Neville labels Man. Utd’s draw with Wolves ‘baddest of the bad’

Gary Neville has branded Manchester United’s performance in their draw with winless Wolves as “the baddest of the bad”.

United would have gone fourth in the Premier League had they won at Old Trafford on Tuesday, but bottom-of-the-table Wolves – who kicked off with only two points from 18 games—ended a run of 11 straight defeats with a 1-1 draw.

Ruben Amorim’s men were dumped out of the League Cup by fourth-tier Grimsby in August, but Neville still felt United were even worse against Wolves in a match they might have lost but for two fine Senne Lammens saves.

“That was the baddest of the bad that,” the former United captain said on the Gary Neville podcast.

“They weren’t just booed off at full-time. The fans waited in the stadium to continue to boo them. They’ve gone backwards.”

United won 1-0 at home to Newcastle on Boxing Day, despite missing several injured players, including captain Bruno Fernandes, Harry Maguire and Matthijs de Ligt, with three more at the Africa Cup of Nations.

But they failed to fire against Wolves, with Ladislav Krejci’s header just before half-time cancelling out Joshua Zirkzee’s deflected shot.

Amorim’s 3-4-3 system came under scrutiny again after the Portuguese reverted to his favoured formation after playing four at the back against Newcastle.

“This isn’t right. I’ve watched enough of United over the last five or six weeks to know what looks right and what isn’t right,” Neville said on Sky Sports.

“When I see that we go back (to three at the back) after five minutes tonight and I’m thinking, no, Ruben, why have you done that? The manager has to look at that and think, I got that wrong. I complicated it.”

Amorim withdrew Zirkzee at half-time and sent on 18-year-old Jack Fletcher for only his third senior appearance, saying the switch was “just tactical”.

But Neville, referring to Amorim’s substitutions, insisted: “They made Manchester United worse. Every single substitution was bizarre.

“If Zirkzee wasn’t injured and that was a tactical substitution, it was a really poor one.

“Zirkzee isn’t Eric Cantona, by any stretch of the imagination, but he needed to be out there for physicality, for presence, for experience.”