Manchester United will have “a lot of painful moments this season”, says Gary Neville, with poor decision making leaving them in need of patience and some serious recruitment in the transfer market.
The Red Devils have continued to invest heavily under a succession of managers, but too many big-money flops have been taken to Old Trafford.
A serious price is being paid for those mistakes, with the struggles being endured in 2019-20 considered to be a direct result of recent mismanagement.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is finding it difficult to get United back on track, but is considered to be favouring the right approach when it comes to putting trust in home-grown signings and promising academy graduates.
Neville admits that philosophy is going to take time to pay dividends, with questions being asked of the club’s leadership in getting to this point and what they now plan to do heading forward.
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The former Red Devils defender told Sky Sports: “I made the point last year when Jose Mourinho wanted to sign players, whether they were right or wrong, who was saying no to him? Who is qualified up above him to say no? Who’s making those decisions?
“There are going to be a lot of these inquests this season. There will be more difficult games – they have Liverpool at home in two weeks’ time.
“United will have a lot of painful moments this season, a lot of hard moments. There will be lots of those.
“We can have these inquests but the end solution is they have to recruit well to a certain style of play and stick to it. They can’t do anything else.
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“They can’t rush it, they can’t circumvent the process of the transfer windows, you can’t get the players you want in January because other clubs don’t let them go.
“You have to work as hard as possible to make sure that they get high quality players into the club and get the players out that remain in that dressing room that don’t want to be there, and do it as quickly as possible.
“It’s not a quick fix, it has to be done methodically.
“I hope that, because of the poor results, they don’t come off the path that they are on, which is to develop a young, progressive team. But they do need some experience in there and it is needed badly.”
Neville added: “They need another five or six. They need a centre-back, they need a right-back, they need two central midfield players, they need a wide player and they need a top centre-forward. They need five or six top players in that squad and they are going to cost a lot of money.
“Man Utd are now getting the pain they deserve for poor decisions at board level. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer needs to make sure that the clean-up job that he is doing, he needs to make sure that he gets the £250 million to spend that the others have so that he gets an opportunity.
“If they recruit well in the next three or four transfer windows, they've got the bones of something. If they recruit badly, they'll end up suffering.”
United, who were already experiencing their worst start to a Premier League season prior to a meeting with Newcastle, hit a new low on Sunday as they slumped to a 1-0 defeat at St James’ Park.
That result has left Solskjaer’s side sat 12th in the table, with just nine points taken from eight games.
The man at the helm is facing some uncomfortable questions, amid suggestions that another change in the dugout could be made, but the Norwegian insists everyone is still pulling in the same direction.