How Nice fared in first years of Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS ownership

Shortly after acquiring OGC Nice in the summer of 2019, INEOS CEO Sir Jim Ratcliffe lambasted the failings of Manchester United.

“United have spent an immense amount since [Sir Alex] Ferguson left and been poor, to put it mildly. Shockingly poor, to be honest,” Ratcliffe sniffed. “We have a different approach here [at Nice] to be moderately intelligent about it.”

Four years on, Ratcliffe has acquired a minority but influential stake in a club that he claimed to “have lost the plot”.

With dramatic changes on the horizon for United, here’s how Ratcliffe’s “moderately intelligent” approach fared during his first few years at Nice.

It took Ratcliffe two months to attend his first match as Nice owner, rocking up for the glamorous visit of perennial champions Paris Saint-Germain in October 2019. The game began with boisterous chants in support of the new owner but ended in two red cards and a 4-1 defeat for the hosts.

Nice, who had finished as high as third in 2017, lost seven of the first ten games after the INEOS takeover was announced at the end of August. By the start of December, the club had slumped to 14th place. Only two teams had conceded more goals.

Yet, Nice hauled themselves up to fifth by the time COVID-19 struck. Ligue 1 was the only one of Europe’s top five leagues not to resume the 2019/20 campaign, and so Nice qualified for the Europa League in Ratcliffe’s first season at the helm.

Results have dramatically fluctuated during INEOS’s tenure on the Riviera. For each demoralising winless stretch, there has been an uplifting unbeaten patch. Reaching the 2022 Coupe de France final – the club’s first major showpiece in a quarter of a century – was countered by a humiliating exit at the hands of third-tier Le Puy Foot 43 the following year.

Bob Ratcliffe, Sir Jim’s brother who was made Nice’s CEO upon the acquisition, promised the club would be playing Champions League football in “three to five years”. Francesco Farioli lost just two games as manager before the winter break this season but there have been plenty of false dawns before to temper expectations.

Before INEOS got hold of the purse strings, Nice were geared towards snapping up promising…