Gary Neville criticizes Ed Woodward for not backing Jose Mourinho

Gary Neville has come out and claimed that Ed Woodward held a briefing with journalists in a bid to explain to them why the club did not sign a centre-back in the summer transfer window.

Manchester United had a rather slow transfer window where they signed just 3 players- Diogo Dalot, Lee Grant and Fred.

They were heavily linked with a number of top centre-backs with the most popular of them being Harry Maguire of Leicester City, Toby Alderweireld of Barcelona, Jerome Boateng of Bayern Munich and Yerry Mina of (then Barcelona) Everton.

Ed Woodward told the press the reason behind them not backing Jose Mourinho and Gary Neville has expressed his disagreement with the club's explanation.

Gary Neville told SkySports,

"From a board perspective, it has been messy over the last couple of weeks."

"I think of the briefing Ed Woodward gave journalists ahead of the Leicester game, where he explained why United weren't going to buy centre-backs and why Jose was not being backed, trying to justify to the media why he's not backed his manager."

“It's too late for that, Mourinho has already been given a contract extension - back him until the end."

He goes on to say how the board and the manager have to work together to make sure the club profits from the decisions that are being made.

"My view would be he has to stay to the very end of that contract and be backed to the end of the contract.

The briefing undermined Jose Mourinho, there's no doubt about that. Jose knows that and he's not going to take any messing around from anybody.”

Neville adds that the club giving off mixed signals is not helping anyone at the moment.

"If Ed Woodward was going to doubt Jose Mourinho, the time to doubt him was at the point whereby he should have said I'm not giving you a new contract last January."

"The minute he gave him a contract extension - which some may say was unnecessary halfway through a season - believing in the manager and showing the faith, he had to then buy him the centre-backs. He had to get Maguire and Alderweireld because they wouldn't have made those mistakes at Brighton."

Only time will tell what the future holds for Jose Mourinho and Manchester United.