Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach
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Yoro, Heaven, De Ligt and Mazraoui all have enough pace to play a high line.
One of the main reasons we don't play a high line is because we lose the possession battle and naturally retreat, not because our centre halves are slow.
I'd switch striker and CB around but otherwise agree with you. We should be aiming for around 5 good reinforcements this summer window.
Well, my honest and presumably unpopular opinion is that there's not really a reason to keep Amorim. (I'm not against him, just thinking). If INEOS want to do something what Liverpool and Man City did, namely that they bought two high profile managers and helped them to put together a squad which was capable to win that's understandable. But there's a fly in the ointment. First of all Klopp and Guardiola both were proven high profile managers who could be expected to be successful with the team sooner or later, while Amorim isn't. He is potentially good but winning the portuguese league and the domestic cup with Sporting isn't that big achievement for a couple of reasons. Secondly, both Liverpool and City were financially capable teams while United simply don't have money to overhaul the squad. So, i'm not really optimistic to be fair. As I said, i'm not an "Amorim out" guy just thinking.
I've been critical (within reason, I think) but I've been pleasantly surprised at the tactics he's been willing to deploy the last couple of games. Way less set on forcing his style on an ill-suited squad and much more open to playing a deeper defensive line. We've looked more comfortable across the pitch because of it.
You will note, however, that he's also maintaining his system..
We're just settling into some shapes within the system when we otherwise wouldn't to control the game in a different way
Genuinely, I do not understand this thing with Man Utd managers feeling like they have to 'come out and play.' It killed Ole, it killed Ten Hag, and its been killing Amorim.
When we played Oleball, when we were more defensive during Ten Hag's first season, when we keep it compact like we do in the big games, we just look better.
Its all well and good wanting to go on the offensive but if what you've got doesn't suit that, then you have to wait and do something different until you get the players to achieve a different result.
If someone has to put it into Amorim's head that he has to apologise for a less expansive approach that person needs talking to.
We would much prefer to defend deep and break to getting beat up by teams in the bottom half of the table.
Because it's the only way to get to 90+ points, that's why.
I think the reason for this is obvious though, no? It's easier to set up and get inferior players to play a low block and hit on the counter. This is the only tactic that has worked for us for going on 6 years now. But when we have to come out, play some football and try to find ways through an opponent, things that require a bit more quality, we are suddenly way short.
I'm not saying this is always the problem, but I think this rings true for this current squad. To break down teams that sit in a low block you need players that can go past a man and ruin their organisation, good off the ball movement to create openings, incisive passing to exploit situations. This is where we are lacking and have been for a long time.
Lindelof and Evans are gone. Assume you have included Shaw? Him and Martinez are MIA, and cannot ever be relied upon.
So we have De Ligt, Maguire, Yoro, Heaven and Maz - for 3 positions, with 2 of them teenagers and Maz more or a RB. So yes we need another CB.
Need to get him a striker than can score goals at the very least. Are we the only team in the league who don't have that?
It kind of does! I’m sure I’ve heard of the phrase ‘pushing at an open door’ before..Maybe it's just German? Assumed it'd make sense in English as well
I'm not convinced De Ligt is suited to a high line and I believe it was one of the reasons he was dropped by Bayern. We may get away with it if he was flanked by two quick CBs though. Sporting under Amorim often had their CBs pushed all the way up to the halfway line and beyond, so it is a lot of ground to cover if you get countered.
We've been caught in this vicious circle for years now though. If you're used to playing counter attack football, you can't just become a progressive footballing team overnight. It takes time to rebuild the squad and get them playing how you want, and during that transition period you will inevitably get worse. But if you never try, then you get stuck as a counter attacking team, and that style has a hard ceiling in terms of success. We've had two managers now who relied on reactive football for way too long. We may as well just bite the bullet and start now. Mixing it up from time to time is fine, but our Plan A has to be based on our long term principles.
7 CBs is more than enough. Heaven and Yoro may be teenagers but they have all the attributes we're looking for. We'd actually find it difficult to sign a better player than Yoro on the market, especially given our circumstances. We are expecting Martinez and Shaw to return at some stage so what do we do with 8 players competing for 3 positions when they do?
The whole idea of having 2 players for each position or 6 centre halves for 3 positions is to allow for injuries and have some rotation. We'll have 7. The fact that 2 are injured does not warrant signing an 8th. That's madness especially when we are so bare up front and in midfield in terms of quality and even in terms of pure numbers.
Priority 1 is a technical dangerous forward. Priority 2 is a technical wizard in midfield.
Priority 3 is a goalkeeper.
Centre half is about 7th down the list, not 1st.
No, he was not dropped by bayern when he was there. And he was sold because his asset value was the highest and they needed to find their own deals like Olise.
He's capable of a highline, and is actually very agile and quick on the turn. There's many times where he's accelerating back on a turnover and surprisingly capable in keeping up pace.
He's also clever positionally and rarely puts himself in uncompromising positions. If you have an even faster cb next to him like Yorro it's an even better fit.
Yep. 2 of Yoro, Mazraoui and Heaven. De Ligt has pace but he's not zippy.
And therein lies the problem. Evans and Lindelof are leaving, so I’ve no idea why you’d count them for next season. Martinez has torn a cruciate, and could very easily miss the first 30-50% of the season. Heaven is untested; he may turn out to be good but Amorim cannot know or rely on that. Shaw has played a grand total of two PL games this season, and will also be expected to play left back. Mazraoui very clearly has at least two other positions he will be expected to play.
In terms of non-injured, experienced players, whose primary position is CB, I count 3. And one of them is very slow and about to turn 32.
Funny really what impact an actual result has on the perception of a performance. Because he'd been hammered for playing this setup when it wasn't working as well ie mainly 5atb.
I said it in another thread but I've seen improvement since the Everton game in terms of performances, hopefully results follow more regularly.
I covered it in my chat with Clayton
Its not a question of not trying, its a question of not doing a 180 and trying to go in a totally different direction overnight.
Of course, I would love United to be a dominant team. However, you have to be realistic. If your central midfield is a bunch of guys who are (mostly) coming to the end or are not natural athletes you have to accomodate. Make a long-term plan that anyone you buy in the future will be young, energic and powerful and gradually phase out the guys who cannot perform as you'd like.
Ole, Ten Hag, and Amorim have all made the mistake of trying to run before they can walk. Ole seemed to decide that just cos we got a bunch of attackers in he could just give up what had worked before. Despite him chasing Rice because he knew he didn't have the right level of dynamism in the middle of the park. Why? Likewise, Ten Hag completely dropped what had saved him and won him a League Cup, seemingly, because he signed Mason Mount. As if he'd mistaken him for a latter day Michael Essien.
We have to let time and better recruitment do their job before trying to switch it up. However, it feels like our coaches are under some diktat that they must 'play on the front foot' even its obvious we lack the personnel for it. Its weird.
Yes, he was dropped by Tuchel and he was not happy about it. I think at different points he was dropped for different reasons. First time Tuchel mentioned his passing between the lines not being as good as their other CBs, which I can agree with. Second time I believe he was dropped for Dier due to him being better in the higher line.
He's not rapid by any means, he gave away a dangerous freekick yesterday because he couldn't keep up with the Arsenal player and brought him down on the edge of the box. He gets beaten in little 2-3m races too often where he is slow to turn. His positioning is something that has been criticised about him for years but I think Amorim has got him a bit better coordinated recently.
There's a big difference between what we need, and what we need first. Whatever the patchwork nature of our CB line up, we're still going into next season with 7 CBs on the books, and most of them can do a solid job when available. They may not be what we need to win the league, but to get us back into the top 4 mix, they're certainly good enough.
However, assuming that Rashford, Sancho and/or Antony don't make a Lazarus like return, we're probably going into next season as things stand with 5 attackers, if Bruno continues in centre mid. Of those 5, only 2 (Amad & Garnacho) look good enough. Hojland, Zirkzee and Mount may or may not be total write offs, but relying on them to score the goals we need would be madness. So whatever need we have at CB, its dwarfed by what we need up front.
ETH waited til his second season to drop his dependency on counter attacking, and Ole waited until his third full season. And you think that was too quick? How many years exactly should we be waiting until undertaking a change that will probably take a couple of seasons at most to get used to? And why? We should put back any chance we have of winning the league by yet a few more years, just to pick up the odd second tier cup? Or to get a few plucky underdog results against big rivals?
We could have made this change years ago and had it done and dusted by now, but we didnt, and we're stuck in the same rut. We can't keep kicking the can down the road forever.
You are wrong about this manager and I think next season you will see that.
There won't be any stupid signings in the summer. It'll be lots of Dorgu level buys in the 18-23 years of age range where they only have to pay 7-8 million up front. He'll also promote from the u18s and u21s.
Go look up what he did in his first summer at Sporting. 25 players out and made loads of very smart signings plus youth promotion to transform their fortunes.
Until we have the players to properly execute the idea.
I don't think we can just set an arbitrary number like after two years you should do X.
What if after two years you're still relying on Eriksen and Casemiro? Do you just say: 'F-k it. Lets just open up.' Fine. But then we have expect anyone with even an ounce of pace and power to go through the middle of our team like a week old curry.
Can anyone really say that its been acceptable to watch Ten Hag's donut midfield for a season and a half? Or watch Amorim be unable to win back-to-back in the league and drop down to the bottom half, even though we were six points off fourth when he was appointed?
Set the plan and try to deliver it. If for some reason you don't get the pieces to make it happen then, unfortunately, you gotta play the cards you're dealt not the ones you'd like to have.
I agree but I remember on the overlap Ole mentioning the need for the team to take the next step. You can't absorb pressure and hit on the counter when the impetus is on the team to break the opposition down that was the struggle with Ole.
He identified the right necessities to progress but he didn't have the coaching regiment / credentials to bring it to light. Plus signing Ronaldo was a mistake provisionally on the teams ability to break down low blocks. Should have either moved Greenwood across or signed a more mobile forward to have a fluid front three.
United is a different animal to Sporting.
We had ETH who beat Madrid in 2019 at home in mesmerizing fashion and did collapse at United.
ETH won 15 home games. 15 games. And it was not enough at the end.
Can Amorim achieve that? From what he has shown?
I am not against the objective, I am against trying to reach the objective when you lack the players to make the next step.
Of course, us rolling back the close 15-20 years would be great and I'd love it. But its one thing to say it and another thing to do it.
If you look at your squad and you know you cannot play in that dominant fashion, then you have to keep bringing in new players until its possible.
Maybe it takes more windows, more time? At this point what difference does it make? Its not like Ole, Ten Hag and others trying to fast forward the process has taken us forward. In fact its probably taken us backwards. I don't think some of these have ever gotten over the losses we've had against Liverpool in the last few years. How can you convince a squad that's taken those kind of defeats that the club's headed in the right direction..?
I am not going to say we would have won the title playing counter attacking football. But think about how much harder its become to even convince top players to stay or sign for Man Utd. We're not looking likely for Champions League football soon, nevermind winning the damn thing. That might have been avoided by boring our way to 65-80 points for a few years until we could sign the guys to take us beyond that.
Amorim took over when we were 6 points off the top four. His decisions, seemingly under the weight of this Man Utd cannot play low block idea, have made that impossible. I think its right to question why the hell he even thought this was ever a good idea and to be relieved that sanity finally seems to have won out.
Striker, wingback/winger and a dangerous no 10 like Cunha is what we need most I think.
With Yoro/De Ligt/Martinez/Heaven/Mazraoui cb is sorted for now.
Buying an expensive cb won‘t help much if we are short on attacking threat.
Without Amad in the squad he seems to be the only one being able to carry the ball over some distance. Bruno to a lesser extend as well and I feel Yoro can do it as well from the back but I feel we need way more players able to make a run with the ball, which imo is also one of the main reasons we actually bought Dorgu, because he can actually carry the ball.
Firstly, you will never replace an entire squad in a single season, so simply waiting til you have all the right players is a non-starter. You will have an extended period where you have a mix of styles in the squad and continue to have round square pegs in round holes, whatever you do.
Secondly, this ignores the fact that lots of players can lend themselves to multiple styles of football, but will get better at whatever style you spend most time training & playing. Assuming the squad is coached well, it will get better at playing progressive football the more it does it. Suddenly turning up to a single pre-season and saying "right now we want 60% possession every game" isn't going to work.
The transition has to happen, and the sooner the better. This mañana mentality is why we're struggling now to implement changes to our style of football that our rivals did 5 to 10 years ago.
Issue is, if the squad is relegation level how comes it gets results against Liverpool, City and Arsenal in the same season?
As you've said it, the set-up is the problem. Who does the set-up?
How cames we cant replicate the urgency and craft we displayed at Anfield? The squad is the same i believe...
We have a poor squad but not a relegation squad. That i will stand on it for ever.
We play badly because of poor set-up and poor tactics. When players play by instincts we play better.
Arsenal had more shots against us than against PSV. We were way to accommodating in midfield.This is going to be a much quieter thread until Thursday now that all the usual suspects can’t moan as usual
I hope he doesnt make the mistake Ten Hag made. We need someone to help us progress play from deep and allow Bruno to play in one of the attacking positions. Teg Hag went the experiment route and got Mount. Amorim and the recruitment team should look for an actual central midfielder.
and this is why he deserves what ever is coming, earlier respected him and his stance to not sell out his principles even if it means him being sacked after month or two. When ever you trade your philosophy for survival, there is only one outcome in United, question is just when.
What you're saying is fine in abstract but the last few coaches we have had have basically tested it to destruction. The idea you can just do it, or that players will adapt because they should be able to play multiple styles, might be true in principle. But in practice our squad has shown again and again that they're not able to do that in practice.
So then you have a choice: Keep trying to force things onto them and hope, or be a bit pragmatic until you can file out the players who cannot do what you want and replace them with players who can.
Nobody is saying you don't try to change but that you try to change when its feasible. At the moment the makeup of our squad points to evolution not revolution. If you can get rid of Casemiro and Eriksen and buy mobile, powerful, central midfielders. If you can let players like Lindelof go and bring in someone who's genuinely comfortable on the ball etc. Then you can change.
Just sending the guys out there and saying 'do it' doesn't deliver transition. It delivers poor results that undermine belief. Then you get a squad half-ar$ing it because they don't think they'll get results and it takes you back not forward.
Amorim has fallen into this trap and I think we need to cut him the slack to be pragmatic until summer, when the club might be able to deliver him the right kind of profiles. Not keep banging his head against the wall and being relieved at snatching wins against Ipswich and Southampton.
Ole actually said this when he was our manager as well, he announced that he would try to move us to 433, which was the right move, but obviously he wasn't really hands on/he'd not really coached at the right level and Carrick/McKenna who ran training were both essentially highly rated new coaches.
I disagree on Ronaldo (not that I think he should have been signed, that was a terrible move clearly aimed to stop City from being able to monetise his brand in my opinion) purely because you can setup a press with one passenger. City do it with Haaland, Pool accommodate Salah. It's hard to have more than one, but it would have been possible to just start the press a bit deeper/be a bit more conservative. The issue is more that Ole was too trusting of Rashford and Greenwood - two players with very little interest in real off the ball defensive work and so he essentially deployed a front three with the work rate of PSG's infamous Messi/Neymar/Mbappe in a much harder league and without anywhere near the individual level of talent. Bruno was given free reign which helped offensively but often the front four were very little help to those behind them. Poor McFred.
We then saw the difference/importance of defensive running when a front three of Rashford/Wout/Antony (maybe our worst ever front three in terms of pure ability) proved extremely effective in its own quite limited way.
I would say its less on Amorim and more on the recruitment team.
Jason Wilcox et al should already be aware of who is definitely leaving in the summer, who they'd ideally want to sell in the summer, and what kind of profile would best suit how we want to play to replace those players.
Too often in the past we've let the first team coach influence who we buy or just gone for like for like i.e., we lose an attacking midfielder so we just go and buy an attacking midfielder.
When we knew we were going to lose Pogba we should not have signed Van de Beek. Likewise, when we decided Van de Beek was a bust we should not have signed Eriksen. A forward thinking recruitment team would've used those opportunities to re-evaluate the balance of the squad and gone: 'Steady on. Actually instead of buying another flighty attacking midfielder, why don't we bring in an actual box-to-box player.' I don't even think we would have had to go to the very top of the market. We could've picked up someone like Anguissa instead of letting him go to Napoli and rapidly transformed our team, just by adding pace and power in a key area.
I want INEOS to deliver what it promised: The footballing authorities at the club choose the style and the coach plays it. They should already have a destination point in mind and be bringing in the players to let the coach do his job. It should not be Amorim identifying the players, just like it shouldn't have been Ten Hag etc.
Amorim's best chance of being a success is if the club gets its act together and buys the tools he needs. But he shouldn't be part of that process. We need to end this idea of 'the manager gets his players.'