Right, which is why it's fine to have one inverted wing-back and a natural wing-back on the other side, because you're shifting the play to the inverted side to play a switched ball to the opposite side. To be fair to Dalot, his inverted-ness was rectified by Garnacho holding their wide position and Dalot shifting into the 10, which dealt with your concern about the 10 and the wing-both being narrow. What really we need, is what you said. We can't have Dalot on that left side.
Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach | Thread locked during matches
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Right, which is why it's fine to have one inverted wing-back and a natural wing-back on the other side, because you're shifting the play to the inverted side to play a switched ball to the opposite side. To be fair to Dalot, his inverted-ness was rectified by Garnacho holding their wide position and Dalot shifting into the 10, which dealt with your concern about the 10 and the wing-both being narrow. What really we need, is what you said. We can't have Dalot on that left side.
What I'm seeing more of in this thread is actually posters in the "criticizing phase" as you call it being attacked for their opinions as if they were in the "sacking phase".
The problem isn't that we have a left-footed RWB. It's that we have a left-footed RWB paired with a left-footed RAM and a right-footed LWB with a right footed LAM.
The whole point of inverting wingers was to delegate the crossing role to the fullbacks who could also make dummy runs allowing wingers to cut inside 1v1. It was also the increased physical and technical attributes of FBs and players in general that made it possible. I currently fail to see any benefit of inverting both AMs and WBs besides crowding the middle.
I'm talking about those who are calling for a sacking or 'change' in manager or anything indirectly calling for a new coach already, you can't deny there are many especially straight after games. would be interesting to see a poll on this
There are a few of those in here, yes. There are a lot more who make valid criticisms without calling for a sacking or even implying that they want a managerial change. For some reason, some posters love to conflate the two groups, hence all the pearl-clutching posts.
Few? That's where I disagree but okay. Seems the 'few' keep getting far more as the weeks go by on here, but we can agree to disagree.
I also don't see anyone get attacked for 'valid' criticism, maybe 'absurd' criticisms. But I guess we see what sometimes our agendas want us to see.
I’m super worried. Thought it would be a shambles but we’d see a lot more by now in terms of how we want to play.
So we were set up poorly in the wins over City and Arsenal and draw versus Liverpool? What about the Everton match (in my opinion, a far more convincing performance than anything offered up by ETH this season)? If that's you calling it as you see it, then perhaps you are seeing what you want to see.
I agree the last few games have included some head-scratchers (Kobbie at 9; Dalot continuing at LWB), but on the whole I feel he's been playing with the very flawed hand that's been dealt him, and I'm honestly all for the 'few steps backwards approach for future steps forward' (and I don't think it's any worse in the present than it was under ETH) if it means once and for all clearing out the bad attitudes such as Rashford and Casemiro (to be fair, Casemiro is more of a case of ability than attitude, but I appreciate Amorim's fazing him out, nonetheless.)
Isn’t that exactly why previous managers were sacked?
I’ve mentioned giving him time, but how much time is enough? Would you have extended that same patience to Ten Hag? After three years, with a squad largely of his own making, the same issues remained.
That’s the real concern—not just for me, but for many others. What if Amorim follows the same trajectory? If we grant him the same grace period only to find ourselves in the same predicament, what’s the point? This worry is only magnified by the fact that, so far, he’s shown very little with the squad at his disposal. From INEOS' perspective, can they really entrust someone with the responsibility of building a squad—spending significant money in the process—when his system and performances have yet to inspire confidence?
Maybe it will take what Liverpool did—cycling through managers until stumbling upon the right one, as they did with Klopp. Time will tell, but right now, Amorim hasn’t given us that spark. His decisions remain questionable, and the signs of genuine progress are hard to see.
It takes time for ideas to be implemented though, if it was that easy why didn't Moyes, LVG, Mourinho, Solskjaer, Ragnick, ETH do it?
He's 4 months into the job. At some point you have to look at the entire club not just the coach.
Klopp finished 8th in his first season and took over in October, Amorim came in November.
Agreed. My concern is that the managers before him had time yet still failed to implement their ideas consistently. So what guarantees that Amorim will succeed—especially given the poor start he’s already made?
We can't simply rely on hope that he'll improve with time. Football is a results-driven business, and right now, he's falling short.
No manager comes with a guarantee, but to answer your question about how much time, he should get a full pre season and the whole of next season for me, unless the form next season is the same as the last 2 months, in which case he'd probably get sacked earlier.
Mourinho, LVG and Solskjaer did do it within 4 months. Especially LVG and Solskjaer.
You have to give him a pre season at least. He's averaged a game every 4 days so far. You can't do any training with that kind of schedule.
This is the precise reason why he shouldn't have come mid season, some of our fans won't provide him the luxury of getting to the Summer before they decide he's not good enough. It was a stupid recruitment choice, should have just gone with an Interim.
mourinho and lvg had full preseasons with summer windows to be fair.
How many of those had a preseason and signings? All of this is premature
The season was over the second eth was sacked. Amorim himself wanted to come in the summer, a system manager, (something we have been crying out for) needs time and a pre season along with the right player profiles, even look across to pep who needed a season to get city going.
We were never going to get a new manager bounce with Rubin, he should be judged midway through next season with hopefully a successful summer transfer window.
We were never going to get a new manager bounce with Rubin, he should be judged midway through next season with hopefully a successful summer transfer window.
I think anyone who genuinely wants to see progress at the moment is deluding themselves especially after seeing this squad under EtH. Again, you're rating these players way higher from your previous posts.
Let me break it down:
Amorim can patch it up and try and get this team to get wins playing better football, which everyone is dying for, but really in the long term, what's that going to achieve? Everyone here is thirsty for short term success, they want to see exciting football with players who are not going to be here, let's face that reality. Fans here want us playing good so we can go up the PL table from 13th to 8th, so exciting!
These players are capable of playing better, with maybe different formations whatever, in the long term progress though it's going to mean feck all, that's what I don't get. Simply because Amorim is going to get in more of his players and will go back to his style anyways.
Can he temporarily change? Sure, but he clearly doesn't want to because the players he has currently and will keep for the future will keep learning his style, he's clearly accepted this season is going to go down as the worse because of the future long term goal.
What was annoying though from last night:
- He keeps playing dalot as WB
- He could have gone more attacking by playing Amad as WB as it was Leicester at home
Otherwise, I couldn't care less about changing formations and all that nonsense - I'm already looking forward to the future with most of these players not being here under him.
I want to see PROGRESS next season, this season is null and void the moment we sacked ETH and hired a new manager.
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What ideas did Solksjaer implement other than happy vibes and a 'thank god Jose isn't here' feel among the players and fans? Tellingly, the team's form nosedived (in a fashion every bit as alarming as what we're seeing now) once he got a contract. As for Jose and LVG, both had full preseasons complete with transfers that they approved, so it's hardly apples-to-apples.
That to me is clear, in spite of all the criticism that I believe are mostly valid we should give him a preseason and I would say next season. Because he has never actually done what he is currently trying to do and it's perfectly possible that he is in fact a good coach but is also overwhelmed by the fact that he has to manage games every other days while learning about his new context. Not all managers can come in the middle of the season and settle quickly, it doesn't mean that they are bad.
Early on? Fast transition Football and a higher pressing line. There is a lot of issues that followed but it would dishonest to suggest that he didn't setup the team differently from Mourinho when he came as an interim.
And I agree with preseason(I mentioned it earlier), I simply responded to the question asked, they did implement their ideas quickly.
That’s a fair point. However, implementing his system would inevitably require signing specialist players to fit his style—without any guarantee of success. In the worst-case scenario, if it failed, the club would be forced to scrap the entire plan and start over yet again.
This is precisely why both player and managerial recruitment have been so poor. The club has lurched from one philosophy to another—transition-focused managers to possession-based ones, then back again—creating a cycle of instability. It’s been a complete mess!
The signings won't be exclusive to him but more in sync with the general game model. There are iterations of his play that can be suited to whatever signings he makes. SImeone, Alonso, Gasperini all play similar styles to this and I'm sure there will be others.
Most Managers don't try and change system mid season either. What he's doing is certainly harming our results right now, but clearly the strategy in the club, as he eluded too a few weeks back, is short term pain for long term gain. We muddle through this season getting the squad a bit more used to his system and demands in a competitive environment so we can hopefully hit the ground running in 25/26.
I think what’s truly delusional is the idea that we shouldn’t be doing better with the squad we have.
I understand it’s a new system—which, by the way, I don’t want him to change—and I accept that there will be bumps along the way. But, as it stands, he’s underperforming.
Time will tell if he improves next season, but anyone claiming they didn’t expect more from him right now is being dishonest.
It’s easy to set up to defend against a better team away from home. We are set-up poorly in any game that sub-optimises the players we have out there. Any subsequent result doesn’t change that, and these results are all just draws anyway, except a City team who can’t beat anyone.
And the performance against Everton was rubbish, perhaps you need to go and watch the game as opposed to reading the score on Teletext. Amorim himself was quick to point out that the performance concerned him.
We played FAR better under Ten Hag THIS season in defeat to West Ham than we have in any victory under Amorim. We played better in defeat to Brighton than we have in most games under Amorim, and played FAR better drawing away against Palace than we ever have under Amorim.
Fazing players out has nothing to do with anything, and offers no explanation as to why our players are out of position, why we play with 5 defenders, and sometimes - 5 defenders and 4 midfielders. It is not mandatory to go backwards because a manager is new. It is always a concern to go backwards, because the steps forward you speak of are not promised to anyone. Where we are at the moment is simply going backwards. There is zero to suggest that we will be going forwards, except the simple fact that ‘nobody knows what will happen in the future’. In 3 months, there are no signs of anything that would indicate imminent steps forward, so presently, the evidence of those steps exist largely in the will and imagination of people like you, which has no bearing on anything.
Dalot hasn’t been playing LWB for the ‘last few games’ either, he’s been doing so for the last few months. Poorly. He bought a LWB, and it continued. He’s not playing with a very flawed hand. His hand is significantly stronger than the one the new Southampton manager was dealt on his arrival, yet he got his team to come and play us off the park at Old Trafford. His hand is not worse than what Eddie Howe was dealt, yet he came in and got Dan Burn, Jacob Murphy, Sean Longstaff and others immediately climbing the table.
But not if it means it hinders progress for next season .If he tries to do better with the squad we have, that means he's changing everything i.e reverting back, which he isn't going to be doing for future seasons, so the players going to re-learn his style from pre-season onwards potentially dragging progress into next season?
Amorim will play his style as much as he can. In the PL he will, maybe in cup games, it'd be half and half hybrid as they are one off games, like yesterdays 2nd half was different to the first half.
It is a tricky situation for him because fans are impatient, they aren't going to see the long term goals, who does really because everyone lives in the present and the now, fans get hurt every time they lose, it's understandable. Added to the fuel the media pours on our 'situation', making the whole vibe negative and making fans think it's doom and gloom forever.
Hence why you see some come on here and calling for a sacking, because of the fear.
That's true but the ones that do tend to show signs of improvement during the season especially when they take over before new year. So I don't think it's unfair to expect signs of progress between now and June which doesn't mean that we are world beaters in June but that we have palpable signs of progress, that some players get comfortable in their roles, that he gets comfortable in his selections and the different combinations possible.
What would be difficult to accept is zero improvements or even regression.
Yeah you might be right - my memory of it is mostly just him more or less saying, 'ok boys, get out there, smile, and play with freedom'. I suppose that was an implementation of ideas in a sense, but it hardly seemed like a system implementation, particularly when the the following years with Ole rarely included such a free-flowing, buccaneering style (to be fair, he did manage to make us hard to beat for a while.)
Totally agree with this, I like him as a person and hope he’ll turn us into a force again but I’m disappointed he’s not been able to get us playing better football. Like you I’m glad he’s sticking to his formation but he’s underachieved with the players he has so far.
Yeah that's fair enough. I will say that there have been micro signs of improvement, ones that may help more than we realize in the future. The obvious one is Amad, but I also must say that I prefer the recent iteration of Garnacho. Yes the goals have dried up, but he's looked far less selfish in recent weeks, and has provided a fair few assists lately. I also think Ugarte has looked better since Amorim took over (a bit tired lately, which is understandable given he's lacking a proper midfield partner) and I thought Lisandro was really taking to the system. Sadly, the future is unknown with Licha, but I think these versions of Amad, Ugarte and Garnacho could be very valuable members of a hopefully successful team in the future.
We kept the fast transition but didn't use an aggressive counterpress, probably because he failed to manage it properly which led to a lot of muscle injuries at the end of his interim. While it may not be an attractive change, it's actually an other example of Solskjaer implementing a different idea.
And most managers don't have definite systems, they have a few core ideas and they opportunistically organize most of their teams around them, sometimes they abandon these ideas because they don't fit with what they have at a particular moment in time.
The managers with rigid systems are often not top managers or at least they don't last at the top, it's people like Zeman, Gasperini or Bielsa. They are brilliant Football minds but utterly inflexible.
No he didn't, I fell for some bs. Thanks for correcting me.
If we finish around 15th place with no cup, Jim may question Berrada's decision to go all out for Ruben. Hopefully, we will see some progress by the end of the season and Amorim proves that his tactics can be successful in the PL. So far he talks a very good talk, but his walking has been very disappointing.
I love the hard line he has taken with players and it is what their egos need. Sadly player power will probably get him fired for it when players turn on him.
I hear fans say that a lot, but has our current squad actually shown itself to be unprofessional toward managers (as opposed to just shit / lacking technical ability and tactical flexibility)?
I don't believe this, otherwise Rashford would still be here stinking up the place and getting RA sacked
How does my suggestion that he should be doing better imply that he needs to change his system? That’s not what I’m saying at all. He can stick with his system—that’s fine. But the reality is, he’s not getting the best out of the squad we have.
the squad or players don't fit his system, maybe it was always going to end up that these players underachieve.
Which is why some fans are arguing he should change the system. So the likes of Dalot can play better and we play more of an attacking style. I'm with you he shouldn't change his system but I accept that's why the players aren't being their best.