Gary Neville feels Manchester United may have “needed” to lose the Europa League so that the trophy could not mask the fact the club is “not ok.”
United have just undergone perhaps the worst season in their history. Certainly in the Premier League, they have not had a season worse than one which finished with them in 15th.
They could have gotten some solace from winning the Europa League, but Tottenham beat them 1-0 in the final.
United legend Neville feels it may be a good thing that the club didn’t pick up European silverware, as that might have masked the problems at Old Trafford.
He told GOAL: “I was in a pub watching it. I didn’t react at the end of the game. It sort of, to be fair, was something that felt quite expected. The club has made a lot of poor decisions over the last 10 years, and I think Wednesday night, it all came home to roost on and off the pitch.
“The financial stresses that this will bring, but also the performance in a big game like that. I don’t believe that football players, wake up in the morning and don’t care. I believe they genuinely do care, and I believe those Manchester United players do care.
“But the reality of it is, it’s too much for them, and it’s too much for everybody at the club at this moment in time. And there’s no doubt that there is going to need to be changes there.
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“There’s obviously a manager who’s relatively new who’s going to need to do quite a lot of work in changing and adapting that squad to get what he wants. And he’s collected a group of players who have had a difficult time before he came, even more difficult time since he arrived.
“It would have been a silver lining around the dark cloud last Wednesday night if Manchester United would have won. But the fact that they didn’t win, maybe it’s what the club needed.
“When you win a final and you get into the Champions League, you can sometimes tell yourself, ‘yeah, we’re ok’. We’re not ok. The club’s not ok. It needs drastic change, and I’m hopeful of that drastic change coming. How far that will set Manchester United back, that loss, we don’t know yet.
“But fans are patient. They love the club. They love the players. They love their manager. And they recognise that one day, Manchester United will return to success, but it could be quite a while off yet because of what’s happening in the current phase.”
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