Gary Neville, speaking on Sky Sports‘ Monday Night Football show, revealed his belief that Manchester United’s defensive core is not good enough to win the title.
Man United had previously taken the ascendency in the race to win the Premier League title, something that Neville was getting pretty excited about, as you’d expect after several years of hardship.
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However, the cracks have began to show, with the draw with West Brom at the weekend a pretty clear indicator that United are not yet in a position where they’re ready to compete for the league title.
Neville appears to agree, and speaking on Sky Sports’ MNF show, suggested that the problem could lie with the core of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s back-line – the goalkeeper and the centre-back pairing:
“The key thing is that only one of the last 20 Premier League champions have conceded at least one goal per game. That tells you about these three of De Gea, Lindelof and Maguire. To win titles, that triangle of goalkeeper and two centre-backs need to be as solid as a rock.”
“They need to be dominant and these three aren’t dominant. The goalkeeper’s not dominant at the moment, even though I thought he did OK on Sunday, and the two centre-backs are not dominant. They concede too many goals and if you concede one or more goals per game, you’re not going to win a Premier League. Manchester United have to look at that.”
Unfortunately for Man United, they have invested a great deal of money into that area, so there’s no possibility of hitting the reset button and starting again. A workable solution needs to be found.