Former Manchester United star Christian Eriksen has lambasted the role of former United stars in the club’s struggles over the last few years.
Time at United
Eriksen signed for the Red Devils in 2022 and spent three years at the club, winning the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup during his stay.
The creative midfielder played 107 times for the Red Devils, scoring eight goals.
Realistic
He joined Bundesliga side Wolfsburg in the summer as a free agent but in an interview with ESPN he has claimed that people need to be more realistic when assessing his former team, United.
The Dane asserted, “it probably depends who you ask. If you ask a fan, they want to be back to winning the league every year for the next 20 years like they did in this time of football it is almost impossible, to do that with so many other clubs having that many good players around. It’s tough.”
He continued, “I think obviously they want to get back to that to being stable as a top club, but even being there, winning the FA Cup and the Carabao in the last two seasons is something that any other club would be proud of to have done.”
Eriksen also added that due to the size of the club, even winning the Carabao Cup is seen as a small thing and not good enough.
Massive ex-United presence in media
Sky Sports have the likes of Gary Neville and Roy Keane in their ranks and The BBC have recently hired Wayne Rooney.
Rio Ferdinand worked with TNT Sports for numerous years and the likes of Owen Hargreaves are all regularly featured discussing the club on national media.
Eriksen elaborated, “you see how big the club is, how much people want to be involved with the club, even on the media attention. I think even now we speak about United here. It’s just the power of the club.”
He also claimed that the media are more opinionated about the club and this tends to create a negative atmosphere with “the fans following their heroes on the TV and it doesn’t help the players at the club.”
The midfielder finally stated that, “as a footballer, there’s always someone who has an opinion on one or the other, but you’re just playing football. You try to focus on that bit, and I think United were good at that. The focus was on the game itself and not so much what people say.”
Featured image Matt McNulty via Getty Images
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Alex Browne
Alex is a huge Manchester United fan, inspired by greats of his homeland such as George Best, Harry Gregg and Norman Whiteside. Proud owner of such niche shirts such as Kleberson, Eric Djemba-Djemba and Gary Neville. Grew up pretending to be Ruud van Nistelrooy and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in the back garden, with little success.
