Jamie Carragher has labelled ’s signing of Lisandro Martinez a mistake after the defender’s calamitous performance in Saturday’s 4-0 defeat at Brentford.
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Goals from Josh Dasilva, Mathias Jensen, Ben Mee and Bryan Mbeumo, all within a 25-minute spell in the first half, utterly humiliated Erik ten Hag’s side, with Martinez especially struggling to deal with his opponents’ physicality.
This was largely evident with Mee’s goal as the Brentford defender easily towered over Martinez during a set-piece routine to head past David de Gea.
While a highly rated player under Ten Hag at , questions were raised over whether Martinez at 5ft 9in was too short to play as a centre-back in the Premier League, even before the Argentine’s £46million move to Old Trafford, which could rise to £57m after add-ons.
And now, after the Brentford defeat, as well as the opening weekend loss to Brighton that has left United bottom of the table for the first time since 1992, Carragher looks ready to dub the 24-year-old a flop.
The Liverpool legend tweeted: ‘Erik ten Hag has not started well but has a very good pedigree after his record at Ajax in the Champions League, but the signing of Martinez for over £50m already looks wrong!’
Carragher had already raised concerns over Martinez’s height prior to the start of the season, and it seems those fears have now been realised.
‘[5ft 9in] that’s small,’ he told Sky Sports.
‘That’s small for any player on the pitch in some ways now, really. You think how big and powerful players are. I haven’t seen that much of him, but he must have a really good spring to play centre-back in any league.
‘When you think of how that could affect Man Utd set piece wise, if one of your centre-backs is really small, you’re relying so much on the other centre-back to deal with things aerially coming into the box, so I think that could be a problem.’
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