Sir Jim Ratcliffe has hit out at Newcastle United for being ‘very difficult’ and ‘very awkward’ over Dan Ashworth.
It is now four months since Ashworth was placed on gardening leave by Newcastle, but Manchester United have yet to reach an agreement with the Magpies to release the sporting director from contracted gardening leave. There remains a sizable gap between what Manchester United are willing to pay and what Newcastle are demanding to allow a key member of staff with a lot of ‘intelligence and information’ to go to a rival before he has served his lengthy notice period.
Sir Jim previously described Newcastle’s eight-figure demands as ‘silly’ and said it was ‘absurd’ that Ashworth could be left sitting in his garden until next year if Manchester United did not pay up. Clearly, the billionaire remains frustrated.
“One of the biggest issues in football, which I have to say I wasn’t fully prepared for, was the gardening leave issue, which is not something that I bump into in my business world,” the Manchester United part-owner told Bloomberg. “I see absolutely no point in the gardening leave thing that they have in football. It just makes it difficult to change things with pace because Omar [Berrada] is on six months, Dan Ashworth is on one-and-a-half years.
“We had a very sensible conversation with Southampton about Jason Wilcox. We managed to find a solution to that. Newcastle are just being very difficult and very awkward about Dan. Until you get the people in, it’s quite difficult to drive the change and it’s just frustrating.”
