Manchester United played Aston Villa on Monday night in the FA Cup. Pat Nevin joined The Football Show to discuss Ralf Rangnick's side.
Firing Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was supposed to offer short-term relief.
But Ralf Rangnick's arrival has brought with it poor results, poor performances and reports of players being unhappy. Marcus Rashford spoke up on social media this week saying the players were behind Rangnick. Manchester United looked to back that up on the field against Aston Villa.
While watching the game, Pat Nevin cast his eye over the Manchester United squad.
"If you watched Irish sport...everybody is giving everything," Nevin said.
"You look at some of the football teams like Man United and you think, 'wait a minute.' Anybody in any sport that cares goes for it. Gives everything they've got for the vast majority of every game. You look at the Premier League and everyone's doing it. You look at Man United, I don't think they're yet capable of doing it."
"It's not going to be binary. It's going to be one reason for Ronaldo, it's going to be one reason for Rashford."
Work rate is still the problem for the Manchester United players. It's the primary reason as to why they are closer to Aston Villa as a team rather than Manchester City or Liverpool. It's not just the players who draw the most criticism either. The majority of the squad must improve.
If you're one player working hard with 10 people around you who aren't, you'll eventually slacken off.
"When McGinn is 20 yards out and nobody is closing him down. He's getting shots off and you're thinking, 'that's not good enough.' You should be flying out there and they weren't flying out. To be fair that time it was actually McTominay who wasn't flying out quick enough.
"They're playing better than they have done recently but are they that much better than Aston Villa? Absolutely not."
Manchester United need to make transfers in January and the summer, but they need to change the culture of the dressing room. They also need to change the culture of the club as a whole. Talk of Paul Pogba signing a £500,000 per week deal makes sense commercially, but Pogba has never played to that level consistently for United.
The United directors are prioritizing commercial gain over performance on the field. So performances on the field will inevitably suffer.
One January transfer for each Premier League team
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