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However, a lot of those moves have been cost-cutting measures, while earlier this week United announced that most season ticket prices will increase by about 5% for the third successive year.

But while Ratcliffe has been incredibly damning in his assessments of United and the position his club finds themselves in, he could be any more complimentary about Ian Graham and how they managed to get themselves ahead of the curve in terms of the data revolution that has swept through football.

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In a glowing endorsement, Ratcliffe hailed the club’s former director of research Michael Edwards as a 'genius' as well as praising Jürgen Klopp, who is currently Fenway Sports Group’s CEO of football, for the team they built with Jurgen Klopp that enabled the Reds to win the Champions League and then the Premier League.

“United completely missed the data revolution, which Brighton and Brentford didn’t, which Liverpool didn’t either,” he told The Times.

They brought in Jürgen Klopp and they had Michael Edwards as sporting director and Graham, who is the genius in football on data analytics.

“So you had that team of three who then built an extremely intelligent squad between 2015 and 2018 that went on to win everything on the planet.

Edwards, who would look at 20 videos for every player that they considered buying, and Graham, who would look at the data of every single minute that footballer had played in his life.

We’re still missing out, because we still don’t have data analysis at United.

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“He’s a warm character, he’s got a sense of humour, he knows what he’s talking about, he’s got a really good relationship with Ruben.

So, you know, if you compare that with last season when we had Erik and John Murtough [as football director], it’s chalk and cheese.