Nicky Butt savages Manchester United players and makes dismal prediction

Manchester United hero Nicky Butt feels the Red Devils are still many years from challenging for the Premier League title again, saying ‘the club is rotten from the bottom up.’

It is a brutal assessment from the former United and England midfielder, who has pointed the finger at the players at Old Trafford.

Ruben Amorim’s side is performing much better than last season, but it would have be disastrous if they weren’t, given that they finished 15th in the last campaign.

Butt is certainly not convinced that the improvement is going to return them to former glories any time soon.

In fact, he thinks it will be at least another five years before Manchester United are ‘anywhere near winning the Premier League’ again, largely because the players they have are not good enough.

‘For me, it’s fundamentally that the club is rotten from the bottom up at the minute,’ Butt told FourFourTwo.

‘If you brought prime Sir Alex Ferguson back in, he wouldn’t be able to turn it around straight away, it would still take time. If you put Pep Guardiola in there, or Jurgen Klopp, it wouldn’t work either.

‘Ultimately, I think the players we’re buying and the players that we’re able to buy aren’t at the level we used to have, so it’s about accepting the fact that it’s going to take five to eight years in order to get the club back to anywhere near winning the Premier League.’

He added: ‘It’s been a s**tshow.’

The Red Devils host the Premier League’s bottom club Wolves on Tuesday night and could climb as high as fourth in the table if they win and results elsewhere go their way.

However, Butt is not alone in his concerns over the current set-up, with his former teammate Roy Keane having more doubts over the manager.

After the 1-0 win over Newcastle on Boxing Day, the Irishman said on Sky Sports: ‘I’m not convinced. He [Ruben Amorim] got a pre-season and signings, they have no Europe but they are still not showing it. We are still waiting. The question marks are still there for me, we talk about top four but they are not ready for that.’

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He added: ‘Man United just need to be better. We are not going to compare them to the great defensive teams like Arsenal but they need to be better. I still feel that any time I watched Man Utd, as good as they are going forward, teams seem to create chances so easily.

‘If you want to make progress as a football club you have to be harder to beat. They need to improve or we will keep talking about the same problems. If they keep giving up chances and goals like they are, they will never make the next step.’

Legendary United boss Alex Ferguson actually made an even more dire prediction that Butt, suggesting it could be another 10 years before the Premier League trophy returns to Old Trafford.

‘It could be 10 years, could be 11,’ Ferguson told Press Box PR. ‘I remember looking back on my own time, starting off [in November 1986] when Liverpool were the bee’s knees.

‘They were a ­fantastic club, winning the European Cup four times, but then it took them 31 ­[actually 30] years to win the league again [after 1990]. We are now in the same situation.’

With those comments put to Amorim, he was more optimistic, saying: ‘He understands football more than me, especially English football. I think we are not [going to] take that long to win a league.

‘I don’t know which manager is going to be here, but I truly believe that we can fight for the title in the next [few] years.

‘I think it’s not going to take so many years, but you never know.’