GARY NEVILLE has launched a scathing attack on Manchester United following their embarrassing defeat to Nottingham Forest.
The Red Devils suffered a 3-2 defeat to Forest at Old Trafford on Saturday evening, their second straight loss under new gaffer Ruben Amorim.
It came before United announced sporting director Dan Ashworth has left after just five months.
Amorim made several changes to the side who lost 2-0 to Arsenal on Wednesday night, much to the annoyance of former United star Gary Neville.
He told NBC Sports: “When you keep changing players and you keep changing your back three and you take five players off, you’re basically saying to all of them, because they’ve obviously been taken off at the start of the game, that you don’t trust them.
“Ten Hag kept doing that a few weeks ago when he kept changing the back players, changing the midfield.
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“All of a sudden you’ve got a completely different system, a completely different set of players on the pitch at the end of the game. You can never get consistency.
“It looked really scruffy. They looked a mess at the end United with no real shape.
“In the first half they weren’t brilliant but at least they had a shape to them.
“Pick an XI that you think are the best. Almost give that XI the faith and trust.
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“[Enzo] Maresca’s doing it now at Chelsea – he’s playing an XI on a Sunday or a Saturday and then he’s playing a different XI in midweek.
“He’s sending some messages to the players that there’s stability here and this is what we’re going to do.
“When you change players all the time you’re just spinning plates and there’s no consistency.
“You need to build patterns together. You need to build that idea of what you are doing together.”
Neville was equally as annoyed by United stars not putting the hard yards in on the pitch.
The Sky Sports pundit continued: “No good team is ever a good team without hard work.
“Manchester United are 13th in the league. Their running stats, their distance covered is 16th in the league.
“You don’t deserve anything if you’re being outrun every single week.”
Neville’s former United team-mate Rio Ferdinand offered a brutal one-word assessment of the result, writing on X: “Shambles.”
Amorim, 39, didn’t mince his words after the final whistle, telling Sky Sports: “It was a tough game. We started the two halves really bad.
“It was hard to pass on some calm to the players and continue the game as we should do.
“We had not a lot of quality but a lot of heart. Suffering two goals after half time in this context is really hard.
“We need more time to put positionings in.
“If you see the first goal it was good combination between the players and after the first goal we had good moments, creating chances but then we went forward without thinking.
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“It’s a tough context but we have to understand this is a long journey and that’s what our jobs are.”
United will be back in action on Thursday, taking on Viktoria Plzen in the Europa League.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
