Former United player Markus Neumayr believes Wayne Rooney needs support up front if the club are to be successful this season.
Markus still follows his old club and gives his view on the start United have made to the season: “I have watched most of the games and it has been a mix of quite good and bad performances.
“You can see that the team is still searching for their identity but for me the most annoying thing is the lack of consistency.”
United have found scoring goals a problem in the league this year and Markus puts this down to the fact that Wayne Rooney is not the most suitable option to lead the club’s attack: “It’s basically one reason, Wayne Rooney is not a striker who can play up front on his own. He needs to play more behind the ball where he can create things and run into the opening spaces, that’s where his qualities are.”
Despite this, Markus doesn’t think that a change of system would benefit the team: “I think it’s essential to stick with the same system, so the players can learn the basic moves week in week out. Doing this will create you chances and goalscoring opportunities.”
Jonny Evans became the latest of a catalogue of players to leave the club since Louis Van Gaal took over earlier this week, signing for West Brom after making nearly 200 appearances for the United first team.
Markus played regularly with Evans in the reserve team during his time at the club and thinks now is the right time for his old teammate to move on: “He was a great person, always very calm and polite. As a footballer he always worked hard for the team and you could count on him to do his job with one hundred percent passion.
“I think it is the right decision to get more minutes under his belt and to get back to the shape he was in two or three years ago when he a regular starter in the United line up.”
Markus now plays his football for FC Vaduz of Switzerland, a country who are preparing to take on England in the latest round of international fixtures and who have made great strides towards the top of international football: “The atmosphere for the England game will be very enthusiastic, Swiss football in general has made a massive step towards the top and they are creating more and more players who can play in the big leagues in Europe.
“Of course England will be the favourites but there won’t be much between the two sides. I think it will be a 50/50 game that could end up going either way.”
Markus’s team FC Vaduz play in the Swiss Super League, the top flight for football in the country and have also featured in European competition so far this season: “At the moment we are in seventh position in the league. We were eliminated in the third round of the Europa League qualifiers without losing a game.
“So you could say that our start to the season has been quite good, but if you’d have seen our performances we can’t be happy with some of the results we’ve had.”