After a narrow escape at West Brom, Shaka Hislop ponders whether Man United are capable of being more convincing under Jose Mourinho. After a narrow escape at West Brom, Shaka Hislop ponders whether Man United are capable of being more convincing under Jose Mourinho. Jose Mourinho insists Manchester United will fight for the title until the end of the season after they beat West Brom 2-1.
Manchester United's recruitment of players since Sir Alex Ferguson retired has "not been good enough," according to Gary Neville.
United have signed 22 players for a combined cost of £609.5 million since Ferguson left in 2013.
However, seven of the 11 that started the 2-1 win over West Brom on Sunday were at Old Trafford when he retired, including the entire back five of David De Gea, Antonio Valencia, Ashley Young, Phil Jones and Chris Smalling.
"If you look at that back five today then they were all there when Sir Alex Ferguson was at the club," former United defender Neville told Sky Sports. "They've signed eight defenders in the last four or five years and not one of them is in the team today.
"You've got Valencia, Jones, Smalling, Young and De Gea and you obviously have Lingard and Rashford, who were also at the club as well, so seven out of that 11 were there five years ago."
Manchester United have signed 22 players for a combined cost of £609.5 million since Sir Alex Ferguson left.
Louis van Gaal signed 13 players during two summer transfer windows at the club, and of those, six have already left.
Of the seven signings Jose Mourinho has made as United manager, only two -- Romelu Lukaku and Nemanja Matic -- started at The Hawthorns. Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Victor Lindelof were both named on the bench.
Eric Bailly is injured and Paul Pogba was suspended, while Henrikh Mkhitaryan, a £26m signing from Borussia Dortmund 18 months ago, has been left out of the matchday squad for eight of the last nine games.
Neville added: "The recruitment has not been good enough in the previous five years. It's been disjointed when David Moyes came in, then they flipped upwards towards Louis van Gaal and then backwards with Mourinho in terms of the profile of players.
"It hasn't been good enough, the recruitment, it's been all over the place and you can see still quite a lot of the players in that squad have been at the club for a long time."
Rob is ESPN FC's Manchester United correspondent. Follow him on Twitter @RobDawsonESPN.
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Source: espn.co.uk