Ferdinand exposes ‘hapless’ Man Utd star as Ten Hag is told he’s right ‘not to adapt for individuals’
Rio Ferdinand thinks Erik ten Hag should “not adapt for individuals” even after Man Utd’s damaging 3-0 loss against Sevilla in the Europa League.
United put in one of their worst performances of the 2022/23 campaign on Thursday night as they were deservedly beaten 3-0 by Sevilla. This loss condemned them to a 5-2 aggregate defeat to the Spanish outfit in the Europa League quarter-finals.
Harry Maguire and Victor Lindelof started at centre-back with Lisandro Martinez and Raphael Varane both out injured.
For Sevilla’s first goal, they were gifted a shot on goal after Maguire lost possession in his own half after receiving the ball from David De Gea.
This is a fresh blow for Maguire, who looks likely to leave Man Utd at the end of this season.
David De Gea was just as bad against Sevilla but the ‘hapless’ defender who has been criticised the most over the past few days.
Reflecting on the loss to Sevilla, Ferdinand has admitted that Man Utd “were not at the races”.
“Poor, weren’t at the races,” Ferdinand said. “You can’t dress it up any way different to that. When you go into a game of that magnitude you have got to perform, the first minute of the game you have got to be on the front foot.
“They started that game the way they finished the last game, going 2-0 up at Old Trafford and throwing that away was disastrous and that just continued to the second leg.”
READ MORE: Ten Hag cops for Sevilla sh*tshow as Maguire’s Man Utd career is pronounced dead…
When asked if Ten Hag needed to adapt his style of play with Maguire and Victor Lindelof playing instead of Martinez and Raphael Varane, Ferdinand said “I think in the teams I played in we didn’t adapt for individuals.
“The team is the way we play and everybody has to adapt to the way we play – and you recruit for that. You’re talking about the Maguire goal when the ball got played into him, I saw a clip online Martinez got the ball in exactly the same position previous to that and he got out of it.
“It’s not about adapting your tactics to the team, when you play a ball to an individual you know what that boy is capable of.
“You play it and go ‘He can deal with this under pressure from two or three different people’, whereas if you know that player can’t, I would always veer away from that and I think that’s where David De Gea made the wrong choice in that instance.”
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