Roy Keane and Gary Neville disagree over Manchester United selling in-form star to Arsenal

Roy Keane and Gary Neville have disagreed on the sale of Danny Welbeck to Arsenal in 2015 following the Manchester United academy graduate’s good form.

Manchester United have had significant goalscoring issues ever since Sir Alex Ferguson retired, with only a few players able to score more than 20 goals in a single season across the last ten years.

Names such as Anthony Martial, Cristiano Ronaldo, Marcus Rashford, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic have all hit that mark, but overall, the club have failed to score enough goals each season, leading to an era of mediocrity.

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Towards the beginning of 2024/25, Erik ten Hag’s men fell to a 2-1 loss against Brighton. Ex-United striker Danny Welbeck opened the scoring for the Seagulls and was awarded the Player of the Match award. He has scored four goals in eight games and is one of the Premier League’s most inform strikers.

This prompted a series of conversations surrounding the England marksman, during which former United captain Gary Neville explained that he felt the club should never have sold Welbeck.

The history behind Welbeck’s sale is that, after making his debut in September 2008, and then signed for Arsenal on a “long-term deal” for around £16 million in 2014.

When asked why United chose to sell to a direct rival, then-manager Louis van Gaal said: “Welbeck doesn’t have the record of Robin van Persie or Wayne Rooney. We let him go because of Falcao but also to allow the youngsters to fit in. That is the policy. That is why I am here.”

Speaking on Stick to Football, Neville said: “I made a comment on Sunday that Welbeck is in better form than any of the United front players by far. Danny Welbeck, to be fair, should never have been let go at United.

“If you’ve got a squad of 24, 23 – which you have – and you want to keep five or six strikers, he’s got to be one of those players. You’ve got to keep him.

“McTominay’s doing well at Napoli, Sancho’s doing OK at Chelsea…”

Wayne Rooney, former teammates of Neville and guest on the podcast, added to this, praising Welbeck’s ability to win the ball high up the field – something Ten Hag has been encouraging his forward line to do.

“One of [Welbeck’s] biggest strengths was winning the ball back, high up the pitch,” the former striker said. “He was aggressive when you’d go and press, his touch was good, and we had a really good connection playing with him…he was quick.”

Roy Keane, however, wholly disagreed with Neville. Following the examples of Sancho and McTominay, Keane pointed out that just because a player does well after leaving United does not mean they were good enough to play for the club in the first place.

“I don’t know about that,” Keane retorted. “You can’t keep saying that about players – just because he left!

“Sometimes there’s a player who, when he leaves, he goes up and has a really good career. It doesn’t mean to say they were good enough for Man United.”

Neville argued: “No, but as a player who could be a second striker…Van Gaal just wanted him out at the time.”

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