New Straits Times

Neville slams United’s transfer policy

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LONDON: Manchester United legend Gary Neville has slammed the club’s recruitmen­t policy in recent years, describing it as ‘disjointed’ and ‘not good enough’.

Jose Mourinho’s side started Sunday’s Premier League match at West Brom with seven players that were all in place at Old Trafford when Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013.

David de Gea, Antonio Valencia, Phil Jones, Chris Smalling, Ashley Young, Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford were all in the side to face Alan Pardew’s Baggies and Neville believes that is a sign that the club’s transfer strategy has not worked.

“If you look at that back five today then they were all there when Sir Alex Ferguson was at the club,” said Neville.

“They’ve signed eight defenders in the last four or five years and not one of them is in the team today (Sunday).

“You’ve got Valencia, Jones, Smalling, Young and De Gea and you obviously have Lingard and Rashford, who were also at the club as well, so seven out of that 11 were there five years ago.

“The recruitmen­t has not been good enough in the previous five years. It's been disjointed with David Moyes came in, then they flipped upwards towards Louis van Gaal and then backwards with Mourinho in terms of the profile of players.

“It hasn’t been good enough, the recruitmen­t, it’s been all over the place and you can see still quite a lot of the players in that squad have been at the club for a long time.”

Neville followed that up by claiming on Twitter: “Scary and sobering point to have to make considerin­g £660m (RM3.6 billion) has been spent since he (Ferguson) left.”

Since Sir Alex left the club in the summer of 2013, United have invested in a number of defenders but are yet to find a stable back line.

Luke Shaw, Daley Blind and Marcos Rojo all arrived in the summer of 2014 when Van Gaal took over at Old Trafford while Matteo Darmian followed one year later.

Eric Bailly arrived from Villarreal in Mourinho’s first summer in charge while Victor Lindelof joined from Benfica before the start of this campaign. Daily Mail

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