Manchester United has become a “graveyard” for players and could finish in the bottom half of the Premier League this season if they don’t address their deep-lying problems, according to Gary Neville.
United are currently rock-bottom of the top flight after losing their opening two matches under Erik ten Hag’s management. They were beaten 2-1 at Old Trafford by Brighton on the opening weekend before things turned from bad to worse in a remarkable 4-0 thrashing by Brentford on Saturday.
Ten Hag has so far failed to implement his playing style on the squad, who have been all at sea. Problems on the pitch have been linked with recruitment in the summer transfer window, with Lisandro Martinez and Christian Eriksen struggling in their first two games and Tyrell Malacia yet to be given much game time. Top target Frenkie de Jong remains at Barcelona, months after United began negotiations.
Cristiano Ronaldo started against Brentford after being benched for the Brighton match, despite wanting to leave United this summer. It is a situation which Neville believes illustrates the mess behind the scenes at United and could end up in a bottom-half finish, if left unaddressed.
"The problem they have now is if they lose him, there’s nothing left in terms of the goal scoring part of the pitch and I genuinely think if they don’t bring players in or if they bring in poor players in and he leaves, I genuinely think they can finish in the bottom half of the table," Neville s aid on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football programme. "That’s a bottom half of the table team."
Discussing the club's recruitment record, Neville added: “It’s been one of the problems Manchester United have had for 10 years is that they’ve flip flopped from managers, strategies and they’ve allowed managers to control recruitment and that’s a massive issue." He went on to do a piece of analysis on United’s recruitment over the past 10 years – a period during which the club has spent a whopping £1.2billion. He believes that just four of five per cent of the players brought in during the past 10 years have worked out, with 75 per cent flopping and 20 per cent neither successes or failures.
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“That is a horror story from a recruitment point of view,” he added. “However, there’s a call for blaming the players and we’ve blamed the players over the years. I was excited about a lot of those signings as many people were, even last year with [Raphael] Varane, [Jadon] Sancho, Ronaldo. [Angel] Di Maria came and we all went ooh he’ll be a good signing, we did it on Monday Night Football at Leicester when he went through midfield.
“But it’s become a graveyard for football players this football club where football players are now considering to even come to the club, they can’t get players in. I have to say where I got away from the players is that when a school is underperforming for years they get put under special measures by government and the kids don’t get blamed – that’s where Man United are. They’re in special measures and you can’t blame the kids anymore.”
