Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos are betraying Manchester United fans over ticket price hike

A long-serving Manchester United staff member had their suitcase packed the day before leaving for the pre-season tour. Less than 24 hours before their flight, they were notified they would not be on the plane as they were at risk of redundancy.

The employee is now one of the 250 former employees. The callousness has extended to hiking ticket prices, without any consultation, to £66. There has not been a peep from chief executive Omar Berrada or anyone from Ineos.

Despite attempts to unify the organisations, there is still a dichotomy between long-serving and caring United staff members and the Ineos cabal. Resentment was bound to fester when a recently-appointed official and his wife were present on the pre-season tour.

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United stayed in Beverly Hills for ten nights and Los Angeles is not an economical city to file expenses from. The summer cost-cutting was undermined by the presence of at least two 'outsiders'.

One Ineos official who is a regular at Carrington is particularly unpopular and figures are mystified by their presence. There is bound to be rancour with staff embittered, having seen close colleagues cut loose. Yet even someone at Ineos is questioning the colleague's existence.

This may all seem extraneous but when matchgoers are literally forced to pay the price for new co-ownership then every penny counts. The Fans' Advisory Board (FAB), whose members sign a non-disclosure agreement, and those on the fans' forum were not aware ticket prices would rise for the remainder of the season until United's announcement.

Club sources accept it is a "difficult decision" but insist it is part of a cost-saving programme to put the club on a more sustainable financial footing and that resources can be reinvested into the first team squad. Some sources doubt whether Berrada instigated the ticket rise and questioned his position.

Some United followers have taken a dim view of the FAB representatives signing NDAs. What progress they might have achieved has collapsed and trust has eroded.

United have an appalling recent track record of shafting their supporters. The treacherous Super League venture was aborted but the new prices may be permanent.

The unprecedented mid-season increase of ticket prices - up to 40% - have been branded "unfair", with supporters particularly dismayed by the removal of concessions for children and senior adults. When I went to Old Trafford for the first time in 1996, my ticket in the first tier of the north stand cost £14.

"‘This goes far beyond just ticket prices," United fan Steve Crompton said. "It’s an attack on football, it’s an attack on heritage and rivalries. The start of an erosion of the very fabric of football culture in our country.

"There will be no tribalism or rivalries in football unless we all make a stand. We warned about this close to three years ago. It’s a matter of record."

It makes a mockery of Sir Jim Ratcliffe's rhetoric when this correspondent spoke to him in Knightsbridge back in February. Ratcliffe said Trafford Park "was the heart of the Industrial Revolution, it is the oldest industrial park in Europe, it was the first industrial park in Europe, it's where the Industrial Revolution began. And it's still one of the biggest ones.

"And they obviously built the Manchester Ship Canal to service it. That's where all the coal came in, the cotton and that sort of stuff. And that's why they built Old Trafford there. People would finish their shift and then walk to the ground." The working-class hero story does not wash when the working-class continue to be squeezed out.

Ratcliffe was born in Failsworth, round the corner from Newton Heath. He ought to have a better grasp on such a contentious issue yet United are not the exception. 1996 Coca-Cola Cup winners Aston Villa charge up to £97 for home Champions League matches.

Ratcliffe once had a season-ticket at Stamford Bridge, another run-down and underdeveloped stadium that is nevertheless situated in a desirable and affluent area of London. London prices have come to Manchester.

Down the Fulham Road, there were protests last season. During their defeat to United last November, Fulham fans held aloft yellow fliers reading, 'Please don't price us out' as ticket prices rose by 18 per cent, with a season ticket costing as much as £3,000.

The makeup of matchgoers at Old Trafford has changed markedly as football has evolved into an upper-middle class sport. Some of the sights are reminiscent of Twickenham and some of the supporters might as well be at the rugby. Walking up the Warwick Road for the derby in 2008, someone seriously asked me where Old Trafford was.

It has gotten worse since then. On the tram to a game in press in early 2015, a half-and-half scarf seller got chatting to an impressionable couple who didn't think twice about parting with £10 for a United-Burnley scarf. Perhaps they made space on their wall to commemorate Chris Smalling's two-goal matchwinning performance off the bench.

We see it all the time in the press box. Aimless tourists unable to locate their seat who somehow end up in the press box, oblivious to all of the unfolded laptops and accreditation lanyards. During the strategic review, a Qatari sympathiser was planted in the row in front of the press box for the Barcelona tie and unloaded hysterically at some of us. We have not seen him since.

A football following should be a broad church and United have accommodated requests to amplify the atmosphere, relocating the singing section to the heart of the Stretford End, where the welcome banner for Ruben Amorim was unfurled. There is always a Mancunian twang to United fans' playlists at away games and the local faction should be as critical to the fanbase as the Mancunians on the playing staff.

Ratcliffe talked a good game and met fan groups shortly after his minority stake was agreed on Christmas Eve last year. In a statement confirming their bid in February 2023, Ineos said: "We want a Manchester United anchored in its proud history and roots in the north-west of England, putting the Manchester back into Manchester United."

It remains a club disunited.