Newcastle legend now launches a scathing attack on Sir Jim Ratcliffe after Dan Ashworth move

The Dan Ashworth to Manchester United saga seems to be no closer to a conclusion with Newcastle United refusing to budge on their £20million asking price.

The former sporting director remains on gardening leave as Sir Jim Ratcliffe's Manchester United revolution stands firm in refusing to pay to release Ashworth from his contract early.

Meanwhile, former Newcastle and Man United legend, Andy Cole has questioned the way Ratcliffe is conducting his business in his early days at Old Trafford.

Andy Cole scored 68 goals in 84 games for the Magpies before making the move to Old Trafford for £7million plus Keith Gillespie. He then went on to score 121 goals in 275 game for the Red Devils.

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Andy Cole says Man United are p*ssing everybody off

Speaking to Betfred (via Goal), the former Number nine has been quite scathing about the way Jim Ratcliffe is approaching his player and staff targets.

"Manchester United are interested in everybody. There’s talk about Jason Wilcox and Dan Ashworth coming in and at the moment, it seems as if Manchester United are p*ssing off a lot of clubs. That’s not what the club is all about.

“Manchester United are a classy outfit and there’s no point in them p*ssing other clubs off because they may need them later down the road. They should go about their business in the right way and I see them linked with some many players or staff and I just think to myself: 'Come on man, this is Manchester United'. At this present moment in time, it just seems as if we’re p*ssing everybody off and that’s not good."

"You don’t hear about Real Madrid p*ssing everybody off or Barcelona p*ssing everybody off or Liverpool p*ssing everybody off. Everybody has this fixation about Manchester United, but everything you hear about them isn’t good news and there’s a big cloud over the club at the moment.”

From our side it's all quite amusing

Nobody is really looking back fondly on Dan Ashworth's brief tenure at Newcastle, especially in light of the fact that talks for Joelinton's contract extension broke down while Ashworth was still at the helm and then rapidly progressed when he was moved out of the way.

So the fact that Man United have moved to take him away from our club isn't that big of a deal, especially in light of how Newcastle have the Man United board on strings right now. The whole thing is frankly rather amusing from our side of the fence.

However, we hope that Andy Cole is right and Man United are p*ssing clubs off as it's only going to serve to make things harder for them going forward, and that can only be a good thing for their rivals.