Neville reveals why he has a 'big fear' about Man United's defence after draw with Everton

Gary Neville has torn into Manchester United's defence, admitting he can't see a way out of his former side regularly conceding goals after they shipped two more to Everton on Sunday.

The Red Devils have conceded twice in each of their three Premier League matches so far this season, and they were held to a 2-2 draw with Everton after a last-minute Ainsley Maitland-Niles stunner.

It's an issue manager Michael Carrick is going to have to fix if his side want to be competitive this year – they are currently 11th in the table with one win, one draw and one defeat to their names so far this term.

And Neville has concerns. Questions were raised after the transfer window closed with the club failing to add to their defensive ranks, and the full back-turned pundit is worried it may come back to bite them.

'Manchester United are conceding two goals a game,' he said on the Gary Neville Podcast. 'From a United perspective you can't concede two goals a game, they're on track to concede 76 goals.

'They won't do, but the one thing that I think needed to happen beyond the transfer window with the questions that have been asked about the defence was that Manchester United needed to win today and secondly they couldn't concede goals.

'That last goal is a really bad one. There's a lot that happens before that goal goes in the back of Manchester United's net. When you're playing against a team, it's 2-1, you're away, you've got to push up, you've got to make sure you don't have players sprinting off and doing stupid things.

'Dorgu sprints forward, the ball gets played past him and Everton just drift down that left side so easily. Santos doesn't get across and when he doesn't get across quickly enough Yoro is deep and narrow, almost playing like a third or fourth narrow centre back waiting for the ball to go into the box.

'So they could have stopped it at source. That to me is a real error in the lead-up, and I was screaming as it happened because you know full well you're going to get the ball pumped into the box and you're going to get a team behind desperate in the last few minutes so you have to make sure you're organised and United weren't organised in that last couple of minutes.'

The Red Devils will take on local rivals Manchester City next weekend in the Manchester derby, but first face Azerbaijan side Sabah FK in the Champions League.

Harry Maguire and Lisandro Martinez played at centre back against Everton, and it was the same partnership last week in the 5-2 win over Ipswich.

Maguire played with Ayden Heaven on the opening day 2-0 defeat by Hull.

'Teams think they've got a chance against them,' Neville continued. 'I thought they were a little bit complacent and I was saying it after the first goal, they lacked that killer instinct before that period when Everton equalised and then they react again.

'Everton weren't at it at all in that first half – United were the better team and didn't have that killer instinct up top and certainly from 1-0 up to 1-1 they let Everton back in the game. It's not going full throttle when you've got a team down, putting them away and then this liability of conceding goals.

'I don't think it's going to go away and that's my big fear. I think conceding goals is going to chase them and hunt them down the road and I don't know how Michael deals with it because he's got his best back four on the pitch. I don't know why Luke Shaw went off with five minutes to go – hopefully he's not injured. I don't know why Dalot went off with five minutes to go.

'To be fair, Ruben Amorim and Erik ten Hag used to change their back four a lot as well – you can't be changing your back four. If you've got Hincapie to come on for Calafiori maybe you can, but United have got a back four of Shaw, Dalot, Maguire and Lisandro Martinez and they've not got much behind that. So you can't really change your back four at 1-0 or 2-1.'

Carrick himself was critical of his defence in the wake of the result.

He doesn't have too many options to change things in terms of personnel – with Matthijs De Ligt still missing with a long-term injury. Therefore, Carrick insisted, it's down to his current crop to do better.

'Obviously we can't ignore it,' he said about Maitland-Niles' equaliser. 'We need to concede fewer goals to give us a better chance of winning games. We'll certainly look at that and keep improving.

'There's obviously things we need to get better at as a team. There's been two strikes from distance really, two really good strikes from their point of view. Sometimes they fly in the top corner and more often than not they probably don't.'