Man Utd: Neville slams ‘bizarre’ Amorim decisions vs Wolves and ‘hopes’ one player is injured | OneFootball

Man Utd legend Gary Neville has hit out at the Red Devils for the “baddest of the bad” display against Wolves as he criticised Ruben Amorim’s substitutions.

The Red Devils put in a woeful display to give bottom side Wolves only their third point of the season in a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford on Tuesday night.

Wolves, who have only scored 11 goals all season, had higher expected goals than Man Utd with the Red Devils continuing to show inconsistent form in the Premier League.

Joshua Zirkzee’s deflected shot put Man Utd ahead on 27 minutes but Wolves found an equaliser through Ladislav Krejci on the stroke of half-time.

Krejci and Jhon Arias both came close to winning it for Wolves in the second half, while Man Utd wing-back Patrick Dorgu was denied a late winner by VAR.

Reacting to the boos from Man Utd fans at half-time and full-time, 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 thought their display “was the baddest of the bad” against Wolves and the Man Utd legend was frustrated by Amorim’s choice of team against the Premier League’s bottom side.

Neville: I’m not going to get emotional

Former Man Utd right-back Neville added: “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.

“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 continued: “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.”

Neville: ‘It should have been picked and it was so obvious’

Man Utd had some excuses for their poor display with Bruno Fernandes out injured and Bryan Mbeumo, Amad Diallo and Noussair Mazraoui all at the Africa Cup of Nations.

Neville said: “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.

“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.”

Amorim could not avoid more criticism with Neville calling all of his substitutions “bizarre”, he went on: “The substitutions made us worse, they made Manchester United worse. Every single substitution was bizarre.

“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.”