Red Devils still $350m away from title contention

[Ulquiorra]

MANCHESTER United are a team in turmoil after a 3-0 home loss consigned the Red Devils to their worst Premier League start in 26 years.
Spurs fans sang ‘you’re getting sacked in the morning’ at Old Trafford, as the pressure on United manager Jose Mourinho hit crisis point and pundits have gone in hard on the beleagured outfit.

Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher stuck the boot into the under fire Premier League giants suggesting they’d still need to spend another £200m in order to become title contenders.

“We saw the side of United tonight where they’re still fighting,” Carragher said on Monday Night Football.

“The worrying thing is if you’ve got that in a game, and you’re still losing 3-0. There’s a serious lack of quality, if you’ve spent £400m (A$701m) on a squad. How do you lose 3-0?That’s a team that looks like it still needs £200m (A$350m) spent on it.”

The ex-Liverpool defender then dished out a savage jibe on centre-back Victor Lindelof after a second successive horror show.

“Some of the defenders there. What’s happened at United in terms of buying two £30m centre-backs? I can’t really criticise Lindelof because it gets to the stage that he’s so far out of his depth that you start to feel sorry for him.

“In Jones and Smalling, have they improved since Mourinho came in? They’ve been playing for a long time, and it shouldn’t really be happening at this level.”

Mourinho sensationally stormed out of his press conference after the game, as pundits began to predict the end of his three-year reign at Old Trafford.

“His time is done at Manchester United, I think they’re a club in crisis, I don’t think players want to play for him, I don’t think players want to go there and join him,” Richard Keys said on BeIN Sport.

“I think the football they play is not exciting not even by their own standards. I would put Zinedine Zidane in right now.”

Speaking on Optus Sport, former Spurs player Jermaine Jenas suggested Mourinho ‘lost his cool’ in ‘worrying’ scenes.

“He lost his cool there completely for me,” Jenas said.

“… Maybe what Jose has done in the past will stay there forever as we know. But he needs to be more concerned with the future and what he has in front of him right now. The fact that he thinks people don’t respect him because hes won three Premier League titles, its worrying to be honest with you.”

“…but the facts are he’s got an issue, he’s got a problem. That was not a cool calm collected man in front of the written press there.”

While United legend Gary Neville was not kind in his evaluation of his former team’s showing on a night which shapes as the beginning of the end for the Special One.

“I was thinking from the point of view as a fan that with six changes tonight, the legs would go and the game would ease down,” Neville said on Monday Night Football.

“It went from being a big response with a high energy to looking frantic.

“We’ve not seen a pragmatic United team in the big games for a long time. I’ve been saying the same thing for 14 months now. Tottenham away last year, Arsenal away last year, City at home, so many games now we’ve seen where United have been open.

“I looked at the first five minutes, and I thought, what the hell is this? It was like a pinball machine. You couldn’t work out where people were playing.

“Tonight, there was a real frantic nature to it. None of the desperation to get back into the game we saw tonight was at Brighton.”