Phil Jones has revealed which Manchester United manager left him ‘absolutely raging’ and feeling ‘humiliated’ before a furious dressing room meltdown.
The retired defender spent 12 years at Old Trafford between 2011 and 2023 and hung up his boots in August.
In a career marred by injuries ever since his teenage years at Blackburn, he suffered mental ‘trauma’ from online abuse which left him hesitant to leave the house, as he told The Sun.
His aim now is to pursue a career in coaching and last September he assumed a role with the Red Devils’ under-14 and under-18 teams.
Jones had a long list of managers at Manchester United: Sir Alex Ferguson, David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Ralf Rangnick, and Erik ten Hag all took the reins. But one got under his skin in particular.
Phil Jones has revealed which Man United manager left him ‘raging’ in the dressing room
The former defender spent 11 years at Manchester United, winning the Premier League
Sir Alex Ferguson brought Jones to the club as a youngster from Blackburn and saw huge potential in him
Ralf Rangnick is the manager who left Jones ‘raging’ due to subbing him off against Liverpool
The manager in question is Ralf Rangnick, who was in interim charge between December 2021 and May 2022.
During Liverpool’s 4-0 humbling of United at Anfield in April 2022, Rangnick took off Jones for Jadon Sancho at half-time with the score at 2-0. Jones was irate.
‘I’ve never lost my head in a dressing room and I’ve never been emotional enough to lose myself in the dressing room, and I think that’s the only time in my career that I completely lost it,’ he told the High Performance Podcast.
‘I was absolutely raging. Raging. That he humiliated me. Humiliated me in front of an Anfield crowd first and foremost, fearsome rivals, and the fans and my family and the players.
‘We were 2-0 down at half-time, weren’t great, I don’t think we had a shot on target first half. Nothing was coming off. And I’d actually done alright in the game.
‘Considering where I’d been, what I’d been going through, knee and injury-wise. I’ll look back at the game and I’ll highlight anything, I didn’t give the ball away, I was calm under pressure.’
This was Jones’ second Premier League start of the 2021-22 season due to a long-term knee injury which kept him sidelined for over 700 days.
He added: ‘I’m not saying I was exceptional but I definitely didn’t deserve to come off at half-time. There were far worse players on the pitch that day, I was the easy one to come off. You’re an easy scapegoat.”
‘He humiliated me in front of an Anfield crowd first and foremost, fearsome rivals, and the fans and my family and the players’
Jones has previously credited Jose Mourinho with convincing him to stay at the club
Erik ten Hag was Jones’ final boss at United before he stepped away to become a coach
‘At half-time I remember Ralf came in and said ‘I’m going to make a change, Phil’s going to come off’.
I remember the whole dressing room went like [eyes open] as if to say, “is he bringing Phil off here?” I took my boots off and I slammed them on the floor and I said, “you’re taking the **** out of me”.”
‘Everyone said, “calm down, calm down.” I get irate now, it really got to me.’
Eventually his temper did cool and he apologised to the interim boss.
‘I just couldn’t get my head around it,’ he added. ‘I apologised afterwards, said, “it was out of character for me, I shouldn’t have done that, at that moment that was not what was needed in the dressing room,” but you can understand I was pretty peeved off.’
Jones won the Premier League, FA Cup, Europa League, and Community Shield during his time at Old Trafford.