Gary Neville has slammed Manchester United’s ownership, saying that they “don’t have a clue what to do” about Michael Carrick’s future at the club.
United will spend the international break in the relegation zone despite snatching a point in a topsy-turvy 4-4 draw with Aston Villa on Sunday thanks to stoppage-time goals from Joshua Zirkzee and Patrick Dorgu.
Having won one Premier League game all season, Carrick is under serious pressure — a far cry from his position six months ago after guiding the club to third place as caretaker head coach.
“When the new manager comes in, everybody’s happy for a couple of months and all of a sudden, six months later, it happens again,” Neville told NBC.
“You can keep changing the manager and thinking that’s going to be the answer. But this has been proven now over eight managers in 12 years, that’s not the answer.
“Michael could leave, Michael might stay, we don’t know, the ownership don’t have a clue what to do.”
United have not won the Premier League since Sir Alex Ferguson’s final season, and have finished in the top four in fewer than half of seasons since then.
Fans protested against the Glazer family and Sir Jim Ratcliffe before and during Sunday’s game, with some unveiling a banner reading: “We don’t want a new stadium, we want new owners.”
The club’s chief executive, Omar Berrada, and director of football, Jason Wilcox, have also faced heavy criticism, with the latter even referenced by United defender Lisandro Martínez after the defeat to Atlético Madrid in October.
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“It’s rinse and repeat,” Neville said of United’s strategy. “[Ruben] Amorim, [Erik] Ten Hag, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Carrick, José Mourinho, Louis van Gaal, David Moyes, Ralf Rangnick — some of them are world class managers who have had success, there are a lot of promising young managers there, ex-players who know the club as well.
“None of it has worked because if you recruit badly, if you’ve got [a] poor performance department, poor recruitment department, you’ve not got leadership that is strong right through the spine of the football club you will fail.
“Every organisation in the world will fail if you’ve not got an aligned leadership from top to bottom — your board and your ownership right the way through to the person who is stood on the pitch trying to play football.
“There are real issues within that football club, you’ve got people doing those jobs who have never done those jobs before in senior positions.”
