Man Utd ‘got rid’ of Rangnick after ‘being scared to death’ by requesting sales of ’12 players’ – Neville
Gary Neville believes Ralf Rangick’s brutal assessment of Manchester United is why he did not stay at the club beyond his spell as interim manager.
The Red Devils appointed Rangnick as manager in December 2021, with the view of the German taking on a sporting advisor role at the end of the 2021/22 campaign.
Erik ten Hag was reluctant to work with him, however, and Rangnick left the club upon the Dutch manager’s arrival.
The 65-year-old took charge of 29 matches at Old Trafford and is now in charge of the Austrian national team.
His time as interim boss was very difficult and he spoke on many occasions about the necessary overhaul at the club, which Neville believes ‘scared the club to death’.
Speaking in April 2022, Rangnick said Manchester United – who had the fourth-largest net spend in the Premier League in 2023 – require “open-heart” surgery, and he was not wrong.
“It’s not that difficult (to see),” he said during a press conference. “You don’t even need glasses to analyse and to see where the problems are.
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“So, now it’s only about how do we solve them? For me, it’s clear it’s not enough to do some little, minor amendments, some little issues here and there, some minor cosmetic things.
“No, in medicine you would see this is an operation at the open heart, so there are more things to be changed than some little things here and some minor things there, and this is the good thing.
“If this happens, if everybody has realised that this has to happen and if people want to work together, then it makes sense and then I still believe that it doesn’t need to take two or three years to change those things.
“This can happen within one year. Other clubs not too far away from here have shown that it doesn’t take two, three, four years, that it’s possible within one, two or maybe three transfer windows.”
Speaking on The Overlap podcast, United legend Neville has said these home truths contributed to Rangnick’s exit.
“They brought in Ralf Rangnick as a sporting director. He was just managing the team for a few months, and he was going to get the sporting director’s job at the end of the season.
“He said that he needed open heart surgery – he wanted to get rid of like 10 or 12 of them out the club and just rip it all up. They [United] got rid of him because that scared them to death.”
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