United chiefs to confront relegation contingency at Ratcliffe summit in Monaco

Manchester United chief executive Omar Berrada and technical director Jason Wilcox are set to meet owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe in Monaco this week, with the club’s alarming start to the 2026/27 Premier League season forcing relegation contingency planning onto the agenda alongside head coach Michael Carrick’s future.

Ten games into the campaign, United sit in the bottom three with a single victory to their name — a survival scrap that mirrors last season’s struggles and raises uncomfortable questions about the club’s trajectory under INEOS, who arrived at Old Trafford promising elite operating standards.

Acknowledging the possibility of relegation remains close to taboo for a club of United’s commercial scale, but a recent warning from north London illustrates why ignoring it would be negligent. Tottenham Hotspur chief executive Vinai Venkatesham, speaking on The Sports Agents podcast, revealed how Spurs quietly mapped out a Championship blueprint during their own brush with the drop last season.

“You have to [prepare for relegation]. I mean, you can’t not. To not make that plan would have been irresponsible,” Venkatesham said. “Sometimes going through something as traumatic as what we went through last season bonds people a little bit and also puts even more fire in everybody’s belly to make sure that something like that can never happen again.”

Spurs ultimately secured survival on the final day, and that near-miss directly shaped their summer transfer strategy. The club spent £300 million on reinforcements, including £100m on Newcastle United midfielder Sandro Tonali and £85m on West Ham’s Matheus Fernandes.

“Everybody was aligned we wanted to strengthen this position,” Venkatesham added. “If I’m honest, we achieved more than we thought we might do, and that was really because so many of our number one targets we were able to land.”

For United, the Monaco summit represents a critical moment. INEOS’s second full season in charge has produced no visible improvement on the pitch, and with Carrick’s position under scrutiny, the hierarchy faces decisions that could define the club’s short-term future — and potentially its division.