Jamie Carragher couldn’t resist poking fun at Gary Neville in the wake of Manchester United’s embarrassing Carabao Cup exit at the hands of League Two outfit Grimsby Town.
United clawed themselves back into Wednesday’s second-round contest following a pair of first-half goals from Charles Vernam and Tyrell Warren, which had sent the Blundell Park crowd into raptures.
Bryan Mbeumo reduced the deficit with a smart finish with 15 minutes remaining before Harry Maguire equalised at the death to set the stage for a nerve-jangling penalty shootout.
Ruben Amorim couldn’t even bring himself to watch as Matheus Cunha squandered the chance to seal victory with United’s last spot-kick of the regulation five – and Mbeumo struck the crossbar to hand Grimsby a famous 12-11 win.
The stunning upset was the first time United had been beaten by a four-tier side in their entire history and Amorim cut a despondent and lonely figure in the dugout after the game.
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It means the Red Devils remain winless in all competitions this season, with Amorim’s men picking up just one point from a possible six in their two opening Premier League matches against Arsenal and Fulham.
Despite losing their first game of the top-flight campaign to Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal, there were some signs of promise in United’s performance, with summer signing Cunha, in particular, earning rave reviews after an eye-catching debut at Old Trafford.
The display even encouraged Neville to back United to secure a top-four finish – and Carragher took to X to to repost a video of his partner in crime’s predictions in the immediate aftermath of Grimsby’s triumph.
In the clip, Neville tells Sky Sports host Dave Jones: ‘Last season I remember watching Chelsea in the first game of the season and, at that point, no one had Chelsea finishing in the top four or five and I watched them against City and I thought I saw something.
‘I thought, “That’s not bad, that, that will do damage this season and that’s a good team”.
‘And when I watched United yesterday [against Arsenal], I thought the performance was very good.
‘I think they’ll get a goalkeeper, I absolutely am banking on it. They’ll not make the mistake of not getting a goalkeeper.
‘When they bring a goalkeeper in and you’ve got those players up front that they had yesterday [against Arsenal] with that backline, I think with the free weeks they’ve got, no Champions League or Europa League, I think Manchester United will surprise people.’
Facing the media after United’s latest humiliating setback, Amorim insisted ‘the players spoke really loudly’ with their showing – but ‘something had to change’.
‘I am shocked because we are in the moment when we make a lot of changes,’ the United head coach told ITV.
‘We try to fight a lot of things but then when we have these moments, we need to show up.
‘If we don’t show up, you can feel that something has to change and you are not going to change 22 players again.’
The Portuguese later moved to defend Andre Onana after yet another shaky performance from the United goalkeeper in what was his first game of the season.
‘With all due respect, when you play against a fourth division team, it’s not the goalkeeper, it’s everything,’ Amorim told Sky Sports.
‘It’s the environment, it’s the way we face the competition. We know that in the moment, people will pay attention to everything, it’s massive – every detail. We showed that performance today. My players spoke for me, really loud.
‘It doesn’t matter if we recover [from 2-0 down] or not. It’s the signs the team made during the game. The beginning of the game.
‘I know that the best team won, the only team that was on the pitch. The best players lose, because one team can win against any group of players.
‘I think the team and the players spoke really loud today. That’s it. We lost. The best team won.’
United must somehow dust themselves off and regroup ahead of their Premier League encounter with newly promoted Burnley on Saturday.
Scott Parker’s Burnley sit 11th in the table, five places above United, after bouncing back from an opening-day loss away to Tottenham to beat Sunderland at Turf Moor last time out.
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