From a producer’s seat, this feels like walking into a legendary studio that has been living off its back catalogue while the bills pile up behind the mixing desk. At some point someone has to turn down the reverb, cut the vanity tracks and tell the band they cannot keep adding players on credit. Two hundred job cuts and the end of a paid figurehead role like Sir Alex’s are brutal edits, but they look like the kind of hard mix decisions you get when the label has already blown through £300m. If the pain stops at genuine bloat and overstaffed backrooms, the album might finally sound tight enough to survive the next few seasons. If, instead, the cuts land hardest on the runners, techs and long-serving crew who kept the place running when the owners were out of tune, the record will carry that bitterness in every note. A great club, like a great record, depends on the invisible work as much as the headline acts, and Ratcliffe will be judged by whether he remembers that once the cost-cutting tour is over.