Sir Jim Ratcliffe has disclosed that Dan Ashworth departed Manchester United due to a lack of ‘chemistry’. Ratcliffe had gone to great lengths to bring Ashworth to Old Trafford, previously hailing the former Newcastle United sporting director as ‘one of the best’ in the world. The Manchester United co-owner even criticized Newcastle’s ‘silly’ demands to expedite Ashworth’s departure, accusing the Magpies of being ‘very difficult’. A settlement was eventually reached last summer, but Ashworth spent as much time on gardening leave as he did officially working at Old Trafford before his unexpected exit in December. Now, for the first time, Ratcliffe has addressed the situation in an interview with Gary Neville on The Overlap. “You probably know Dan better than I do,” Ratcliffe admitted. “I’m sure, in fact, you do. I don’t want to go into details because I don’t think it serves much purpose. At the end of the day, it was chemistry—maybe a bit more than that—but let’s just say chemistry, and it didn’t work. Just chemistry. “I know it’s an unpopular decision, and it’s seen as an error—an error it was. But in our defence, we recognized that it wouldn’t work and decided to make a change. It would have been easier, given the media scrutiny, to simply accept it, but I wasn’t willing to do that.” Ashworth played a key role when Manchester United extended Erik ten Hag’s contract and committed over £205m—subject to add-ons—on signings including Joshua Zirkzee, Leny Yoro, Matthijs de Ligt, Noussair Mazraoui, and Manuel Ugarte. Despite these moves, Manchester United currently sit 14th in the league table.