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Sky Sports pundit, Gary Neville, has come out defending under-fire manager, Erik ten Hag.
According to the Manchester Evening News (MEN), the former Manchester United captain has boldly asserted that “there is no way they should change him this season, this idea of sacking him is absolute nonsense and I would not be in favour of that”.
This contrasts sharply with the opinion of Danny Murphy who wrote yesterday that the club should sack the former Ajax coach immediately to save their season.
Neville on the other hand believes that the problems at the club run much deeper than the Dutchman. The former right back explained, “I know people say you can’t blame the Glazers (for what is happening on the pitch) but yeah you can. Yeah you can because ten years of failure and miserable recruitment comes down to the fact they have not got a sporting director or a proper head of recruitment in place”.
The pundit believes that such a lack of leadership generates a situation where managers feel they have to do everything themselves and this contributes massively to the underperforming on the pitch.
Neville went on to claim that if we were talking about one or two under-performing managers, then the argument to sack them might have more merit. However, this is not the case. A whole host of managers have come in and not delivered in the post-Ferguson era, inluding huge names such as Jose Mourinho and Louis van Gaal.
The 48 year old commentator lambasted the owners’ record by stating, “they have spent a billion quid, on the limit of FFP, £700m in debt, £300m going to other clubs, the bank overdraft is at £250-300m, they are £1.2bn under”.
The former full back also claimed that incoming part investor, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, has a real job to do to sort out the current malaise.
“What we need is a change of structure at the top, that will hopefully happen in the next few weeks, hopefully that will change the way in which the sporting project is looked at because you can’t come in and leave everything as is”.
Such change has been frequently discussed in the press with names like Paul Mitchell, Dougie Freedman, Dan Ashworth and Jean-Claude Blanc all mentioned as possible candidates to take over key footballing positions at the football club under INEOS.
Neville then finished his argument by stating that only with a significant change in footballing structure can the club finally “compete with some of the other clubs who recruit and do their business a lot better”.
Despite poor results, it seems Ten Hag still enjoys the support of most fans and crucially for him, it appears the potential new part owners agree. Sir Jim Ratcliffe is said to be a proponent of the work the former Ajax coach has done at the club and understands the difficulties and lack of help he has received from the top. All Manchester United fans will hope better times are soon on the horizon in this regard.
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