Without naming the part-owner, a statement insisting they "remain deeply committed" to "equality, diversity and inclusion" was effectively a public rebuke.
Remember, Sir Jim only owns just under 30% of the club, despite the investment gaining control of football operations two years ago and the INEOS billionaire becoming the face of decision-making.
The majority owners are still the six Glazer siblings, whose grandparents were Lithuanian Jewish immigrants to the United States.
We haven't heard from them directly, but the statement issued on the club website is as close as we can get to detecting their view of Sir Jim's complaint in a Sky News interview that "the UK has been colonised by immigrants".
United highlighted how Manchester is a city "anyone can call home", extolling how the club boasts a "diverse group of players, staff and global community of supporters".
Sir Jim's own apology statement made no mention of diversity and inclusion.
Only 20 words were spent apologising - "I am sorry that my choice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe and caused concern" - another 90 words were used to reassert the need for curbs on immigration.
That is a concern shared by three leading parties - Reform, Labour and the Conservatives - but it is demonising immigrants, claiming they have colonised the country, that has proved so inflammatory.
We don't know if Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has accepted Sir Jim's apology - and how it impacts their work on the Old Trafford redevelopment project - but the day began with him denouncing "portraying those who come here as a hostile invading force".
Sir Jim could yet face an FA charge for bringing the game into disrepute as the governing body looks into his outburst and whether the language was discriminatory.
While the bulk of the interview focused on business and economic interests, Sir Jim did bring it back to his football role when expressing concerns about the levels of immigration.
"I've been very unpopular at Manchester United because we've made lots of changes," he said, adding: "You've got all the same issues with the country. If you really want to deal with the major issues of immigration."
Piara Powar, executive director of the FARE network, told Sky News that Sir Jim's language risks "escalating hate".
The leading football anti-racism activist told Sky News: "He's now using his platform as a co-owner of Manchester United to put that out there, and that's a very dangerous precedent.
"So if the FA don't look at it very seriously... that then leads us into a dangerous road with owners using the purchase of football clubs as a political platform."
And what about the fans, particularly those from diverse communities, who can fear discrimination still at matches?
Manchester United Muslim Supporters' Club chair Asif Mahmud is concerned about those threatening minority communities now feeling more empowered.
He asked: "Will comments like what Sir Jim has said give power and strength to those who feel we don't belong here?"
For Preetam Singh of the Stretford Sikhs fans' group, Sir Jim still has more work to do demonstrating any contrition.
He said: "It was a very half-hearted apology, more of a justification of what he said yesterday. So I would expect, and I would hope, he and the club would maybe come out and make a statement with a proper apology."
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Fans are still waiting. And this goes beyond reputational damage for Manchester United.
It is about how welcome players, wider staff and fans from all backgrounds feel at the club now, knowing the true views of a leader inside Old Trafford can seem so dehumanising.
The FBI also shared new identifying details about a possible suspect seen in images and video the bureau previously released showing a masked individual on the porch of the 84-year-old's home in Tucson, Arizona, shortly before she went missing in the early hours of 1 February.
In a statement, FBI Phoenix described the person as "male, approximately 5ft 9in-5ft 10in tall, with an average build" and said he can be seen wearing "a black, 25-liter 'Ozark Trail Hiker Pack' backpack" in the footage shared by law enforcement.
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The FBI also said it is increasing its reward up to $100,000 (£73,400) for information leading to the location of Ms Guthrie, who police believe was taken against her will.
The reward, which was previously up to $50,000 (£36,700), also applies to information that leads to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in her disappearance.
Over 13,000 tips from the public have been received since 1 February, according to the FBI.
Earlier this week, a man was detained for questioning in the investigation and released without charge, authorities said.
Speaking to reporters following his release, Carlos Palazuelos, who had been detained during a traffic stop, said he was innocent and did not know who Savannah Guthrie was.
Police said Nancy Guthrie has difficulty walking, has a pacemaker, and requires daily medication for a heart condition.
On Thursday, Savannah Guthrie, who co-hosts the Today show, posted on social media a home video montage of her mother with the caption: "Our lovely mom. We will never give up on her. Thank you for your prayers and hope".
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The Guthrie family previously said they were willing to pay for their mother's return after an apparent ransom note asked for $6m (£4.4m) by last Monday.
The FBI said on Monday it was not aware of ongoing communication between Nancy Guthrie's family and the suspected kidnappers.
You can expect to hear multiple declarations from European leaders, including Sir Keir Starmer, about their respective plans to ramp up spending on defence and security at a major security conference in Munich over the next three days.
But the key indicator to track is evidence of the rhetoric becoming cold, hard fighting reality.
It is certainly what the United States will be looking for - a form of scrutiny that became clear at a separate meeting of defence ministers from the NATO alliance in Brussels on Thursday.
Elbridge Colby, the US under secretary of war policy - a deputy to Pete Hegseth who chose to miss the gathering in what some insiders saw as a signal of the US reducing the priority it places on its NATO membership, though others denied this was the case - delivered a striking speech to allies.
He said Europe must take the lead in defending itself, but - in words that will come as some relief to his counterparts - stressed that the US was not abandoning NATO.
"The world that shaped the habits, assumptions, and force posture of NATO during the so-called 'unipolar moment' following the Cold War no longer exists," Mr Colby said.
"Power politics has returned, and military force is again being employed at a large scale."
The Trump administration official said his message was about giving a reality check to his partners, about the need to turn a pledge made at a major NATO summit last year to increase total defence and security spending to 5% of GDP into viable military capability.
"For Europe, it means moving beyond inputs and intentions toward outputs and capabilities," Mr Colby said.
"Defence spending levels matter, and there is no substitute for it. But what matters at the end of the day is what those resources produce: ready forces, usable munitions, resilient logistics, and integrated command structures that work at scale under stress.
"It means prioritising war-fighting effectiveness over bureaucratic and regulatory stasis. It means making hard choices about force structure, readiness, stockpiles, and industrial capacity that reflect the realities of modern conflict rather than peacetime politics."
These words should be triggering alarm bells in London and other - in particular Western - European capitals that have for too long relied on spin over substance when it comes to talking about defence.
The spending pledge last year comprises a commitment to increase spending on core defence to 3.5% of GDP by 2035, up from a target of 2%, with an additional 1.5% of GDP to be spent on an ill-defined bucket of wider security measures.
Donald Trump applauded the move, which he rightly received credit for forcing through. However, the US president talks as though those levels of defence spending have already been met.
In reality, many allies are planning to take advantage of the full ten-year timespan to reach the target - including the UK, even though it is a leading member of the alliance and a key partner of the United States.
Mr Starmer's government is only planning to inch up core defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by next year, lift it to 3% by the next parliament, and only reach the full 5% by 2035.
Defence sources say this is far too slow given the scale of the challenge to rebuild the UK's armed forces as well as wider national resilience.
It is also, as Mr Colby said, not just about how much money a country spends but what the cash is spent on and whether input translates to credible military output.
Again, on that point, the UK is seen to be falling short.
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A plan for defence investment - due to be published last year - is yet to be revealed amid reports of a £28bn hole in the budget over the next four years.
At a press conference following the NATO conference, I asked John Healey, the defence secretary, if the UK was failing to meet the moment.
He strongly pushed back on this suggestion. "The UK has always met its commitments to funding NATO," he said.
"The UK is putting more money into defence this year than it has done for 15 years - £270bn in this parliament alone. This is the largest increase since the end of the Cold War."
But given that defence spending across NATO was repeatedly cut following the collapse of the Soviet Union, this is perhaps not the best measure to judge whether what is being spent now is actually enough. And many believe that it is not.
The US president has scrapped a scientific finding by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health - the so-called "endangerment finding".
If you want to gut federal climate action in the US, this is the big one to go for, because it is the legal basis for many other rules.
Accepting that greenhouse gas emissions harm health - and scientists are clear they do, by way of air pollution, and extreme weather like heavy flooding - is what has justified subsequent rules to clean up the sources of those emissions.
He has also repealed rules on emissions standards for all vehicles and engines.
Transport is the biggest polluting sector in the US, famously a nation of drivers.
If US transport was a country, it would be the sixth biggest polluter in the world.
That's bigger than the entire economies of Brazil or Indonesia.
The big motivation for these changes is to cut costs. The White House stresses that these moves will save carmakers about $2,400 (£1,754) a car, and the economy $1.3trn (£954bn) a year.
Environmentalists dispute these figures, saying that if cars are less fuel efficient, petrol bills will go up, and so will healthcare bills for asthma sufferers, or households cleaning up wildfire or flood damage.
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But the news has been welcomed by the fossil fuel industry, and Republicans who say the rules went too far by regulating emissions in a manner that side-stepped approval by Congress.
Climate policies in the US always yo-yo under the Democrats and Republicans, the latter being far more sceptical.
Environmentalists are now planning to challenge these rollbacks in court.
But if they go through, it will make it much harder for anyone to ever bring the limits on climate pollution back in again. .
His "abhorrent" offending stretches back two decades, first at a Finchley primary school and then at the Bright Horizons nursery in north London where he worked for seven years.
Chan pleaded guilty to 56 sexual offices - including more than 30 against children - and is one of the UK's worst known sex offenders.
Judge John Dodd KC said his offending was "utterly wicked, perverse, and depraved" and the huge number of images he possessed showed a "deep-seated sexual obsession" with children.
Speaking at sentencing at Wood Green Crown Court, where some parents watched in tears, he said: "Every right thinking person hearing about your offending would feel revulsion and disbelief.
"You became a sexual predator and someone who clearly lost all sense of moral compass."
One thousand two hundred families have been alerted by the police and told their children may have been in contact with Chan - either at the school or the nursery.
However, just four families have been told with certainty that Chan, 45, abused their child.
At the Bright Horizons nursery in West Hampstead, Chan used iPads issued to staff to film himself abusing children.
Sometimes he would target them during their naptime. His youngest known victim was six months old.
At least 26,000 indecent images of children were found on his devices, with pictures of victims from the nursey arranged into folders under their name.
The judge said 280 videos and 1,204 of the images were in the most serious 'category A' classification as they depicted penetrative sex.
Chan also confessed to sexually assaulting a woman as she slept and filming up the skirts of girls in a classroom.
DS Lewis Basford, from the Met Police, described Chan as a "callous and abhorrent individual who needed to be weeded out of society".
He said: "Whilst we've been able to speak to a number of families and provide them with clarity of what happened, I still walk away with the unknown, and being unable to actually speak to all families and provide the clarity that their child was not subject to harm during Vincent Chan's care."
DS Basford added: "All of those families that have had children go through that nursery setting or go through the primary school will be asking themselves the question, was my child a victim?"
The question haunts so many of the families involved, some are now campaigning for wide-ranging changes to make UK nurseries safer.
Despite pleading guilty, Chan has not explained his motivation to the police - who believe he was acting alone and not sharing the images with others.
The 56 charges he admitted were: Five counts of sexual assault by penetration; four of sexual assault by touching; one charge of sexual assault on a female; 23 counts of taking indecent images of children, six charges of making indecent images of children; six counts of outraging public decency; 11 charges of voyeurism.
'Parents' complaints missed'
One girl's family, who we can't name, want the local authority to take further legal action against the Bright Horizons nursery chain.
The mother said: "They had a whistleblowing policy, but no one whistleblew for seven years.
"Complaints from parents were missed… the digital device security didn't work. I think there were so many missed opportunities."
Chan was stopped in June 2024 when a complaint was made about him using nursery iPads to create videos of children in distress with music set to them.
Once police were alerted, officers recovered inappropriate images stored across 69 different electronic devices belonging to Chan.
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Alison Millar, from the law firm Leigh Day, is representing many of the families and told Sky News his crimes were "unimaginable".
She said many parents had felt "dismissed" and "ignored" when they raised concerns about Chan, who worked at the nursery between 2017 and 2024.
"Parents said I've overheard this man shouting and berating young children," said Ms Millar.
"They were just told, 'oh well, that's Vincent, he just has a loud voice.'"
A local child safeguarding review has been set up but families want further accountability, as well as improvements to vetting of staff, monitoring in nurseries and stronger whistleblowing channels.
Bright Horizons is one of the UK's biggest nursery chains with over 300 centres across the country - the nursery on Finchley Road has since closed.
'Depraved and devious'
In a statement, Bright Horizons said: "Keeping children safe is our most important responsibility. Vincent Chan broke that trust.
"His actions were depraved and devious and go against the kindness and care our dedicated professionals provide to children each day."
It said it's now "increasing awareness of the ways staff can escalate concerns so that they do so quickly and confidentially" and has brought forward safeguarding audits and refresher training for staff.
A review of its systems by an external expert has also been launched.
Helen Reddy, specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: "Whether it was at the school, the nursery, inside his home or nearby, Vincent Chan was and is a serious danger to women and girls.
"He is a prolific sexual predator, and this sentence will ensure he cannot harm anyone.
"The evidence against him was overwhelming and I'm very relieved he admitted his guilt, so victims and their families didn't have to sit through a trial."