Rio Ferdinand left Manchester United only in the summer of last year but, when he looks at the club, it is as though he barely recognises it. Tens of millions of pounds have been spent by the manager, Louis van Gaal, in overhauling the squad and only nine of the senior players with whom Ferdinand worked remain. The shift in style has been seismic and it does not take long in Ferdinand’s company to realise that he finds it all a little jarring.

“I was talking to Nemanja Vidic on the phone and we were both saying that the change is unreal in terms of the personnel and the transfer policy,” Ferdinand says. “It doesn’t look like anything I knew from when I was there. Even the sponsor that was there for so many years has gone, with Nike being replaced by Adidas. Everything has changed, other than the groundsman and the chef.”

Ferdinand is in no mood to pull his punches. Having retired last May, after a difficult final season at Queens Park Rangers, he no longer has to adopt the measured tones of the top professional and it is clear that he will be a must-listen-to pundit on BT Sport. His views carry authority and insight and his deconstruction of Van Gaal’s United will touch plenty of nerves.

“Man United supporters have to go away and re-educate themselves on how to watch Man United,” Ferdinand says. “Don’t go there expecting to see free-flowing, attacking, gung-ho football. If you’re losing 1-0 in the 89th minute, don’t expect that free-flow … get the ball wide, cross it or get the ball into the strikers. The only thing I can see that is similar sometimes is, if they win the ball high, they do like to go straight for you.

“The philosophy seems to be – we’ll keep the ball more than you; you won’t have comfortable possession to be able to pick balls forward; us suffocating you with possession is our first form of defence.

“They still have moments in games, like most teams. But when you put a Man United game on, you were always thinking to yourself: ‘This is going to be explosive, exciting, crazy, you don’t know what you’re going to get.’ Now it is very methodical, side to side, wait for an opportunity to come.”

Ferdinand believes that United will be better equipped for success in the Champions League this season, because of their slower, more patient approach, although he says that he does not consider them serious contenders. Moreover, he is categoric that they will not win the Premier League. The champions, he says, will be Manchester City, by “a minimum of six or seven points.” City, he adds, will also be England’s best hope in Europe.

“That hurts me,” Ferdinand says. “Manuel Pellegrini got his system wrong last season – playing 4-4-2 in big games you get out-numbered in midfield and you’ve not got the personnel to cope. It’s easy for us to say on the outside but it was glaring. I think he has held his hands up. He’s changed that system and it seems to have really helped him.”

The United style debate rages on and Ferdinand expresses his surprise that Van Gaal decided to loan the attacking midfielder Adnan Januzaj to Borussia Dortmund. Except that it was not really too much of a surprise.

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“He is a wonderfully talented kid, who I think is a Man United player,” Ferdinand says. “He plays with a little bit of fantasy and imagination. But if you also look at [Ángel] Di María … he was free-flowing and off-the-cuff and you can’t do that in a Van Gaal team. Adnan Januzaj needs freedom. He can stand anybody in the world up and beat them. Van Gaal hasn’t seen him as the right guy for his team.”

Ferdinand is particularly indignant about Van Gaal’s gross spend on transfer fees – £252.7m – and, although United were hardly thrifty during Ferdinand’s 12 years at the club, he says they would have benefited enormously from that kind of investment.

Van Gaal’s final signing of the summer was the deal that took the 19-year-old forward Anthony Martial from Monaco for £36m. The fee could rise to £58m. Ferdinand says: “Vidic and I were saying: ‘If they’d have spent £50m when we were there, we’d have won how much more?’ If, you’d got somebody at that time who was worth that.”

Within the spend, though, there was no room for a new central defender and Van Gaal has used Daley Blind in the position during the early season. “When you think you’ve spent all that money … where is the centre-half?” Ferdinand says. “Blind is a fantastic all-round footballer but he’s not a centre-half. He’s indecisive in certain areas, he’s not comfortable, he’s not used to being in certain positions and then the ball is behind and he can’t recover – nor can the other defenders.

“When you do start spending a lot of money like Man United have, the pressure becomes a lot greater to put silverware on the table. I don’t think Man United are going to win the league this year.”

BT Sport is showing all Uefa Champions League and Uefa Europa League matches exclusively live this season. Visit btsport.com/europe