Manchester United legend Paul Parker believes Ruben Amorim won’t be able to find any signs of progression from yesterday’s bore draw in the derby with Manchester City.
Amorim has insisted that he has seen positive signs in the team’s recent performances – but United still lost to Nottingham Forest last week, and failed to create much of note against a relatively poor Manchester City team. And Parker believes that it will be the post-season where the United boss can hope to make any real change.
“I want to say yes, but I’m talking about Manchester United and everything they should be about,” Parker said when the question was put to him on this week’s Talking Devils podcast. “It’s like I’m being negative by saying it, the only progression I can say was happening was in the substitutions. Mount came on and was a threat though he didn’t do himself a favour getting booked so soon. Lindelof came on and moved the ball early.
“United have always been a team to play with tempo, and if you’re a team who don’t have the ball for long periods, you can’t play as slow as we do at the moment. But if I look at the game as a whole, I have to say no we can’t look at it as progression. Progression is only going to come at the end of the season, when things happen off the field in order to make things happen on the field. And if it doesn’t happen off the field you’re going to end up with a pre-season of negativity.”
In general, Parker was critical of the standard of football in yesterday’s goalless draw, and believes that the mainstream media have only just begun to comment on the poor standard of this season’s Premier League that has been evident for months.
“Everything about the game was that nobody believed they’d see a spectacle,” Parker said. “There was nothing on the line. You can say City are looking for fourth place but the game was tedious, as most thought it would be.
“Football has become tedious in the so-called best league in the world. It’s robotic. Gary Neville seemed to have permission to say yesterday what most of us have been saying. You knew what would happen yesterday. I was watching City do what they’ve been doing for six or seven years but the energy and quality wasn’t there. It was just poor. At the start of a season people would look forward to watching the Manchester derby, one of the biggest clubs in the world against one that’s been winning things, and they got nothing yesterday. We got exactly what we thought would happen… The game didn’t have any bite about it. There was nothing.”
Paul Parker was speaking exclusively on this week’s Talking Devils podcast.
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