Gary Neville was gobsmacked that Manchester United persisted with Patrick Dorgu at right wing-back against Wolves and felt Ruben Amorim failed to pick his ‘obvious’ best XI.
It’s been one step forward, two steps back for United over the winter period and it proved the case again on Tuesday evening, with Amorim’s men held by bottom-placed Wolves in a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford.
Joshua Zirkzee put United in front with a deflected effort in the 27th minute, but the visitors – who were riding a miserable 11-game losing run – fought back and found an equaliser through Ladislav Krejci on the stroke of half-time.
Senne Lammens sprung to his left to deny Krejci a second as Wolves piled on the pressure after the break and Jhon Arias came close later on, before Dorgu was denied a last-gasp winner by VAR for offside.
The United crowd vented their anger and frustration as Amorim’s players were booed off the field to a chorus of boos at both the half-time break and at full-time.
The result leaves the Red Devils down in sixth, two points off fourth-placed Liverpool. Chelsea, who sit fifth, also dropped points on the night after they were held to 2-2 draw at home to Bournemouth.
Reacting to the boos and jeers he heard at the Theatre of Dreams, ex-United defender Neville said on his Sky Sports podcast: ‘They weren’t just booed at full-time… the little walk-around which the United players have started to do now in every single match, irrespective of the result, the fans waited in the stadium to continue to boo them.
‘Sometimes I think when you get a boo at the end of the game, it’s the majority that boo and then the ones that stay will usually signal the fact that they’re appreciative of the fact that they’re walking around.
‘But that wasn’t it. They were staying to boo them.’
Neville bemoaned United’s woeful performance, labelling it ‘the baddest of the bad’, before questioning the system Amorim used – and the manager’s failure to change that system when it clearly wasn’t working.
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‘I’m not going to get emotional because I don’t think it’s something that is helpful for anybody but that was the baddest of the bad, that,’ the eight-time Premier League winner added.
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‘We saw them warming up before the game and they were warming up in the system of three at the back with [Ayden] Heaven to the right, [Lisandro] Martinez and [Luke] Shaw.
‘Then, up front they had [Diogo] Dalot at right wing-back, Dorgu at left wing-back and then they had Zirkzee in the right channel, [Matheus] Cunha in the left channel and [Benjamin] Sesko.
‘I said at the time that they were warming up in wrong shape before Newcastle to fool everybody the other night and then they ended up playing a back-four, so I said to ignore that.
‘As soon as I saw that shape was going to be played… I’ve seen Zirkzee playing in that right channel before and it just doesn’t work.
‘We know that Dorgu is a left wing-back and we’ve seen him play there a number of times now and he does okay there, he’s willing, and so does Dalot at right wing-back. I think they’re both willing. I’ve played that position and I think I was a pretty decent right-back… it’s a bloody tough position to play right wing-back or left wing-back, it just is.
‘I thought Dorgu was so good on the right wing against Newcastle, I just thought he looked free. He could come in on his left foot, he looked more inventive, he looked more like a wide player.
‘So I was struggling with it from 30 seconds but what I didn’t want to do was start the negativity after 30 seconds because the reality of it is that you’ve got to let them settle in and if they go and score two then you look a little bit stupid as well.’
Neville went on: ‘Let’s be really clear: after five minutes I thought, “That’s not going to work all night, that’s going to be a bad performance and he’s going to have to change that after 15 minutes”… after 15 minutes he didn’t change it and after 20 minutes I said, “This is it”.
‘I think my words were, “They might score two in the next 20 minutes but this is not right”, and I’ve been very complimentary of the last two or three performances: Bournemouth, Villa and Newcastle.
‘There were things in those three performances that I’ve liked and I genuinely believed that entertainment and performance matters. I matters for two reasons at his club: these fans come here to be entertained, like every other football fan in the country, but you’ve got to entertain here… there’s 75,000 of them and they want entertaining.
‘Secondly, I genuinely believe that performance leads to results. I know some people say that results aren’t everything, but it’s very difficult to win a lot of football matches if you’re not performing well.’
According to Neville, United’s most effective starting XI was staring Amorim in the face – but the Portuguese had other ideas at a time when they just needed ‘simplicity’.
‘It was really simple tonight. The AFCON players aren’t here, we know the injured players aren’t there and it’s actually made his job more simple. There’s more sympathy for him,’ Neville explained.
‘Sesko plays up top, Cunha plays to the left, Dorgu plays to the right, Zirkzee plays in that little hold off Sesko. You’ve got [Manuel] Ugarte and Casemiro in midfield, you’ve got Luke Shaw at left-back, Ayden Heaven and Martinez at centre-back and you’ve got Dalot at right-back. It’s not not an amazing team but it’s really obvious that that’s the team that should be picked, in the system that we should be playing.
‘It should have been picked and it was so obvious. It’s Zirzkee’s best position, dropping in, Sesko’s got someone close to him which means he’s not playing up front on his own, Cunha’s on the left and can drift in and that’s fine, you’ve got Shaw who can go round him and he’s really good to play with on that side.
‘You’ve then got Dalot coming from behind on the other side but you’ve got Dorgu that can cut in which means Dalot go round.
‘The big question marks you would have in that system would be Casemiro and Ugarte, and Heaven and Martinez. However, I thought Ugarte and Casemiro did really well against Newcastle, I thought Ugarte and had his best game for the club, and I thought Heaven and Martinez did brilliantly against Newcastle.
‘So I thought those four would just be certain to start there. I always want to say that it’s not just the manager, not just the players as there’s a culmination of everything when you get a bad performance.
‘But I do think tonight that the manager has to look at that and think, “I got that wrong and I complicated it”, because they just needed simplicity.’
Neville was also critical of Amorim’s ‘bizarre’ substitutions on the night, in particular the removal of goalscorer Zirkzee for 18-year-old academy product Jack Fletcher.
‘The substitutions made us worse, they made Manchester United worse. Every single substitution was bizarre,’ he said.
‘I don’t know what’s happened with Zirkzee at half-time. If he was injured then fair enough, get him off the pitch.
‘If Zirkzee wasn’t injured and that was a tactical substitution then it was a really poor one. And I’m not saying Zirkzee is Eric Cantona… he’s not, let’s by clear, not by any stretch of the imagination.
‘But I have to say, he needed to be out there for physicality, for presence, for experience and he’d scored.
‘You couldn’t take him off so I’m hoping he’s injured. I don’t mean that in a bad way! I’m hoping he’s injured for Ruben Amorim.’
United’s players have an opportunity to bounce back and win back some respect from their fans this weekend, when they return to Premier League action away to bitter rivals Leeds.
Daniel Farke’s Leeds side face Liverpool and Newcastle either side of Sunday’s clash with United in what is a tricky start to the new year.
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