Roy Keane says the competitive nature of the Premier League has caught Ruben Amorim out and he will have been shocked “how bad Man Utd’s players are”.
United slipped to their 14th league defeat this season – their joint-highest tally in a single Premier League campaign – with a 4-1 defeat to Newcastle on Sunday.
Amorim’s side are all but guaranteed to have their lowest Premier League finish and first season finishing in the bottom half since 1990 under Sir Alex Ferguson.
“I think the Premier League has caught this manager and his coaching staff out,” said Keane.
“I know people do their homework before they go to a club but I think he’s gone in there and been shocked at how bad this group of players are.
“You don’t know the quality of a group of players until you get in the door and start working with them.
“Of course you do your little bit of homework from the outside looking in and you’d have a bit of pride and ego thinking you could improve the players. That’s a manager’s job.
“But over the last couple of years the recruitment has been about bringing in players that haven’t played in the Premier League and it seems to have caught a lot of them out.
“They can’t seem to cope with the demands, the physical side of the game, and the lack of goals is a huge problem.
“In the past United have always been entertaining and you’d think good for a goal, but with 15 minutes left at St James’ Park the game was over.
“There’s nothing wrong with losing football matches. Great teams lose football matches, but sometimes it is about the way you lose. In the second half it was nowhere near good enough.
“It’s easy for the manager to say, ‘focus on Thursday’, but you have to look at today and this group of players. A bit of fight, a bit of spirit.
“They are lacking in quality, pace and power, but my goodness, show some fight, and they didn’t do that enough in the second half.”
Amorim’s team were very much in the game at the break following Alejandro Garnacho’s equaliser, but Newcastle overpowered the visitors in the second half, with Harvey Barnes at the double and Bruno Guimaraes taking advantage of a goalkeeping error from Altay Bayindir.
“It wasn’t good enough in the second half from Man Utd,” Keane added.
“That’s 14 league defeats now and we keep making excuses for the team.
“There aren’t enough players that can run in the team and that want to run. They are not enough of a goal threat either.
“You’ve got to dig deep, even when you are up against it, and they didn’t do that in the second half.
“We said at half-time that the big test was still to come for United. Newcastle are an outstanding side and they have got into a good habit in big games. Man Utd are the opposite.
“Man Utd are physically and mentally a weak team.
“Newcastle were too fast, too powerful and more determined. United couldn’t deal with the pace up front from the attacking players and they got what they deserved.
“There was talk before the game on there being good signs for Man Utd and that they are getting better, but I can’t see it. I just saw another poor performance, especially in the second half.
“It’s not good enough and I worry for this group of players. they don’t look like a strong group mentally.”
Amorim: I don’t care about criticism, our focus is on Thursday
Attention for Manchester United now turns to next Thursday’s Europa League quarter-final second leg against Lyon at Old Trafford as they look to keep their own Champions league hopes alive.
United drew 2-2 in the away leg earlier this week and the return match was referenced eight times by Amorim in his post-match interview with Sky Sports.
He said: “They were stronger in the second balls and are a better team. We did a lot of mistakes, which makes it harder to win a game.
“It’s a bit of everything – it’s hard to point at one thing that goes wrong. It’s really hard to win at top teams when you make mistakes to help them to score.
“We can do so much better. Let’s focus on Thursday. All of the mistakes we made today we cannot do on Thursday.
“I understand the criticism. I don’t care. Nothing is worse than losing games.
“People can say whatever they want to say. I don’t want to defend myself as, if you look at our position in the table, it says it all.
“Thursday is really important so I don’t care what people say. Losing games is the hardest part of this job.
“We have a chance to get Champions League but it’s going to be really hard. We need to focus on that.
“We have had a season of difficult losses so it’s usual for us to get up. We can do that on Thursday. It’s a different game in front of our fans.”
