Gary Neville has criticised Manchester United's failure to sign any new defenders last summer and says the back four that finished the remarkable 4-4 draw with Aston Villa will 'get the club relegated'.
United's Position Worsens
The Premier League club go into the November international break sitting 18th in the table after Aston Villa twice blew two-goal leads to draw at Old Trafford. United found themselves 2-0 down inside five minutes as Alysson and Nicolas Jackson took advantage of the hosts' fragile defence.
Michael Carrick's side were level at half-time thanks to Bruno Fernandes' penalty and Youri Tielemans' 44th-minute strike against the club he left last summer. Josh McGinn restored Aston Villa's lead with a penalty straight after the interval, and the visitors looked on course for a big win when Leon Goretzka scored a fourth.
But Manchester United scored twice in injury-time, with substitutes Joshua Zirkzee and Patrick Dorgu scoring, to salvage a point and avoid sitting joint-bottom during the international break. Despite two comebacks, United's current position is their lowest at this stage of a season since 1986, while their eight-game winless league run has only happened once before.
Neville's Verdict on the Defence
Manchester United finished the game with a back four of Noussair Mazraoui, Leny Yoro, Ayden Heaven and Patrick Dorgu, and Neville said that line-up would struggle to avoid relegation to the Championship.
'The reason Manchester United have conceded four goals is because they haven't invested in the defence in the transfer window,' he said on NBC Sports. 'Everyone knew they had to do that, they needed defenders. The current ones are making mistake after mistake after mistake.'
'The defenders that finished that game will get you relegated. Watch the defensive errors… we all screamed in the transfer window that they have to bring some defenders in. They had to bring the transfer budget forward and bring defenders in.'
Gary's brother Phil, who also enjoyed success at Manchester United as a player, added: 'The back-four that finished the game – Mazraoui, Yoro, Heaven and Dorgu – that gets you relegated. That back-four gets you the sack as a manager and that back-four cannot keep United, I don't think, in the Premier League. That back-four gets you relegated, it's poor. It's not good enough to play in the Premier League.'
Doubts Over Managerial Change
Despite Manchester United's grim position in the Premier League, Gary Neville doubts a change in the dugout would improve the situation in the long-term.
'You can paper over the cracks and get a new manager bounce,' he added. 'When the new manager comes in, everybody's happy for a couple of months and all of a sudden, six months later, it happens again. You can keep changing the manager and thinking that's going to be the answer. But this has been proven now over eight managers in 12 years, that's not the answer.'
'Michael could leave, Michael might stay, we don't know, the ownership don't have a clue what to do. It's rinse and repeat. Amorim, Ten Hag, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Carrick, Jose Mourinho, Louis van Gaal, David Moyes, Ralf Rangnick – some of them are world class managers who have had success, there are a lot of promising young managers there, ex players who know the club as well.'
'None of it has worked because if you recruit badly, if you've got poor performance department, poor recruitment department, you've not got leadership that is strong right through the spine of the football club you will fail. Every organisation in the world will fail if you've not got an aligned leadership from top to bottom – your board and your ownership right the way through to the person who is stood on the pitch trying to play football.'
'There are real issues within that football club, you've got people doing those jobs who have never done those jobs before in senior positions.'
