Sir Jim Ratcliffe is making decisions the Glazers would at Manchester United

Nobody could deny changes were needed at Manchester United. The club has been a sinking ship in the last 10 years and Sir Jim Ratcliffe needed to crack the whip, but he is currently walking a fine line between making changes for good and damaging the identity of the football club.

Ratcliffe was responsible for installing a new football structure, appointing Omar Berrada as CEO and Dan Ashworth as sporting director, and hiring a proper board was long overdue.

He has put wheels in motion to address the future of Old Trafford, he has invested millions into upgrading facilities at Carrington and is laying the foundations for a brighter future.

But he is not immune to criticism. Along with the good changes, there have been bad ones and early warning signs emerged when most staff benefits were scrapped when United made the FA Cup final at the end of May, which caused morale among staff to plummet.

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United charged staff £20 to travel to and from Wembley when it was previously free. They had previously given tickets for cup finals to their 1,100 staff members with travel to Wembley, along with pre-match food and hotel accommodation included, but that was withdrawn.

That led to a report that claimed United captain Bruno Fernandes offered to pay for the staff trip to London out of his own pocket. There has also been chatter that players threatened to pay for their own flight home from Wembley when Ineos organised a coach back to Manchester.

After Ratcliffe's investment into United was signed off, a review of the club's operations began and found United had the highest employee count in the Premier League.

The decision to create redundancies was made and 250 staff have now departed. It is obviously Ratcliffe's prerogative to trim his workforce, but United have lost good people from their organisation, some of who were at the club practically all their working lives.

Those people made the club what it was. They provided the family feel, which was unique for a club of United's stature. While on pre-season tour, Jonny Evans said about the cuts: “It’s been hard and difficult to see. The new owners feel that’s the ­direction that they want to go.

"But it’s not been easy for everyone at the same time. There’s people you’ve known for 20 years and the timing of it happened as we came away on tour pretty much. So we were all a bit in the dark and I’m sure everything will be sorted out, things will be a bit more clear when we get back.

“But it’s been a difficult thing to see – people I’ve known for a long, long time. One thing about working in a club like Man United, you’re all in and everyone’s always been all in. It’s a big massive staff but I think that’s just been the culture of the club. It’s always had that feeling of people."

Highly skilled staff have been lost and there have been eyebrows raised at some academy changes, including the appointment of Simon Wiles from Salford City as Under-14 coach. Wiles was formerly a first-team coach at Salford and his move to United's academy has been questioned.

It initially appeared that changes to United's academy would be minimal when Ineos invested into the club. After all, it is the area that has consistently performed, but it has become clear that this is not the case and it's been suggested not everything is as rosy as it may seem.

Elsewhere, MUTV has become a talking point among supporters. United's academy is the beating heart of the club and they remain at the forefront of youth development, but coverage of youth games has been scaled back and some fans are becoming increasingly frustrated.

The Manchester Evening News contacted United for comment in August and they insisted they remained committed to youth coverage, while a source reiterated they appreciate the significant interest that its supporters have in the development of its youth players.

Sometimes U21 games can't be shown on MUTV because they clash with Premier League fixtures, but sources conceded that media resources need to be stretched across the men's, women's and academy teams, which means United are forced to make compromises.

The words 'hard choices' have been used within United about what to cover and the club reluctantly feel they can't capture everything across the several different teams. The in-house coverage has been indirectly impacted by job losses and a survey was recently sent to MUTV subscribers to gauge their views on the changes to the channel.

United don't have dedicated academy social media accounts and that is a huge missed opportunity. Fans have often been forced to tune into the opposition's feed to watch academy games this season and were embarrassingly forced to track Sunderland's academy Twitter account - the Black Cats are in the Championship - at the weekend to get updates from the Under-18s match.

A club that hasn't played in the Premier League for seven years shouldn't have better academy coverage than the alleged biggest club in England and it's not a good look for Ratcliffe.

There were further murmurs of discontent at last week's fans' forum. Berrada briefly attended the meeting but didn't stay for the full duration and the club's decision to scrap the European away ticket collection system has gone down like a lead balloon among some of United's most loyal and dedicated fans.

United's fans have been there through the thick and thin. They are arguably the finest away support in the country and working-class fans regularly spend thousands of pounds on travel.

Following United on the road, including every European fixture, is a way of life for some, but they have been left angry and disappointed by the scrapping of away ticket collections.

For fixtures in Europe, United fans have previously picked up their match tickets in the country where the fixture was being played, meaning club staff would be sent to designated collection points to hand out tickets to fans with valid identification.

It was viewed as a successful system that prevented fans from buying tickets to inflate their credits without actually attending the match. It also stopped supporters from buying tickets with the intention of immediately selling them for credits. But United have this season scrapped the system as a direct result of the decision by Ratcliffe to axe 250 jobs at the club.

United fans are deeply unhappy with the change and challenged representatives from the club on the issue at the latest fans' forum, where it was a prominent discussion point.

Jim Liggett, operations and maintenance director at United, responded by saying the club could no longer afford to send staff abroad to run the collections on European soil.

Some of Ratcliffe's changes may not feel like a big deal in isolation, but the questionable changes are beginning to add up and goodwill from fans could eventually be eroded.

Ratcliffe needs to be careful when making Glazer-esque decisions.