Ratcliffe and his Ineos team now run the football side of the club and has drawn criticism for his treatment of staff and fans after bringing in a series of cost-cutting measures.
Speaking to United We Stand editor Andy Mitten, Ratcliffe gave a lengthy interview discussing his first year involved.
He said: "The club has drifted for a long period of time, a decade or so. Manchester United has become mediocre.
"It’s not elite and it is supposed to be one of the best football clubs in the world. That’s what it used to be under Alex (Ferguson).
"There is major change to come to achieve elite status. There has already been huge change.
"I know we get criticism in the press but we do need to challenge the cost of running this club because what I want to be free for us to do is buy really good footballers, not spend so much of the money on infrastructure.
"We can't run a business at a loss, which is where United have been in the last couple of years.
"If you are losing money you have to borrow from the bank to pay for the losses. Eventually that becomes unsustainable...
"We’re on the way, but this won’t happen overnight. There are financial issues which we need to address because we’ve inherited a financial situation that only time will solve."
On ticket price hikes, he continued: "It’s an emotive one, ticketing, but we have to have some benchmarks with ticketing.
"We must make sure that we look after the community because at the end of the day it’s their football club.
"We need to make sure that people who are genuine supporters can afford to go. Maybe their circumstances don’t allow them to spend a fortune on tickets.
“I 100 per cent get that. But we have to balance that and optimise our ticket income because it feeds back into how do we win the Champions League or Premier League.
“I’m very cognisant that we have to look after the community because it’s the community’s team, but equally I want to optimise the revenue from people who can afford it."
He added: "I was brought up on a council estate in Manchester, I absolutely get that.
"I don’t want to end up in a position where the genuine local fans can’t afford to come, but I do want to optimise the ticketing. We need to find a balance. And you can’t be popular all the time either.
“Here, we’re talking about three per cent of the tickets. That’s not the issue.
"The issue, as you say, is whether this is the thin edge of the wedge. I don’t think it makes sense for a Manchester United ticket to cost less than a ticket to see Fulham."
On recruitment and transfer spending, he also said: "We’ve not been good enough at recruitment, you probably agree with that. Everybody would agree with that.
"And until we’re as good as anyone in the world, then it’s not good enough for Manchester United.
"We must have the best recruitment in the world. Data Analysis comes alongside recruitment. It doesn’t really exist here. We’re still in the last century on data analysis here.
“There’s an immense amount of useful data that we can get from data analysis and we’re in the ‘very poor’ bracket with data analysis here.
"These things don’t happen overnight. You can’t just flick a light switch and sort out recruitment. It’s all about people and we need to find the right people.
"The other big one is we need to run the club efficiently and well. We need to sweat every pound so that we have more capacity for the investment in players.
"Those are the big-ticket items which take up time.
“The other point here is how you grow the amount of money that you can spend on players. You can run the business more efficiently. And you can grow the top line."
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