'That's not right!' - Gary Neville tears into Ruben Amorim for 'bizarre' Joshua Zirkzee substitution & questions Man Utd manager's 'complicated' tactics after dismal draw with rock-bottom Wolves

Zirkzee scored his second league goal of the season midway through the first half as United looked to boost their top-four hopes at Old Trafford on Tuesday night. However, Amorim's side failed to build upon the Dutchman's early effort and conceded late in the first half as Ladislav Krejci headed Wolves level.

Despite home advantage and Wolves' perilous position in the table, United were held to a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford as they became only the third team to fail to beat the Premier League's basement boys this season.

Additionally, Zirkzee was withdrawn at the break and replaced with youngster Jack Fletcher for the second half, a substitution that drew the ire of Neville. After the game, the former United and England right-back was heavily critical of Amorim and his substitutions, deeming the decision to take off Zirkzee "poor".

Of Amorim's changes in the second half against Wolves, Neville said on Sky Sports: "They made Manchester United worse. Every single substitution was bizarre. If Zirkzee wasn't injured and that was a tactical substitution, it was a really poor one. Zirkzee isn't Eric Cantona, by any stretch of the imagination, but he needed to be out there for physicality, for presence, for experience. And he'd scored. You couldn't take him off. So I'm hoping he's injured. I'm hoping he's injured for Ruben Amorim." 

Upon learning that Zirkzee's withdrawal was not fitness related, Neville added: "That’s not right. That shouldn’t be happening."

Amorim opted to revert back to his favoured 3-4-3 setup for the Wolves stalemate despite using a 4-2-3-1 in the Boxing Day win over Newcastle, a decision that Neville criticised following the dismal display against Edwards' side.

"He doesn't need to say 'I haven't changed because of the media' because then he's telling us basically that the media is in his head," Neville said on his Sky Sports podcast. "The reason he's had to change is because the performance levels with the 3-4-3 have been so poor and the results have been appalling. When I see that we go back [to three at the back] after five minutes tonight and I'm thinking, no, Ruben, why have you done that? The manager has to look at that and think, I got that wrong. I complicated it."

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Neville identified that Amorim hadn't set his United side up correctly in the opening stages of Tuesday's game, and vented his frustration on Sky Sports during the game itself. "This isn't right again," Neville began. "So I think I've watched enough United over this last five or six weeks. I've watched six out of their last seven games to know what looks right and what isn't right and I'm really surprised.

"[Joshua] Zirkzee on this right side having to chase back to right-back almost, [Diogo] Dalot right wing back, Ayden Heaven right centre back, [Patrick] Dorgu over on the left back where he's not been playing well.

"All of it just isn't as good as it was in the last couple of games where they've played in different positions and we should be OK to say that. I think that's what the fans are thinking inside this stadium. They're in exactly the same place as we are. 

"The performances have been so much better in these last two or three games through the tweaks that have been made but he's gone back tonight to his 3-4-3 but the problem is he has got players in the system.

"Zirkzee on this right channel, obviously he's going central now. Dalot over here, having to come back all the time, it's not right. They're playing against a team tonight that are struggling so could win and get away with it but it doesn't mean it's the right system to watch because it's not."

Amorim was left frustrated with United's lack of "fluidity" against the Premier League's bottom club. "We struggled for the whole game," the United boss said. "We had a lack of creativity but we knew that it would be a different game compared to Newcastle. We had a different energy during the game also. If you look at the game, we had our chances, but the fluidity wasn't there because there is a lack of connections.

"The game was completely different from the last one. We had more men behind the ball and when you have more men the ball you have to work harder, have more imagination to play the game in a different way. We lacked that quality. We are not going to use that excuse [missing players]. But I understand why we lacked fluidity and one versus one."

And Amorim defended his decision to sub off Zirkzee, stating: "We were running around trying to recover the ball. They overload with a lot of midfielders and we were struggling with that and sometimes you can attack better with less strikers. We played with three strikers, [Matheus] Cunha, Josh and [Benjamin] Sesko, and sometimes it is not the best thing to attack well.

"The players tried. We didn't play well and when you don't play well with the ball you struggle even without the ball. We need to recover and to go to the next one."

After back-to-back home games, United kick off 2026 with respective trips to Leeds and Burnley as they look to ring in the New Year with a return to winning ways.