Ten Hag doesn't know how to use his own Man Utd signings - Neville

Tom Weber

Updated: 20 May 2024 19:05 BST
3 min read

Gary Neville has admitted that he feels sorry for Manchester United striker Rasmus Hojlund.

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The striker arrived from Atalanta for a whopping €74 million last summer and enjoyed - or endured - an up-and-down campaign. Prolific in the Champions League but unable to score in the Premier League in the early parts of the season, Hojlund eventually hit his stride after breaking his duck in December.

However, more recently the 21-year-old again failed to consistently score, finding the net just once in ten games before scoring in both of Man Utd's final two games of the season. All told, Hojlund notched a respectable 16 goals and two assists in his first season at Man Utd.

According to club legend Gary Neville, however, the youngster could have been a lot more prolific had Erik ten Hag managed to build a coherent system with a recognisable pattern of play. The Dutchman failed at this and, says Neville, let Hojlund down in the process.

Neville feels sorry for Hojlund

Writing for The Overlap, the pundit admitted: "Watching Hojlund, I felt sorry for him. You talk about the difficulty United have had putting out a consistent back four this season. But it's the same up front."

"Hojlund doesn't know what the pattern of play is, whether the wide player is going to go to the line or come inside. You can see he's making good runs all the time and then the wide man will come back inside and there will be a 15-pass sequence."

"Another time he'll drop in and try to join in with that and that will inevitably be the time the wide man decides to get to the line and cross it. Until United can establish a consistent pattern of play, being centre-forward in that team will be an impossible job."

This comes just a week after Neville claimed that Hojlund can become a solid Premier League player like Ollie Watkins but not one of the league's best strikers.