“I don’t know what they want” – Manchester United bidders slammed for treatment of club, lack of “clear and defined strategy”

Potential Manchester United owners INEOS have been accused of lacking a “clear and defined strategy” at their current club Nice.

That’s the opinion of former France midfielder Emmanuel Petit, who has slammed the lack of planning at the Ligue 1 side.

INEOS, headed up by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, are currently in the running to take over Manchester United as the Glazer family look to sell some or all of their shares at Old Trafford.

They’ve been bidding against Sheikh Jassim to win the auction for the club, with the latest reports stating that they are at the front of the queue, despite a late bid from the Sheikh.

Should they become the favoured bidders and complete a takeover they would add Manchester United to a group of clubs they already run, which includes Nice and Swiss Super League side FC Lausanne-Sport, while they are also in partnership with Racing Club Abidjan from Ivory Coast.

But it seems not everyone is convinced by what is happening at Nice, and Petit has been less than impressed by what he’s seen from the management.

“Since INEOS arrived in Nice, I don’t know who makes the decisions,” he said.

“I don’t know where they want to go. I don’t know what they want to do with this club, especially since with Manchester United behind us we don’t know if they’re going to pull out overnight.

“That’s what puzzles me, actually. A group like INEOS, which manages 17,000 people around the world and has a turnover of 80bn, is not even capable of managing a club like Nice at the moment and having a clear and defined strategy.

“When you take the best sporting director, Ghisolfi at Lens, who made miracles on the transfer market with three francs and six pennies.

“You see today that he is in total disagreement with what we are trying to impose on him concerning the extension of certain players like Ramsey.

“Who is making the decisions? Mr. Ratcliffe, Mr. Blanc, Mr. Rivère, whose silence has been deafening for the past few weeks regarding the affairs. He told us in February: You’ll see, we’ll give you the name of the future coach in February.

“It’s the end of May and we still don’t know what’s going to happen at Nice with the market coming up quickly. The direction that INEOS and OGC Nice want to take, I have no idea!”