Mercedes F1 Team part-owner interested in buying Manchester United

Sir Jim Ratcliffe previously tried to buy Chelsea Football Club.

Following his unsuccessful attempt to buy Chelsea earlier this season, Mercedes part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe is planning reportedly planning a bid for Manchester United.

Ratcliffe joined Mercedes driver Sir Lewis Hamilton in bidding for Chelsea after their owner, Roman Abramovich, stepped down amid his links to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia started a war with Ukraine when they invaded on 24 February, and this war is ongoing, with millions of Ukrainians now displaced because of the violence being perpetrated by Russian troops.

Hamilton and Tennis player Serena Williams put some of their money into a bid with Sir Martin Broughton, but the club would eventually go to LA Dodgers part-owner Todd Boehly.

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Ratcliffe owns one third of the Mercedes Formula 1 team, with INEOS and team principal Toto Wolff sharing the other 66.6 percent between them.

United are currently owned by the Glazers, who took over in 2005 in a leveraged buyout of the club.

The debt was therefore secured to Manchester United, but a lot of the repayments have been going straight back to the Glazers, which has been the cause of protests and controversy for years.

The American family are now understood to have run the club into over £400 million of debt in the last 17 years, but they are “open” to the idea of selling up.

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It has been a catastrophic start to the season for the Red Devils, who have lost both of their opening two games.

They were beaten at Old Trafford by Brighton, before being demolished at Brentford last weekend.

The Glazer family value the club at around £5 billion, and a spokesperson for Ratcliffe indicated that he would be willing to fork that out if Manchester United becomes available for purchase.

“If the club is for sale, Jim is definitely a potential buyer,” they said, quoted by Crash.net.

“If something like this was possible, we would be interested in talking with a view to long-term ownership.”

Wolff recently stated that he has been studying United’s downfall since 2013 in a bid to avoid his own team falling into the same slump.