The headline on an easily-found and well put together YouTube video in homage of Daley Blind is: Amazing Goals, Skills, Passes, Tackles.

The reality is that the video contains Blind’s one Manchester United goal – admittedly a cracker away at West Brom in October – and lots of clips of the other – rather more mundane – things that the Dutch international was brought to Old Trafford last summer to do.

Every team in the Barclays Premier League needs a nuts-and-bolts man, of course. The simple things on a football need still need doing.

Daley Blind scoring his only goal (so far) for the club in the clash with West Bromwich Albion in october

Blind poses with his shirt after joining Manchester United, Louis van Gaal and Radamel Falcao are also present

For some, though, what you do is not enough and when Blind sat down with English journalists on Wednesday, he was asked about Gary Neville’s observation that: ‘He plays far too many square passes and takes the easy option.’

Rather damning words from a former United captain and words that Blind admitted had not escaped his attention.

‘Of course, I listen to him but I try to play my own game and does what the trainer wants from me and that is to keep possession,’ said Blind.

‘There is always someone who wants to say something about the trainers or the teams otherwise there would be no interest in TV.

‘I can take a bit of criticism. The people on television can say what they want. You hear it but I think I have played some good games.

Blind was signed after impressing for Ajax in the Eredivisie and for Holland at the World Cup

‘Of course you can sometimes play the ball forward but sometimes it is good to keep the ball in possession and make your team-mates play better.

‘I can make other players more important than myself. If I can do that by switching the play to the other side or wait for the right moment to do that then I will.

‘If there is space forward then I will play that ball but sometimes I think it is better to keep possession, to switch from side to side and move the ball and search for players who can make an individual action. I am not a player who does that. I like the possession game and keep the ball.’

Neville has a well-deserved reputation as one of our better TV pundits. Buried in Blind’s observations, though, are words that one would expect to meet with his approval.

When he says that ‘I can make other players more important than myself’, Blind would appear to be buying in not only to a philosophy that took Holland further than they expected to go in last summer’s World Cup but was also fundamental to United’s success during the years Neville played the game.

Blind clears the ball while under pressure from QPR’s Chilean forward Eduardo Vargas

The former Ajax man applauds the fans after United beat QPR in their Premier League clash

Blind, 24, was brought to United by his former national coach Louis van Gaal as a more than capable footballer but also as something of a messenger. After all when you are trying to change things round at a football club – trying to change people’s heads – then it’s handy to have a couple of people who already get it.

So far, Blind has probably earned himself about a 7/10 rating at Old Trafford. Not bad for a player who missed chunk of early winter with a serious knee injury.

Now that he is back and playing again, he expects United to make progress on the back of the principles that took an admittedly average Dutch side to a World Cup semi-final last July.

‘We didn’t play very great football at the World Cup but we were a team and we were winning games and we started playing better after winning,’ he recalled