Lisandro Mart\u00ednez did not hold back after Manchester United\u2019s 2-0 Champions League defeat to Atl\u00e9tico Madrid, directing pointed criticism at the club\u2019s summer transfer work and, in particular, director of football Jason Wilcox.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Amazon Prime Sport after the match, the centre back said: \u201cReally poor,\u201d Mart\u00ednez told Amazon Prime Sport after the match. \u201cReally poor. I have to control myself a lot but sometimes is a reflection of the mirror of how is our club at the moment. We did a fantastic season last season and now we expect more from the top, more players to compete because many teams bring many players as well. Atletico have an amazing team and they deserve to win today.\u201d<\/p>\n
When pressed on whether he had expected greater investment, Mart\u00ednez was equally direct. \u201c[I expected more] yeah, 100%,\u201d the Argentine confessed. \u201cI expect more from our technical director [Jason Wilcox]. I have to be honest, as players we have to do more but it is also important when you make a strong squad to be ready for this kind of night.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that United had laid foundations last season, but had not built on them enough. \u201cLast season we did everything, we created the base to create an amazing team. It is annoying, disappointing coming here and I am not seeing my team trying to get an amazing result here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mart\u00ednez also made clear he did not see the manager as the main problem. \u201cI don’t think so,\u201d Mart\u00ednez said when asked about Carrick. \u201cHe does his best. Every season is different. You can\u2019t stay with what you did last season. The teams knows how you play, they know every detail, if you don\u2019t change next season is a big problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t keep changing, changing, changing the manager. What about other areas? I can\u2019t say more.\u201d But he did say more. \u201cTonight it is easy to say the coach, easy to say the players but also we have to see other areas,\u201d Mart\u00ednez said pointing up, seemingly referencing United\u2019s higher-ups.<\/p>\n
Carrick, speaking afterwards, said he had not seen Mart\u00ednez\u2019s remarks before responding. \u201cI think after a game like this you come here to trying and get something out of the game and we\u2019re disappointed,\u201d Carrick said. \u201cSometimes you can be a little bit emotional as well. I have not seen it so I don\u2019t think now is the right time for me to comment on it.<\/p>\n
Carrick added: \u201cI fully know we all care and we show that in different ways. But now is certainly the time to be together and work through it. We got a big a big game now Sunday and we\u2019ve got to prepare for that properly.\u201d<\/p>\n
United\u2019s summer work focused heavily on midfield, with Andrey Santos, Carlos Baleba and Youri Tielemans arriving for $207.2 million (\u00a3155 million). Karl Darlow was the other senior addition, while Marcus Rashford returned after 18 months on loan.<\/p>\n
The midfield trio all started together against Atl\u00e9ti for the first time and showed some improvement in that area of the pitch. Even so, the broader squad issues remain. United were linked with a left back all summer, including Lewis Hall, but brought in no defender, while Luke Shaw has already missed time through injury and Ayden Heaven filled in on the left against Atl\u00e9ti.<\/p>\n
There were similar shortcomings in attack. United were closer to letting Joshua Zirkzee leave than adding another centre forward option, even though \u0160e\u0161ko is now injured and Zirkzee has not started a game all season. With Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha better suited to playing as second strikers, the lack of depth is becoming harder to ignore now that Champions League football and domestic cups have been added to the schedule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mart\u00ednez criticised United\u2019s transfer work after the Atl\u00e9tico loss, saying the club needed more support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21753,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,179],"tags":[1047,182],"class_list":["post-21754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-manchester-united","tag-champions-league","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}