have implemented the cost programmes and restructuring that we have done over the last 12 months.
"So we have to deal with all those things, and there's only so many things you can deal with at once. We have a new management team, we have to deal with the financial restructure, then we have to move on to the squad, data analysis, and moving forward.
"But we are in the process of change and it's an uncomfortable period and disruptive and I do feel sympathy with the fans. But I am not actually surprised where we are in the league because Ruben's only got a certain size of squad he can deal with, and quite a number of those players are injured or not available to him."
Later in the BBC interview, he added: "The simple answer is the club runs out of money at Christmas if we don't do those things [widespread cuts and restructuring]. Ultimately, if you look at running the club the size of Manchester United with an income of about £650m you spend a part of that £650m on operating the club and part of it on the squad.
"Where do you want to spend the money? Do you want to spend it on operating the club, or do you want to spend it on the squad? Because if you spend it on the squad you get better results. And at the end of the day what's Manchester United here for if it's not to win trophies and silverware. What we want to do is invest in the best players in the world if we can, rather than spend it on, I'm afraid, free lunches."
On Premier League title ambitions: '2028 a fine target'
"No, I don't think it's mission impossible," he told the BBC.
"I think it's good to have goals and objectives. It's good to put a time rather than just a bland statement that at some stage we want to win the Premier League again.
"Putting a timetable is fine. Obviously it's the 150th anniversary of what I think is the world's greatest football club in 2028 so I think it's a very fine target. Whether that's feasible ... I'm not Mystic Meg. I don't have a magic wand. I can't see into the future, obviously.
"I think if you look at Arsenal, if you look at Liverpool, if you look at the period of time it took them to get the house in order and get back to winning ways, that's probably slightly on the short end of the spectrum. But it's not impossible.
"I look at Liverpool when [Jurgen] Klopp arrived in 2015 with Michael Edwards and Ian Graham on the data side, they rebuilt the squad over 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 and then they won everything in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
"Mikel Arteta has been at Arsenal for four or five years now, and you can see Arsenal is in a very different place than where it was five years ago. So I think we are talking about three years. Maybe that's slightly ambitious but I think it is the 150th year anniversary so it's a good target for us. We are here. We have to measure ourselves. Whether we are doing the things we said we would do which is to get United back to where it should be."
On Ruben Amorim: 'Done a remarkably good job'
"I think Ruben has done an excellent job," he told Sky Sports. "I really like Ruben.
"I think in the circumstances... I mean he arrived mid-season, he didn't have time to train his players in the way in which he wants to play, he inherited a squad which he's had no influence on, and the squad isn't necessarily designed for the way in which he plays football, and English isn't his natural language, and he's never played in the Premier League before, and he's managing the biggest club in the world, and it's a tough place, and he's a young guy.
"If you take all of that into consideration, I think he's done a remarkably good job."
Speaking to the BBC, he added: "I think Ruben is an outstanding young manager. I really do. He's an excellent manager and I think he will be there for a long time."
On fury over women's team comments: 'Bit unfair'
"It's a bit unfair," Ratcliffe told BBC.
"What I said at the beginning was my main focus is on the men's team because that, at the end of the day, is what moves the needle at Manchester United. The women's team is much smaller than the men's team.
"Of our £650m of income, £640m of that comes from the men's team and £10m comes from the women's team. With my business background you tend to focus on the bigger issues before you focus on the smaller issues.
"But the women's team wear the Manchester United brand, the Manchester United logo, so in that sense they are every bit as important as the men's team. And frankly, they are doing better than the men's team -- they are second in the league and won the FA Cup last season. Marc Skinner is doing a great job as the coach and the new captain Maya [Le Tissier] is doing a great job."
On new stadium plans: 'Will attract our billion fans'
"We obviously have the day tomorrow [Tuesday] where we will talk about that in quite a bit more detail, but we have those two alternatives and we have looked at them in great detail," he told the BBC.
"The government has announced three major growth projects for the UK, of which the regeneration of southern Manchester is what they describe as a shining example of their growth strategy for the future. And it would be the biggest regeneration project in Europe, assuming it goes ahead.
"If it goes ahead then we would, I think, underpin that with a new stadium. Because with regeneration projects you need a nucleus, you need a heart to a regeneration programme, otherwise it's just a housing estate. But I think if we were to build the most iconic football stadium in the world, which I think we will do, then that will attract the billion fans we have got round the world. They will all want to come to Manchester.
"The value added to Manchester of that, and to the north of England, is enormous. It's five, seven, billion [pounds] a year. It's an enormous amount. You'll hear more about that tomorrow."
On ticket pricing increases: 'Not an enormous thing'
"Well, I don't get involved in the detail of ticket pricing," he told the BBC. "That's for the management of the club, not for me really.
"My sort of general principles on ticket pricing are that it should be fair, affordable for the people in Manchester. We do need to look after the U16s and the older people who do not have as much money, but at the same time ticket income is part of the overall income of the club.
"The club receives income from ticketing, from merchandising and from TV. They are all major components of how much money we have to spend on new players and the squad.
"I know we got a lot of criticism, and I think it was somewhat inadvertent a few months ago on ticket pricing, but the reality of that was that 500 tickets out of 75,000 were returned to the club by people who had bought those tickets but they didn't want to go the game and wanted their money back. And they had been discounted, either because they were younger people or older people. So we gave those 500 people their money back and then the club sold the tickets at face value, which was £66. But it was only 500 tickets.
"I know that caused quite a lot of excitement. It wasn't an enormous thing in the great scheme of things. We have 49,000 season tickets and most of them are reasonably priced."
On Marcus Rashford: 'Pleased for him'
"No, I am pleased. He's moved out of Manchester and maybe that's a good thing for him," he told the BBC regarding the forward's move to Aston Villa on loan in early February.
"I am very pleased he is doing well. It's good to see because he has got tremendous talent, but for whatever reason it wasn't working in Manchester for the past couple of seasons. But he is a very talented footballer, Rashford."