Former Manchester United assistant boss Rene Meulensteen has slammed the club's current squad of players for being "lost" amid frequent reports of dressing room disharmony.
The Red Devils have endured a dreadful season that has seen them miss out on qualification for the Champions League. The latest low point came on Saturday, when they were left humiliated by a 4-0 defeat to Brighton.
Their campaign has been hit by near-continuous reports of unhappiness from within the dressing room. This disharmony is nothing like the environment Meulensteen helped to create during his six years as one of Sir Alex Ferguson 's assistants.
Given how far United have fallen since his hugely successful spell at Old Trafford, Meulensteen has now moved to slam the current group of stars. He believes they have badly failed to meet expectations and accused them of looking "lost".
“There were a lot of expectations, even from myself. When Ronaldo comes in, he comes in for one reason only and that’s to improve the team and basically get United challenging again," he told talkSPORT.
“They were second in the league, so no reason to believe anything else. For some reason there was that lack of consistency at the start of the season and performances started to fall away.
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“The season has been derailed more and more. You saw the frustration kick in when they got knocked out of this competition, then they got knocked out of the FA Cup, then they lost ground in the league.
“They changed managers against and Rangnick came in. Rangnick’s impact has not brought what everyone expected, to push for the top four and Champions League is so important. They have been derailed and irritation has turned into frustration.
“When I see United play, I see a team that is lost. They are lost completely. There is no cohesion, no organisation, no structure, any basic thing that you need in any successful performance is not there.”
Meulensteen also accused the United dressing room of lacking the pride needed to properly represented the club. He believes the frequent reports of unhappiness is what has led to the seasons becoming a disaster.
"The most important thing is when you do sign for a club is to represent them with pride. We know some players that have come in have never really committed to the club. Then you get these rumours fed in through the media that ‘he’s not happy’ and this player or that player wants to go," the Dutchman added.
"If you’ve got a very solid dressing room and those players in the dressing room want to be there together, they want to do well together and fight for each other. But if you’ve got people in there who don’t really want to be there then you feel that. You will sense it and it has an effect on the performances.”
