Manchester United have admitted that they are at risk of breaching profit and sustainability (PSR) rules if they do not cut their losses and have left the door open to ticket price rises next season.

United have posted losses before tax of £312.9 million over the past three seasons and have implemented a series of drastic cost-cutting measures since Sir Jim Ratcliffe took over day-to-day running of the club, including shedding 250 jobs.

As part of the move to cut costs and increase revenues, United introduced a flat rate £66 ticket for members in mid-season with no prior consultation with fans and last month Ratcliffe gave the clearest signal yet that supporters could face ticket price hikes next season.

The Premier League announced this month that no club had been charged for PSR breaches for last season.

But United have outlined their delicate financial position in a letter to The 1958 fans group – which had written to the club voicing concerns about potential ticket price rises – refusing to rule out an increase.

“We are determined to ensure that our current fans can continue to afford to attend games and that tickets are accessible for future generations of fans,” the club said in correspondence with The 1958 and FC58 Coalition.

“As previously communicated, we are however currently making a significant loss each year – totalling over £300 million in the past three years. This is not sustainable and if we do not act now we are in danger of failing to comply with PSR/FFP [financial fair play] requirements in future years and significantly impacting our ability to compete on the pitch.

“We will get back to a cash positive position as soon as possible and we will have to make some difficult choices to get there. That has included a significant reduction to our workforce as well as cuts across many areas of spend across our club.

“None of this has been easy, but we believe it is essential to restoring financial sustainability to the club which will underpin us as we work to get back to the top of English and European football.

“We do not expect fans to make up all the current shortfall – but we do need to look at our ticketing strategy to ensure we are charging the right amount, and offering the right discounts, across our products for our fans.”

After years of expensive transfer failures and a squad with numerous high-earning, underperforming players with little or limited resale value, United are now in a position where they are having to give consideration to selling academy graduates such as Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo to boost their coffers. Napoli and Chelsea are both interested in signing Garnacho this month.

Ratcliffe admitted in an interview with the United We Stand fanzine last month that ticketing was an “emotive” issue and said he did not “want to end up in a position where the genuine local fans can’t afford to come.”

But the United co-owner also warned that he wanted to “optimise the ticketing” and that “you can’t be popular all the time” and said it did not make sense for a United ticket “to cost less than a ticket to see Fulham.”

Match-day income accounts for £137.1 million of United’s total revenues of £661.8 million for last season with The 1958 arguing in a letter to the club that ticket price increases are “a choice, not a necessity” and that it is a “myth” to suggest they are required to remain competitive.

The fans’ group has called for general admission tickets and season tickets to be reduced for next season and a “stronger commitment to meaningful engagement” with supporters.

United said they were committed to “formal consultation” with the Fan Advisory Board (FAB) and working collaboratively with them to “help us come to the best outcome for fans and the club” and that “no decisions” had yet been taken. They also said they were happy to listen to “fan-led ideas about ways to grow revenue”.

“Once we have an approved strategy and pricing policy for the 25-26 season we will communicate the details to all fans,” the club said.

“At this time, no decisions have been taken and the process of consultation is beginning. Until we have an outcome we will not be commenting further regarding what may or may not change for next season. However, we will share the views you have expressed in your letter to the FAB ahead of our discussions and can confirm we understand clearly your views.”

United have announced a series of cost-cutting measures over the past 12 months and it emerged this week that former players Bryan Robson, Andy Cole and Denis Irwin, who are all now club ambassadors, will have their salaries “significantly reduced” from next season.

Funding for the club’s charitable arm the Manchester United Foundation is expected to be hit this year and the £40,000 a year funding for the Association of Former Manchester United Players is being slashed.

Sir Alex Ferguson’s multi-million pound global ambassadorial role is being cut at the end of the season. Various staff perks such as travel to the FA Cup were cut and the usual staff Christmas party last month was cancelled.

Asking fans to pay the price for Ineos mistakes and Glazer neglect is a disgrace

It is some letter the chief executive of Manchester United has just sent to fan groups. Detailing the club’s precarious financial position, with losses so substantial they are in danger of breaching the Premier League’s profit and sustainability regulations, it is a breathtaking catalogue of failure. In it he is admirably frank in his analysis: the whole economics of the place is a mess. He suggests that a sizeable uptick in revenue has to be found in order to plug the astonishing holes in the accounts at a club that was once reckoned the very epitome of a footballing money machine.

“Tough decisions need to be made,” he insists.

The problem lies in his solution: raising admission prices. Already the directors have lifted the cost of one-off repurchasing of match-day tickets from season ticket-holders to a substantial £66. Now it appears they are looking at other revenue raising possibilities among the match-going fans. Given that the vast majority of admissions come from season tickets, it is fair to conclude that prices for the regulars who come whatever the weather, whatever the chances of being soaked as they sit in the stand, whatever the woeful nature of the football being played by their team, are about to be hiked. Significantly. In short, at Manchester United they are looking to introduce a tax on loyalty.

“We do not expect fans to make up all the current shortfall,” the club writes. The word “all” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. Not all, maybe. But a hefty proportion of it.

This is always the way in football: when a club is in trouble, it is the fans who pay. When an owner leaves them in the lurch, teetering on the brink of insolvency, it is the fans who invariably dip into their pockets to save the place from disappearing. Everywhere from Bury to Bournemouth it is not the directors, not the dodgy owners, not the hangers-on enjoying the prawn sandwiches who dig deep to keep the place alive. It is the fans.

But for a club of United’s commercial scale to go cap in hand to the supporters to bail them out after being holed below the water line is unprecedented. At Old Trafford, the fans have every right to point out that, while they have been filling the stands for every match over the years, those sitting in the directors’ box are entirely responsible for the mess that has been made out of the club’s accounts. It is they – and they alone – who should be forking out to avoid the impending monetary apocalypse.

It would help the bottom line substantially, for instance, if the club was no longer required to pay out £20 million a season in interest payments on the debt imposed on it when the Glazers engineered their reverse takeover back in 2005. Twenty years have passed since the Florida family dumped vast, unnecessary borrowings on the place, debt that they have never attempted, across two decades, to pay off. When you or I take out a mortgage on a house, when we come to sell it, the borrowings are returned in their entirety. Yet when the Glazer siblings sold 27 per cent of the club to Sir Jim Ratcliffe last year, they may have trousered over a billion pounds between them, but none of that was used to repay the loan that allowed them to buy the club in the first place. That still squats on the accounts like a malevolent toad, consuming vast tracts of income while delivering absolutely nothing of value or purpose to the enterprise.

And while Sir Jim and his Ineos brains trust could justifiably claim that the debt is not their responsibility, many of the missteps since they took control of the football operations at United definitely are. Why, for instance, should the fans underwrite the money that has been squandered in the reckless pursuit of a director of football who cost several millions to lure down from Newcastle and was then paid off with a seven-figure sum just a couple of months after starting work? Why is it the fans’ responsibility to pick up the tab for the woeful decision to keep faith with Erik ten Hag last June, then gift him £200 million to buy another raft of inadequate signings, before paying him and his staff off four months later to the tune of another £20 million? If they are scrabbling down the back of the sofa in search of a few coppers to cover their problems, it might help if they knew what they were doing when it came to their own high profile spending.

Yet here are the same executives who made those catastrophically expensive missteps lecturing the fans about the need to do their bit. Apparently it is down to them to sort things out now by paying more. Even the Glazers, despite their dire mismanagement of the place, didn’t expect the fans to do that. After all, under them season ticket prices were frozen for several years. But no longer. Everything is going to be spiralled upwards. And this to watch a side the new manager reckons the worst in the club’s history. It is hardly the most enticing of invitations: pay more to watch this rubbish. Yet the fans will be the ones left with the tab. At Old Trafford, the buckets are already rattling.