{"id":251142,"date":"2026-01-18T13:15:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T13:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/251142\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T13:15:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T13:15:07","slug":"lisandro-martinez-man-utd-defender-hits-back-at-criticism-from-nicky-butt-and-paul-scholes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/251142\/","title":{"rendered":"Lisandro Martinez: Man Utd defender hits back at criticism from Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pundits discussing Manchester United<\/a> “can talk on the television” but “no-one says anything” to your face, according to defender Lisandro Martinez.<\/p>\n

Martinez, 28, helped United to an impressive 2-0 win<\/a> over rivals Manchester City<\/a> on Saturday, shackling striker Erling Haaland as the Red Devils kept just their third Premier League clean sheet of a disappointing campaign.<\/p>\n

After sacking Ruben Amorim and putting Under-18s boss Darren Fletcher in charge for two games, the result gave Michael Carrick a dream start as United’s new interim head coach.<\/p>\n

Before the derby, Martinez was on the receiving end of jibes from former Red Devils midfielders Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes.<\/p>\n

Butt said on The Good, The Bad & The Football podcast that Haaland would “pick Martinez up and run with him” and treat the Argentine like a “little toddler”, while Scholes suggested the Norway forward would “throw him in the net” after scoring.<\/p>\n

Asked about Scholes’ comment, Martinez said: “Honestly, he can say whatever he wants. I told him already, if he wants to say something to me, he can come to wherever he wants. To my house, wherever. I don’t care.<\/p>\n

“And I think for me, I respect the relations when they want to help the club because everyone can talk on the television, but when you see [them] here face to face, no-one says anything in your face.<\/p>\n

“So for me, I don’t really care what they say. I just put the focus on my performance, the performance of the team and I give everything to this club until my last day.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pundits discussing Manchester United “can talk on the television” but “no-one says anything” to your face, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-251142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}