Scholes rips into ‘million miles away’ Man Utd ‘buying players for the sake of it’
Paul Scholes insists Manchester United are “a million miles away” from winning the Premier League as they’re now “buying players just for the sake of it”.
The Red Devils have won just one of their opening five Premier League games of the season and sit 12th in the table, having also been dumped out of the Carabao Cup by Brighton.
United signed Carlos Baleba (£70m), Andrey Santos (£48m) and Youri Tielemans (£35m) in a midfield rebuild this summer, but those signings have left United legend Scholes cold.
“It feels quite sad to say this but Man United are a club now that are not trying to win the league with recruitment,” he said on The Good, The Bat & The Football podcast.
“Santos, Baleba, they’ve brought players in that physically they may be better. Santos played 11 games for Chelsea, they paid £50million for him.
“But he’s not getting into the team, now Baleba might make a bit of difference. But again, if you’re recruiting at the start of the season for Manchester United, it should be for players that you think you can go and win the league with. I think they’re a million miles away.
“I think they’re just trying to consolidate from what Michael did last year, which is hard to get your head around. Were United trying to buy an Elliot Anderson? Probably. Now that’s a signing where you think that might help you get a lot better. The players they’ve bought aren’t making them any better.
“Michael must be really disappointed with what has happened in the summer. I reckon behind the scenes he thinks he’s been let down. What Michael did last year was very, very good.
“The most important time for Michael was the start of this season. These games now are where you put a marker down, it gives you a foundation for the rest of the season.”
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Who to blame?
Erik ten Hag and Ruben Amorim have both been sacked under the co-ownership of Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his INEOS team and Nicky Butt believes United’s struggles are down to the people in charge of the coffers.
Butt said: “As a fan, the bit that gets me, I no longer think ‘it’s a no-brainer we’re going to win this game’. Who can you point the finger at, and for me, it has to be the people upstairs that are pointing the people into place to pick the managers, the players, the coaches.
“I don’t understand it. (Omar) Berrada the CEO said they’re going to win the league by 2028. That’s never going to happen the way it’s going, never in a million years.
“Without literally ripping them to shreds, it has to be said they’ve come in, they gave Ten Hag an extra few years on his contract, that didn’t work. They went and got two other managers after that and it’s still not working.
“There’s got to be a real question being asked – is it being run right off the pitch, in recruitment and then that translates onto the pitch. So it’s a massive big problem I think.”
Scholes added: “I don’t think we can keep blaming managers all the time. You can’t just keep going through managers like we are doing. Recruitment will have an awful lot to answer for, especially after this summer.
“Are they looking at these top targets, Morgan Rogers, Elliot Anderson? It feels like we’re buying players just for the sake of it. It feels like they’re settling for third, fourth, fifth-best signings – and that isn’t good enough. I’d rather just keep the money, and say ‘sure we can find someone in the academy who can do what these lads are doing’.”
