Former Manchester United full-back Patrice Evra has launched a stunning attack against the club’s current lot of players for their poor displays in the first two games of the new campaign. United have lost both of their first couple of games, the opener at home against Brighton, and the 4-0 hammering by Brentford away.
While it was expected that a new manager with solid philosophy will turn around the things for United, they are once again off to a disastrous start. Moreover, their recruitment too has been fragile this summer with fans and pundits divided over their new £60 million acquisition Casemiro.
Evra has now talked about the problem lying beneath the fuss accusing the players at the club of disrespecting the ‘badge’. He even confessed that the club’s disastrous start to the new season comes as no surprise since there has been no improvement on the players’ side.
Evra believes Erik ten Hag has been ‘fooled the same way previous managers were fooled’
It has been a long debated issue at Old Trafford that it is the plyers who need to go than the managers. Even former United players Roy Keane and Gar Neville too have opined that the players have thrown some of the good managers like Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer the club has had in recent years under the bus.
Evra too has weighed in on the debate as while talking to Betfair, he explained: “It’s deja vu and I’m not surprised. I see the same players, there’s no confidence and I think we have got carried away with the pre-season. When the league starts things are totally different, sometimes I even prefer to have a bad pre-season, then it means you have to work hard, your legs are heavy.”
He further went on to claim that United’s preseason, where they brushed aside Liverpool 4-0 and played some energetic football was a fluke which fooled Erik ten Hag into buying the players’ efforts.
“When you’re too sharp in pre-season and you look good, that means you’re not working hard enough. I also blame Ten Hag – he’s been fooled by all those players, the same way other managers have been fooled by them. In pre-season they looked so good, and he would have been excited to make them even better, but no. Psychologically they are broken,” he said.
Evra, a five-time Premier League champions with United also assessed that the players have stopped respecting the badge as was evident from their poor show against Brentford. The Bees went 4-0 up within the first half-hour and United couldn’t respond to the havoc caused by them.
The former left-back added:
“If they don’t fight anymore it’s because those players don’t want to be there and they don’t respect the badge. Let’s be clear. Brentford were 4-0 up after 35 minutes. When I saw that I wasn’t surprised, and that’s the worst part. What did we expect after seeing the same midfield, the same team, what does anyone expect? I don’t know if Ten Hag wanted different players. I don’t know if he wanted to get rid of some players but they couldn’t because their salary was too high. That’s why I’m angry with the players because it’s down to them.”
While they have managed to sign four players so far, United are finding it difficult to offload the fringe players. And on the backdrop of all this, they next face Liverpool, who thumped them 5-0 in the same fixture last season. However, the Reds too are marred with injuries coming into this game and are also looking for their first win of the season.