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Rio Ferdinand drags Man Utd's Lisandro Martinez into Harry Maguire row as Ten Hag backed
Rio Ferdinand has weighed in on the criticism of Manchester United captain Harry Maguire.
Sevilla V Manchester United: Pictures
Manchester United icon Rio Ferdinand brought up Lisandro Martinez when discussing Harry Maguire’s error in the Red Devils’ Europa League exit to Sevilla on Thursday. Erik ten Hag’s outfit lost 3-0 away in the second leg after several high-profile individual mistakes cost United a chance at European glory this season, as Maguire and David De Gea were at the centre of the blame.
In the early stages of the game, Maguire appeared to call for the ball from his goalkeeper who duly obliged but the England man was quickly pounced upon by several opposition players. He was unable to keep the ball and Youssef En-Nesyri swiftly put Sevilla on their way to a comfortable victory over United.
The blame was shared between the two United players involved, as many felt that Maguire should not have called for the ball while others were of the opinion that De Gea can see the entire pitch and he should have known that his skipper was not in position to receive the ball, as Ferdinand weighed in on the discussion after criticising his former's side performance in a damning assessment.
“Poor, weren’t at the races,” Ferdinand said. “You can’t dress it up any way different to that. When you go into a game of that magnitude you have got to perform, the first minute of the game you have got to be on the front foot.
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"They started that game the way they finished the last game, going 2-0 up at Old Trafford and throwing that away was disastrous and that just continued to the second leg.”
Jermaine Jenas was on punditry duty with Ferdinand and asked the ex-defender whether Ten Hag should have adapted his style of play with Maguire and Victor Lindelof deputising for Martinez and Raphael Varane. “I think in the teams I played in we didn’t adapt for individuals,” Ferdinand added in defence of Ten Hag as he then brought up an example of the Argentine centre-back in a similar scenario.
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"It was poor. We weren't at the races."
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) April 22, 2023
"It's only Man City where you take the two centre-halves out of the team and they can deal with it."@rioferdy5 and @jjenas8 assess Man Utd's frailties after they crashed out of Europe on Thursday ������
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“The team is the way we play and everybody has to adapt to the way we play - and you recruit for that. You’re talking about the Maguire goal when the ball got played into him, I saw a clip online Martinez got the ball in exactly the same position previous to that and he got out of it.
“It’s not about adapting your tactics to the team, when you play a ball to an individual you know what that boy is capable of.
"You play it and go ‘He can deal with this under pressure from two or three different people’, whereas if you know that player can’t, I would always veer away from that and I think that’s where David De Gea made the wrong choice in that instance.”