Gary Neville has blasted Angel Di Maria after his wife launched a scathing verbal assault on Manchester.
Di Maria endured a torrid time in the city after joining Manchester United from Real Madrid for £59.7million in 2014.
The Argentina winger scored only four goals in 32 appearances before being sold to Paris Saint-Germain after one season.
Di Maria's wife Jorgelina Cardoso discussed on Wednesday how she begged her husband not to move to Manchester on Spanish show Los Angeles de la Manana.
Cardoso labelled the food "disgusting" and added: "The people were all skinny, neat, weird. You are walking and you don't know if they are going to kill you or not."
And the comments have not be received well by Neville, who retaliated by blasting Di Maria's disastrous spell at Old Trafford.
"I don’t know what she means Geoff," Neville said on Sky Sports. "We hear these stories from time to time, where a player's played like a drain, like Di Maria did at Manchester United, he was awful.
"And I had great expectations and sort of excitement when he came to the club thinking we’d signed a top player. But he was never interested from day one.
"And what I would say is, maybe what he needs to do is look across the road at Sergio Aguero, his Argentinian compatriot, or Pablo Zabaleta, who’ve done alright in Manchester over the years and don’t seem to be in a rush to leave."
Neville did acknowledge that the Di Maria and Cardoso endured a traumatic experience when their home was burgled in 2015.
He added: "I will defend my city to the hilt. I think she had a bad experience and she did have an unfortunate experience obviously where there was a robbery which really would hamper your view mentally.
"So I think that probably clouds her view in terms of the city, ‘cause I think there’s some decent folk around here."
