Former Man United captain and defender Gary Neville has delivered a brutal assessment of his former club’s performance in the wake of their Premier League draw with Brentford.
The Sky Sports pundit candidly stated that it is difficult to play as badly as Erik ten Hag’s side did in their 1-1 draw with Brentford on Saturday in his no-holds-barred lambasting of the United selection’s dismal performance. He even quipped that a petition should have been started to hand back points to Brentford when Mason Mount opened the scoring.
United were woefully lackluster against Brentford, conceding a staggering 31 shots. In fact, they actually thought they had managed to steal a victory with substitute Mason Mount’s strike in the 96th minute, only to be stumped when Brentford defender Kristoffer Ajer equalised just a minute later in a dramatic finale. It was clearly evident throughout the match that the Bees were in control and had created several chances to have justified a comfortable win against a tepid, but lucky, United.
Neville – who had hoped that United would place pressure on Tottenham and Aston Villa in their hunt for fourth place in the Premier League – was totally taken aback by the poor display and told Sky Sports: “I watched them last night and couldn’t believe what I was watching. I thought they would put a bit of pressure on Tottenham and Villa in the run-in. It’s actually really difficult to play that badly.
“Really, it is, you know? I can’t think of any point in that game, maybe the first few minutes, where they did anything well at all. It was a horrible performance to the point where when Mason Mount scored, I think we may have had to start a petition to give Brentford two points back.
“It was an absolute robbery. But then Brentford score. I can’t explain that performance, I’ve no idea where it comes from. Very worrying that you can go to that level of low. You know you can play badly in football, you know you sometimes don’t feel quite right.
“But that was a dismal, dismal effort in an attempt to play football, in an attempt to work as hard as you possibly can. When you give the ball away, their reaction is non-existent. They really are one of the worst teams out of possession.”
Not hesitating to add insult to injury, Neville compared United’s performance to that of Arsenal, who were stellar as they pressed and harried title rivals Manchester City into a goalless stalemate on Sunday.
The United icon continued: “What we’ve seen from Arsenal today, the levels of defending compactness, the work ethic of all the front players to be a cohesive unit and defend together, there’s none of that [from United].”