Ferdinand says Casemiro will feel disrespected after being benched for derby game

Rio Ferdinand has shared his thoughts on Casemiro's omission from the starting XI in the Manchester derby.

"Casemiro’s another one, he’s sitting there going, ‘I’ve won five Champions Leagues with this team’," Ferdinand said on his FIVE YouTube channel.

"I’ve heard people today say, ‘if he plays he needs legs around him, he can’t play with Eriksen and Bruno’. This geezer played with two snails in Modric and Toni Kroos – he just knows his way around a football pitch.

"He is a fantastic defensive midfielder, one of, if not the best, in the world before he came to Man United.

"You can’t say that," said Ferdinand in response to the suggestion that Casemiro's form compared to McTominay's is the reason he wasn't selected.

"The geeze hasn’t been given a chance, he hasn’t been given a fair crack of the whip. He’s come in and played in a Europa League game against some dead team.

"He ain’t been given a start in the team when he’s fit and ready, he’s regressed in terms of fitness, so he’s now worse off than when he came. He still had to get up to speed when he came from that league to this league.

"I wonder the impact it’s having on someone like him. Yes he’s experience and whatnot, but he must be sitting there thinking, ‘wow, I’m happy to be here at Man United but I’m feeling a little bit disrespected here, given what I’ve done’. I’d be surprised if he’s not feeling like that.

"I think we will [see Ronaldo and Casemiro play], but I think it’s the context of what games they’re playing in – they could be playing midweek Europa game. That won’t sit well with them.

"They’d be sitting there going, ‘wow, I’m like the Rumbelows Cup player right now, the Carabao Cup player’.

"These are the sub-plots to what Ten Hag has to deal with. This is what management is about, he’s got to manage that type of player, that type of ego, the pride that comes with these types of players. If you’re not playing, you’ll see a difference in the way they look at you now, and that’s what you’ve got to manage.

"He didn’t have those problems at Ajax with the players he had, he was very much in control, the master of the universe there. Here you’ve got big egos to deal with and this is the task when you come to a top club."

As good as our United legends have been for us during their playing years, they're equally bad when it comes to their punditry and opinions.

McTominay gave Ten Hag no reason to be dropped from the squad, having had solid performances against Arsenal and Liverpool.

Casemiro's being eased into the team and the one time that he did start alongside Eriksen, United lost to Real Sociedad and had a difficult game.

He definitely needs some time to adapt and gain momentum playing for United but that's not going to come by being thrown into a derby game after a two week break.