Former Manchester United captain Gary Neville has delivered a brutal assessment of his old club, labelling their 1-0 home defeat to Everton as "embarrassing and complacent".
A Night of Missed Opportunity at Old Trafford
The Monday night Premier League fixture on 25 November 2025 seemed to turn in United's favour early on when Everton's Idrissa Gueye was sent off after just 13 minutes for an extraordinary incident where he slapped his own teammate, Michael Keane.
Playing against ten men for 77 minutes, Ruben Amorim's side were widely expected to capitalise and extend their five-match unbeaten run. This promising spell had included morale-boosting victories over Sunderland, Liverpool, and Brighton, alongside draws with Nottingham Forest and Tottenham.
However, the script was flipped when Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall scored a brilliant strike to give the Toffees the lead on the half-hour mark. Despite their numerical disadvantage, Everton defended resolutely, while United struggled to create meaningful chances for the remainder of the game.
Neville's Scathing Critique
Speaking as a pundit on Sky Sports, Neville did not hold back in his criticism. He dismissed injuries to key players like Benjamin Sesko and Matheus Cunha as irrelevant excuses for the performance.
"It was nowhere near good enough," Neville stated. "That was a really bad night for Manchester United, it was an embarrassment at times. Everton dominated them with 11 men and with 10 men, in a different way of domination, but they dominated them through their fight and their spirit."
He pinpointed complacency as the root cause of the defeat. "It's complacency, and complacency will kill you," he warned. "The minute that you think as a football player that you just have to turn up on that pitch and you're Manchester United and you can play, you're done."
Eroding Trust and Fan Backlash
Expanding on his thoughts in his personal podcast, Neville suggested that this result could severely damage the growing trust in manager Ruben Amorim. The defeat was a major setback, especially as a victory by three goals would have propelled United into the Premier League's top four.
"It just erodes confidence, it erodes trust," Neville explained. "We're trying to build a trust in a manager, we're trying to build a trust in a team. The fans booed collectively at the end. It was loud, and rightly so."
He concluded that the performance felt like a regression, undoing the recent progress. "It's almost as if you've gone two or three steps forward, everyone's feeling a little bit better about themselves, and you've just gone back to the start again. You can lose football matches, but you can't lose them like that."
