Gary Neville criticises Manchester United recruitment as 'disjointed' and 'not good enough'

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Former Manchester United defender Gary Neville has criticised the club’s recruitment policy in the post-Ferguson era as “disjointed” and “not good enough”.

The United starting XI which ran out against West Brom at the weekend featured seven players all in place at Old Trafford under Sir Alex Ferguson.

David de Gea, Antonio Valencia, Phil Jones, Chris Smalling, Ashley Young, Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford all started in Sunday’s 2-1 win at The Hawthorns.

More than £600m has been spent on transfers since Ferguson’s departure in 2013, with Neville insisting that recruitment has “been all over the place”.

“If you look at that back five today then they were all there when Sir Alex Ferguson was at the club,” said Neville before kick-off.

“They've signed eight defenders in the last four or five years and not one of them is in the team today.

“You've got Valencia, Jones, Smalling, Young and De Gea and you obviously have Lingard and Rashford, who were also at the club as well, so seven out of that 11 were there five years ago.

“The recruitment has not been good enough in the previous five years. It's been disjointed with David Moyes came in, then they flipped upwards towards Louis van Gaal and then backwards with Mourinho in terms of the profile of players.

“It hasn't been good enough, the recruitment, it's been all over the place and you can see still quite a lot of the players in that squad have been at the club for a long time.”

United have spent millions on the likes of Marcos Rojo, Anthony Martial and Luke Shaw, all of whom started on the bench against West Brom.

Despite the club’s vast expenditures in the transfer market, United have yet to reclaim the Premier League title since Ferguson left.