Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach | Thread locked during matches

Shady said:
Ten hag and sir Jim got us into this mess. They kept on a manager who had us around 15th on expected points last season. Now that is where we are in the actual table. Keeping ten Hag was a worse decision than anything the Glazers did.
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Yep. It didn't take a genius analyst to work out that keeping the same manager with such bad underlying numbers would continue to produce similar.

I said it pre-season. You will struggle to find many examples of teams jumping from bottom 3rd numbers to top 3rd without significantly improving the first XI - which we barely did.

The biggest problem was scoring goals and if anything they made the squad worse on that front by selling McTominay and only adding Zirkzee.
 
Jordan_mufc said:
Yeah, the amount of people saying "Brighton" don't have better players than us is crazy. Thw majority of the team have been serving up scrap for 2 years straight. Genuine relegation stuff.

But I'm supposed to believe that Baleba, Mitoma, Minteh, Ayiri, Pedro and Co wouldn't get into our team?
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They are quicker, taller, more athleticism, physical. Better in pressing and playing together. Know how to navigate from moments. Again, ETH did huge damage to the squad and wasted so much to exhausted our financial resources.
 
Wing Attack Plan R said:
There are more managers out there besides Ten Hag and Amorim. Ten Hag was almost in possession of whatever personnel needed to execute his famous donut formation, De Ligt, Yoro, Mount would have finally cracked the case.

In comes Amorim. He needs 2 wingbacks, 2 strikers, a goalkeeper, and a left wing. So 6 top players and he/we will be lucky to get 1 this window and 2 the next. The rest of this season is a write off, and next season. But the 2026-27 season is when he’ll have his pieces and can play his system—unless there’s an injury, a player doesn’t work out, a different manager works out how to effectively snuff the 343.

And we go again.
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They supposedly interviewed a load of managers in the summer, but didn't pick one of them. They could have done something then and were either turned down, why was that, or decided that candidate wasn't what they wanted. So stuck with ETH. Bloody idiots the lot of them.
 
This is not good enough. We are playing with a back 5 and our midfield can’t keep possession of the ball.

The wingbacks must be more in touch with our central midfielders to keep possession. Dalot and Mazroui are way to static in their positioning.

Plus it is a tough schedule and it is essential to rest players. Bruno should have had a day of today. Eriksen could have been useful to build our play against Brighton.
 


You have to feel sorry for him, because he's not wrong. And you have to feel sorry for some of the good players in the squad who are doing nothing but try their best, but have the misfortune of being in a side that has been set up to fail.
 
Some of us really need a perspective :
- Ten Hag is no more incharge of this team. So stop blaming someone who is not in the house. Amorim is the man leading this team for the last 10 games. The buck stops at him. Amorim is down there shouting instructions in the dug out, not Ten Hag.

- This whole freefall mentality needs to stop. No club has a divine right to win, but neither one has a divine right to say this season is a lost cause.This sort of narrative is absolutely mental that we cannot do anything with these players and it will be a bad season, it's a write off. If football was looked at like this by everyone, no team will ever fight for relegation. No team will ever fight for anything and fans will never go in the stadium. A bare minimum everyone who puts their hard earned money to buy tickets and watch the game needs to see fight,grit and effort for the shirt. And, currently the manager has been completely unable to do that.

- This isn't some FIFA game or Football Manager, sell everyone and buy new 11. A manager and his coaching staff has to be smart enough not only to use the hand given to them in the best way, but should also be able to improve the players at his disposal. I wonder what will people do , if United ever got a 2 transfer window ban. Will we just allow Amorim to go till league one , because we cannot buy players and the manager is incapable of improving anyone ?
- A manager change is done to improve the results and performance.At the end of the day, it is a results business. Amorim has neither got results , nor has he been able to stop the slide.The buck always stops with the manager. Right now, I believe we could have an academy manager incharge and he could have probably had better results. He just looks rabbit in headlights and the jump from Portoguese league to this league seems to big for him. There will be a time, when the lot of us need to decide, that the club is bigger than anyone else, including the manager.

For me, he is on borrowed time. Let's hope there is a turn around, but it looks unlikely sadly.
 
FriedClams said:
He’ll come good. All he needs is a new goalkeeper, a centre back, two wing backs, a creative Central midfielder, a number 10 for the left and a lethal striker. Simple.
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And two decent backup wing backs, another good backup mid, another backup striker because you never know, injuries and all that. A cool 1.5billion should do the trick.
 
VP89 said:
What Moyes said was a fact too.
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Saying we should aspire like Man city in 2013 when we were champions was a stupid statement. But it is a fact that in PL era this the worst performing United side. Everyone says that and the manager has also said the same.
Your comparison doesn't even make any sense.
 
swooshboy said:
So we should use the system that was working so well before?

Absolutely clueless yet all you seem to do is spam the same comment in every thread you go in.
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And you sound exactly like those that were constantly backing ETH during the shit show last season. The managers tactics have to take a large proportion of the blame.

The reason I keep banging on, is because this squad of players are not able to play his 343 system. It’s not working and without significant expenditure right now it’s not going to fecking work.

We are stuck in this bizarre Groundhog Day scenario during every match where it’s the same tactics, same players and same results.

If I’m annoying you that much then I’m sorry Just put me on ignore. I want our manager to succeed but things just aren’t working and he is refusing to adapt even a little bit. I’m just frustrated to feck with all of this.
 
AshRK said:
Saying we should aspire like Man city in 2013 when we were champions was a stupid statement. But it is a fact that in PL era this the worst performing United side. Everyone says that and the manager has also said the same.
Your comparison doesn't even make any sense.
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He said it when we were a mile off them during the season, so it was a factual statement. And no it wasn't any more stupid than Amorim saying the fact today.
 
Dr. StrangeHate said:
His version of 5-2-3 is definitely the worst one. 2 no 10s is just a terrible idea as it doesn’t provide us the necessary width and the players he buys won’t be of use in most formations if he doesn’t work out.
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This is my take also. I like 343 but 2 no.10s? And a back 5, not going to work for me. Not that I know shit
 
My worry is we do what we do with new players, and drag him down to our level. Before long he starts acting weird, saying weird things, looks like he slept in a skip and makes weird decisions like Mazraoui at number 10.
 
Matt851 said:
What does going back to the drawing board mean though? We are unlikely to replace the whole squad in the next few years so making best use of the existing squad is going to be critical
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We are going to replace the vast majority of it in the next few years, if we don’t we’re just repeating the same cycle. We are in exactly same position Arsenal and Liverpool were in and that’s what they had to do.

This squad will be dismantled because very few of them will get a new contract at Utd. Whether it’s age, their ability, injuries, there wages or a combination of those things.

We have to break the cycle of renewing contracts, like we did under the Glazets to paper over cracks but there is going to be a lot of pain.
 
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Nothing wrong with the system. You could say we only have 3/4 players that are good enough/ the right profile of players to play in this system. The wing backs should provide key attacking impetus in the wide areas yet both mazraoui and Dalot aren't good enough going forward. Then we lack the right balance on the left side In the 10 position.

We are arguably lacking pace in at least one of the back 3. Mainoo seemingly struggles to play in a midfield 2. Our strikers(whichever plays) can't score or affect the game enough how we need them to. That's without even mentioning the goalkeeping situation.

That means we've probably got 2 starting XI players in Amad and Ugarte who are the right profiles for this team and have the required ability. No wonder we are a mess.
 
To add insult to injury, Sporting seems to be getting back to form playing in 4-4-2 with this new coach.

So maybe more than his system, he built a team with good players, good attitude and work rate and with a good atmosphere around the club.

United doesn’t have that many good players and the atmosphere seems a bit toxic.

Not going to be easy to turn it around, especially in a league as competitive as the premier league.
 
Forget January signings if we would have had money to spend, we would have done it already. We might have outgoings for our out or squad or less used players.
 
VP89 said:
He said it when we were a mile off them during the season, so it was a factual statement. And no it wasn't any more stupid than Amorim saying the fact today.
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Still doesn't make any sense in your comparison. Imagine if the next city manager in his first 4 months says we should aspire to be like Newcastle. Yeah that is stupid statement and nothing in that is a fact, it is his opinion which is baseless. At least with Amorim many fans, media house have also said the same. So he is not wrong.

Anyways Let us agree to disagree and move on.
 
Amorim is making a mistake in selection and thats why good or bad he will get what he deserves, 97% of players should be wiped out without questions asked or moved in reserves. People can say that we dont have players for X formation, well you can find in or outside players that are natural for those specific positions, now their quality is questionable but if they hard working, hungry bunch on low wages, thats better than out of position leeching overpaid cnut cockroaches that we have right now.
 
If INEOS are firmly behind Amorim, they need to get him some players in this transfer window, otherwise we're going to continue to slide and slide... and his position may come under threat. That is just the reality of football.
 
Garethw said:
And you sound exactly like those that were constantly backing ETH during the shit show last season. The managers tactics have to take a large proportion of the blame.

The reason I keep banging on, is because this squad of players are not able to play his 343 system. It’s not working and without significant expenditure right now it’s not going to fecking work.

We are stuck in this bizarre Groundhog Day scenario during every match where it’s the same tactics, same players and same results.

If I’m annoying you that much then I’m sorry Just put me on ignore. I want our manager to succeed but things just aren’t working and he is refusing to adapt even a little bit. I’m just frustrated to feck with all of this.
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The last guy played a different system and guess what? He was sacked because we were terrible then as well. Amad aside, this team has nothing to frighten other teams so they know they can press on and force errors. We are basically getting bullied. And that will happen whatever formation we are playing.
 
Garethw said:
And you sound exactly like those that were constantly backing ETH during the shit show last season. The managers tactics have to take a large proportion of the blame.

The reason I keep banging on, is because this squad of players are not able to play his 343 system. It’s not working and without significant expenditure right now it’s not going to fecking work.

We are stuck in this bizarre Groundhog Day scenario during every match where it’s the same tactics, same players and same results.

If I’m annoying you that much then I’m sorry Just put me on ignore. I want our manager to succeed but things just aren’t working and he is refusing to adapt even a little bit. I’m just frustrated to feck with all of this.
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We need to sign a new Garethw, a right footed RW who scored 25-30 goals a season. :p
 
Djemba-Djemba said:
ETH, those two trophies aside, was an utter utter disaster of a manager here.

His signings will have long lasting ramifications for the club.

To spend what he did on Casemiro, Hojlund, Mount, Onana and Antony in particular was just inexcusable. We've been bad post Fergie I know but his time here really sped up our demise.

feck knows how Amorim fixes it.
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I said a long time ago that ETH will be seen as the most damaging manager we’ve had. I think many were off the same opinion and note it’s clear why.
 
AshRK said:
Still doesn't make any sense in your comparison. Imagine if the next city manager in his first 4 months says we should aspire to be like Newcastle. Yeah that is stupid statement and nothing in that is a fact, it is his opinion which is baseless. At least with Amorim many fans, media house have also said the same. So he is not wrong.

Anyways Let us agree to disagree and move on.
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Of course it makes sense. He didn't even volunteer it out of the blue. He was asked the question and frankly said "yes". But it was a fact, that's where we were at that point. Just like what Amorim said is fact - but I hope to god he didnt volunteer this admission without being asked. Because if he did its even more silly. It doesn't do any good to be this transparent.
 
Mike Smalling said:
I think you mean 4 points of 18 right? I don't think we are worse under Amorim that ETH. Both periods have been awful, primarily due to the quality of the players, which is something ETH needs to take substantial portion of the blame for.

As for the in-game management, it was something ETH was particularly awful at. Always too late to spot a problem and change it. Maybe Amorim didn't get it spot on today, but he's been pretty good with it other games - early and decisive.

If I was to criticize Amorim for something, it would be continuing to play Mazraoui and Dalot at wingbacks in games like this. It ain't working and there are other options.
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I think we are worse than under Ten Hag at the moment, with the caveat that Amorim has still only been here a short amount of time and hasn't been backed financially. However, we are still poor defensively and even worse attacking wise. At least in the beginning of the season we were putting together some nice attacking moves. Now we are not doing that.

In terms of in game changes, Ten Hag got praised for that in his first half of a season then that disappeared. I'm hesitant to praise Amorim for his in-game tactics because its still early. However, if you do praise him for his in-game changes for the odd good result, then his overall starting team choices are poor and for the majority of the games he doesn't really affect them with changes.

The question is, for the squad that he has and the position in which he has taken up the reigns, is he performing about right, over performing or under performing, compared to expectations. I don't think when he was hired anyone was expecting us to get top 4 realistically, however, I also don't think the expectation was to be 13th and getting consistently outplayed.
 
The system is more technical than the players are capable. Too many positions can't carry the ball pass 5 yards. We get to the final third and are so damn shot shy. The amount of dangerous situations that don't result in even a shot off target is a shameless indictment on the attackers especially. Our deeper players rightfully get the blame for conceding but the attackers waste the system's potential long enough for opponents to come down and finish theirs. It's a moments squad through and through. Even with a system they can't up their productivity.
 
Sancho99 said:
Nothing wrong with the system. You could say we only have 3/4 players that are good enough/ the right profile of players to play in this system. The wing backs should provide key attacking impetus in the wide areas yet both mazraoui and Dalot aren't good enough going forward. Then we lack the right balance on the left side In the 10 position.

We are arguably lacking pace in at least one of the back 3. Mainoo seemingly struggles to play in a midfield 2. Our strikers(whichever plays) can't score or affect the game enough how we need them to. That's without even mentioning the goalkeeping situation.

That means we've probably got 2 starting XI players in Amad and Ugarte who are the right profiles for this team and have the required ability. No wonder we are a mess.
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Think the club know we have an average squad and that was why they didn't want Ruben in the summer, so they kept ETH and god help us let him spend more money. I cannot grasp the thinking behind any of their decisions and the timing of them.
 
Lentwood said:
They're solid though and their tactic is "be solid, work hard and pick teams off"

We're trying to play like title challengers. We want to dominate the ball and territory, but we are not title challengers.

I keep going round in circles thinking "Ole got us to 2nd, just by being solid". Could we go back to being solid, being hard to beat, and THEN worrying about kicking on and dominating games?

I don't know what the answer is. All I know is these are not bad players. Nobody will tell me that Brighton have better players than we do...so there's something else at play here...because we are consistently comprehensively outplayed by inferior sides but we look very competent against the "better" sides.
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Yeah, essentially against Arsenal and Liverpool we did the same thing. We were solid, worked hard, and then took advantage of a mistake.

We seem to be really struggling to impose ourselves in games without leaving ourselves vulnerable at the back. It's tough because I'm not sure there is much patience if we sat deep at home against Forest or Brighton but at the same time defending that way is much easier for any team.

I'm trying to avoid critiquing Amorim too much but it can't help the likes of Mazraoui or Yoro moving from RWB to RCB to LWB or RCB to LCB game after game. We need to build relationships. Mazraoui at RCB with Amad at RWB showed promise early on as one of the few relationships that had some understanding. I think rotation made sense over the Christmas period but I'd like to see a bit more stability in league games with rotation in Europa League & FA Cup if players need games.

There is also a huge lack of balance in the team. Dalot showed at LWB he only wants to run inside as does Amad at that RAM position. Where are we stretching play in attack. Who is hugging the touchline if not our wing backs.
 
waza7111 said:
Amad should start at RWB until the end of the season. That should be his permament position until new signings are made.

Maz and Dalot are too defensive.

Having an extra attacker will give teams something else to think about.
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Paul778 said:
100%. Amad played amazing at RWB. He was better defensively when he played there.
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This feels pretty obvious to me if we want to increase our chances of scoring. I mentioned this during the game but was shot down by @Red00012... still think this was a laughable suggestion?
Red00012 said:
Ya let’s play our only decent attacking option as a WB 3 days after he scoring a hat trick :lol:
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Jezpeza said:
We can spend money but we will need to sign players who are still developing at lower prices and then wait for them to develop. The way Dortmund do it etc.

But you are right, if we are sticking to signing 50,60,70 million pound players then we are fecked, 100%
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Bought that left back recently who's 17 going on 18 from South America. Leon his name is for small money, have that kid from Arsenal Martin may come in next season. But they have to buy a striker big time .
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
He’s failing badly with his defensive as feck system. Working fine against big teams but giving “smaller teams” absolutely feck all to think about from us attacking wise. Tonight we had two players from 11 that can make something happen, at home, to fecking Brighton.

He can play whatever fecking system he likes, but this is Manchester United at home, he needs to give his head a fecking shake and get some attacking players onto that fecking pitch.
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I’ve been saying this for a while , it’s fine having 5 defensive players against the top 4 but when we have 5 of them starting for games at OT it’s a worry. Add in Mainoo and Ugarte who offer nothing attacking wise you’re not left with much .
 
DomesticTadpole said:
Think the club know we have an average squad and that was why they didn't want Ruben in the summer, so they kept ETH and god help us let him spend more money. I cannot grasp the thinking behind any of their decisions and the timing of them.
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Glazers sold football decisions to a glorified patsy. Same thing as ever under Gkazers: squad needs a massive overhaul every year plus a couple of shirt-moving superstars in order for us to compete. Meanwhile, Brighton, Forest, Brentford join the ranks of clubs that hammer us.

We said it under Ole: he wasn’t good enough to get mediocre players to become champions, so we either needed best in class players or a best in class manager. That’s still the case.

Losing sucks, but it’s the manner in which we lose that stings. We lost without a shot on target today. We didn’t outplay them and get done by a flukey goal or a crazy refereeing decision. We looked bad. We were unexciting to watch. And we got wrecked.
 
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