The puzzle is almost complete according to Gary Neville.
The Sky Sports pundit believes that former club Manchester United are just two transfers away from comfortably winning the league.
Speaking on his podcast, Neville claimed that Louis van Gaal just needs a pair of gamewinners to turn his misfiring squad into a Barcelona.
“If you put two more players into Manchester United’s team, say a Gareth Bale or a Cristiano Ronaldo into that team, that team could win the league. Because the structure that is being built at this moment in time is solid.
“But they need that match-winner, that Neymar, that Luis Suarez, the one that is going to light up a game and score one or two goals to take it away, then all of a sudden they would look like a Barcelona, because they’re dominating possession, making teams look foolish.
“Even in the last 15 minutes, they didn’t fully commit to winning the game. Historically, you would like to see punch after punch, you would want to see bodies being thrown forward, but you might get caught on the counter attack and lose 2-1 that way.
“But that’s not the way in which this Manchester United team play, and the heart wants them to go forward, commit players and be reckless in some ways.
“I do think they are quite close when I think about it with my head, but my heart thinks I’d like to see them die trying a little bit more and go for it.
“But he’s a year-and-a-half in, Louis van Gaal, and he should get a lot more time to do what he wants to do. I was in the same opinion when David Moyes was at Manchester United, and I’m in the same opinion now.”
Neville obviously knows an awful lot more about football than us but we reckon that Manchester United would need about 11 players to look like Barcelona… namely Claudio Bravo, Dani Alves, Gerard Pique, Javier Mascherano, Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets, Ivan Rakitic, Andres Iniesta, Neymar, Luis Suarez and Lionel Messsi.
But that’s just us.
