Former Liverpool defender turned pundit Jamie Carragher has hit out at criticism of Erik ten Hag for snubbing Cristiano Ronaldo on the bench.
The 37-year-old veteran was an unused substitute in Manchester United’s 6-3 defeat at the hands of rivals Manchester City. This led to criticism from several pundits, including Roy Keane, who described the decision to leave Ronaldo on the bench as disrespectful.
However, Carragher did not agree with his Sky Sports colleague.
He took to Twitter to write: “The idea that ETH got it wrong yesterday by not playing Ronaldo is laughable! Ronaldo played at Brentford when it was 4-0 at ht!! It’s not a dig at CR, but Rashford’s pace on the counter attack as we saw v Arsenal/Liverpool was 100 the best option.”
Keane’s comments were weird because everyone can see that Ten Hag is trying to take this team in a completely different direction. It will take time before we can play out from the back, but Ten Hag requires more energy from his attacking players than what Ronaldo can offer at this stage of his career.
When asked why he didn’t bring on Ronaldo, Ten Hag told reporters after the game that it was ‘out of respect for his big career’, as per Laurie Whitwell.
Everyone seems to be forgetting that Ten Hag decided to bring on Anthony Martial instead of Ronaldo, which hardly backfired since the Frenchman scored two goals in the last 10 minutes of the game.
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