Gary Neville has warned Manchester United that they face a repeat of their nightmare with Paul Pogba if they don't allow Cristiano Ronaldo to depart this summer.
Ronaldo is intent on leaving the Red Devils and has only played 45 minutes of football in pre-season. United maintain that the 37-year-old isn't for sale despite agent Jorge Mendes scouring the market to find a move, but Neville reckons that letting Ronaldo go would potentially save the club a great deal of hassle over the course of the new season.
"Let me be really clear, Ronaldo's achievements in football go beyond anything that anybody could ever wish for and imagine," the former Red Devils captain began while speaking on the Overlap, in partnership with Sky Bet . "He'll go down in the top players of all time and always will be, and what happens this summer at Manchester United will be forgotten about in 20 years.
"But it's unpalatable for me to watch, as an ex-Manchester United captain, an ex-Manchester United senior player, and thinking that at this moment in time the star player in the dressing room is playing up. It happened at times over the last few years where you had Pogba's agent – not necessarily Pogba all the time but his agent – always playing up with the club.
"You can't have your star player in a club running the shop. You cannot have it. So when Sir Alex Ferguson, in the past, moved players on it was because that player needed to be moved on. I know Manchester United fans, but if Ronaldo wants to leave, Manchester United - in my mind - should facilitate that."
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Further bemoaning the situation, Neville went on to say: "That Saturday night, when that statement came out that Cristiano Ronaldo wants to leave and then the Monday morning I think something else came out – I'm not sure the club were even aware.
"The timing was horrific coming into the start of the season, it undermined Ten Hag straight away – it meant that Ten Hag literally has had every single press conference that he does is just obliterated by the Ronaldo issue. I think looking back, Pep [Guardiola], [Jurgen] Klopp, [Antonio] Conte, Sir Alex Ferguson – if a player becomes the dominating factor, and a distraction in the press conference for a manager, there's only one thing that has to happen. We all know it."
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