Manchester United released their latest financial results this week, covering the period up to 31 December 2025. The headlines paint a picture of a club becoming leaner and more profitable — but one still weighed down by debt. For fans hoping INEOS would unlock serious spending power, the detail is more sobering than it first appears.

The good news: costs are down, profits are up

United swung from a £3.9 million operating loss this time last year to a £32.6 million operating profit. The main reason? Cutting costs rather than earning more. The quarterly wage bill fell 9% to £75.1 million, and overall operating expenses dropped 11.5%. This is the INEOS effect — redundancies, squad trimming, and loan departures like Rashford are now showing up in the numbers.

The end of Ruben Amorim’s tenure at Manchester United raised more questions than it answered. Fourteen months after his appointment, the club found itself in a familiar position: another managerial change, and fresh uncertainty over the direction of the club. What went wrong, and how did it come to this?

To understand the Amorim era, it helps to start with the environment that produced it. That means revisiting United’s dealings since their last stretch of relative stability under Ole Gunnar Solskjær in 2021.