Gary Neville believes that even a fifth or sixth place finish in the Premier League this season would be a success for Erik ten Hag, but reclaiming a top four spot would be 'brilliant.'
Ten Hag's United reign will begin in earnest on Sunday when his new side gets the season under way against Brighton at Old Trafford. United go into the campaign coming off of their worst ever Premier League performance, after finishing sixth on just 58 points last season.
So Neville believes that, given the difficulties the Dutchman has faced this summer, improvement on last year's dismal campaign — even if by just a place in the table — would make for a good first year in charge for the new manager. He said on Friday Night Football: "I think it would be to grab that fourth place. If he was to grab fourth place from where I sit here today, I’d say that is a brilliant performance, I really would.
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"Actually as I sit here with the business they haven’t done, I would say I wouldn’t expect him to get fourth place I would say to be fair, Chelsea have done good business, Arsenal have done good business, Tottenham have done good business, City and Liverpool have improved. If you’d have said to me I’d probably say sixth at this moment in time but if you shifted them up to fifth or fourth I’d say that was a good performance.
"If they got [Frenkie] De Jong or someone else in then that bar comes higher. The Ronaldo situation distracting, you seen him having to answer questions about it in the press conference, the fact that Martial’s injured and he was actually going to leave the club six months ago, the fact they haven’t got De Jong yet, the fact he hasn’t been supported like the other managers and getting it early, I think it means it’s an already harder job than it already was."
Neville believes there are still a lot of unanswered questions at Old Trafford to accurately predict how good they're going to be. He continued: "That’s the difficulty with fourth place, I haven’t got a clue what I'm going to see. I’m expecting a better Manchester United than last season to what level we don’t know yet.
"What they’re going to do in the transfer market? Is Cristiano going to stay or go? All those questions need to be answered.
"They’re almost juggling balls in the air and we don’t know basically what’s going to happen. I’m not even sure what’s going to happen Sunday, it was positive in pre-season and I liked what I saw but Old Trafford, Brighton, first Premier League game, you’re not wholly convinced you know what you’re going to see and Manchester United are going to have a solid home victory.
"We’ll wait and see, we’ll look at them Sunday, they’ve got a big game coming up against Liverpool so they need a couple of wins and they have a difficult one against Brentford next week so they’re going to need that win over Brighton. If they weren’t to get the points on Sunday it will just take the confidence away for those two games going up."
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