Rio Ferdinand has hit out at David Moyes’s tactics as Manchester United manager, claiming some of them were “embarrassing”.
The former England and United defender has set out a string of criticisms of Moyes’s ill-fated reign at Old Trafford in his autobiography #2 sides.
Ferdinand said the players became confused about how Moyes wanted them to play.
“Moyes’s innovations mostly led to negativity and confusion,” he said in an extract from the book, which is being serialised in The Sun.
He added: “The biggest confusion was over how he wanted us to move the ball forward. Often he told us to play it long. Some players felt they kicked the ball long more than at any time in their career.
“Sometimes our main tactic was the long, high, diagonal cross. It was embarrassing. In one home game against Fulham we had 81 crosses! I was thinking, why are we doing this? Andy Carroll doesn’t play for us!
“The whole approach was alien. Other times Moyes wanted lots of passing. He’d say: 'Today I want us to have 600 passes in the game. Last week it was only 400’. Who cares? I’d rather score five goals from 10 passes.”
Ferdinand, who left United for Queens Park Rangers in the summer, said Moyes brought the “mentality of a small club” to Old Trafford. He revealed one of the first signs of future problems was when Moyes banned the players from their ritual of eating low-fat chips on the night before a game.
Ferdinand also disclosed his upset at being left out of the United side that played Bayern Munich in the Champions League.
He said Moyes took the players to a park to practice their set-pieces, which he said was "bizarre".
"It was amateurish," he said. "I mean, why not just send Bayern an email or a DVD"
And as they were standing in public, Moyes told Ferdinand he would not be playing as he wanted a bit more pace in defence.
"It killed me," Ferdinand said. "Inside I wanted to scream and grab him. I'm a team player, so I just had to bite my tongue and stand there. But it was probably the worst single moment I ever had at United.
"I'd never been dropped for a big game like that - and to drop that on me in front of everybody."