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

hellhunter said:
With all this bashing of Hojlund and claiming we have to play without a striker, it's easy to forget that Hojlund at least got some goals last season. Amorim didn't exactly improve him, so I'm not even sure it should be used as a shield and excuse.

Not claiming you'll win the league with Hojlund leading the line, but last season's version was enough for midtable
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Pretty sure he went 14 games with a goal, had a brief purple patch and then scored 3 goals for the remainder of the season. I don't think he's being asked to do anything remarkable either, and it's the same flaws with regards to movement we had last season.

He actually did say towards the beginning that this system suits him better, so maybe he's just crap.
 
hellhunter said:
It's flawed for sure, yeah, and likely selling us short here. But we didn't create four or five goals like people claim
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Mount had two good chances. Bruno had a very good chance. Hojlund should have scored at the back post. Dorgu put two brilliant balls in, one of which should have been scored by someone. There are probably more I’m forgetting. We should have comfortably won that game. All of this whilst shutting wolves out almost completely. This result has absolutely sod all to do with the manager, but I knew at the final whistle there would be a load of complete nonsense posted in here, as per usual.
 
Remember the geese said:
So many in here against the manager. Truly bizarre.
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Why is it bizarre, he’s a rookie that’s never managed in the EPL and has 27% win rate and 50% loss rate, you get him 5 or 6 more players like Dorgu and next year we are still in the bottom 5, then what?

How is that an upgrade on two trophies, 3rd and 8th place, how?

We set up with 7 defensive players and he’s learning on the job as I said he qualified for his first European Semi Final by the skin of his teeth in 7 years of his managerial career on Thursday!

Please someone tell me why he’s so special because he’s honest, sometimes you can be too honest?

Ruben has 23 points in 22 PL matches, most fans would be willing to give him much more of a chance if he wasn’t so stubborn and inflexible.

He’s made so many rookie 101 mistakes this season and that’s on Berrada too, he wanted him.

Amorim will decide his and Berrada’s fate. We don’t score because we are set up so defensively and don’t have the ability to play through teams, we’re a dull team set up by a vastly overrated coach, like I said he will get 8-10 PL games next season and if he hasn’t achieved 1.8 points per game and shown significant improvement, he’ll be sacked.
 
Superunknown said:
Based on today's game, I have to disagree. I thought we controlled the game very well. Amass and Fredricson both came into the side and played very, very well. It's clear that our issue is at the top end of the pitch where we just can't score. His three striking options are Hojlund (3 league goals and another poor performance...), Zirkzee (injured, so not an option), and Chido (17 years old). The striking options just aren't there.

I thought Amorim did everything right today and, with a better set of attackers, we win this game comfortably 3 or 4-0. We had enough opportunities today, we just couldn't finish. Wolves scoring that free kick was an absolute sucker punch.
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We did okay against a fairly average Wolves team that didn't do much outside of defending well tactically. If we did this against an up for it Newcastle team away and lost 1-0 fair enough.

It wasn't that we were pinging balls out from the back, playing through an aggressive high press and shutting down their attacks. It was just low quality on both sides and them being happy to let us have the ball aka 'control'.

I can excuse the result if we were showing consistent moments of real technical or tactical quality but that's not the case in this game and has been the same for 5-6 months.
 
It would be hugely counter productive to discard Amorim without at least a summer to get a few of his own players in. He said almost right from the start that there was pain coming in the future. Discarding him and getting a pragmatic manager that will play to this group's strengths will just leave you with the same mentally-weak players and an undefined style.

Though in all honesty, I did expect him to have done better than he has thus far. You could easily finish fourth bottom, which is a disgrace considering the wages and transfer fees paid.
 
dubplate warrior said:
That's a sign of poor players and generally means no matter how elite your manager that the team will not get the results we expect as a fanbase.

If we sign 5 more Dorgu's than it won't really matter about tactics because whoever the manager is we'll still be midtable at best. Not what the point of that hypothetical is because ultimately the biggest issue we have is recruitment, not the manager.

I found his interview after the last game quite interesting as he basically acknowledged why his methods aren't working in the premier league, athleticism. I'd be really interested to see how we look against Bilbao, who whilst being a good team aren't as physical as any team in the league.
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It's a half glass scenario,
1. Probably the tactics are poor. You need to accept also this might be true. Have the humility to accept probably a back 3 team is not cut in the modern EPL.
2. Probably the squad is poor, you need results. You know the shortcomings of your team, it is 'athleticism', but why not cover the shortcomings of your team, get some points, solve the 'athleticism' issue during the transfer window.

In Europa we will do well, it has already become an emotional tournament for us. Thats how cup competitions are won.
In the league where it's not about emotions but tactics and cleverness we will struggle.
 
witchtrials said:
Presumably the kind of insight that wowed Berrada at the interview stage
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It was probably Amorim's implementation of it at Sporting that wowed Berada so much that he insisted Amorim join immediately, to prevent him from going to City since Sporting's Director Hugo Viana was headed to City.
 
If they sticking with him this summer, they better spend their asses off. Otherwise next season is a failure, he cannot work with these players.
 
elmo said:
The results would look vastly different if we even had a striker who’s capable of scoring 10 goals in the league.

The team is starting to cut out on the brainfarts on defense which costed us games early on in his stint and now our performances have been on the upwards trend apart from being useless at scoring.
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I agree they would probably be better, but you can never quite tell the exact differences as team dynamics change.

I still dont think it should be this bad, even if a lot of blame falls to the players.

Again though this goes with any team and any manager.
 
hobbers said:
Onana and Hojlund too shit to be in the Prem. Lindelof and Eriksen leaving in a month. 2 academy players with no first team minutes.

Only Mazraoui and Ugarte would even get in Wolves team today. And even those 2 are both new to the league. That is how shit our available squad is.
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I'm not sure Ugarte would. He certainly wouldn't be a major upgrade.
 
Fooza said:
no it wasn't addressed, he wasn't a striker. Even when we're linked with him a simple Youtube video showed he wasn't an out and out striker with a lot of goals under him.

Zirkzee is a type of signing that needs time, we couldn't afford players like that with the risk of how backwards it could set us especially in the striker position when it was our biggest problem last season. We needed a TOP striker

There's an obvious rule in football, top teams need top well made strikers. If you want to bring in an upcoming young striker, they should be backup to a top striker slowly making their way up. Zirkzee was the wrong option
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Well, that was my point...

And what are the chances we sign a top striker this summer considering our terrible scouts and limited funds?
 
AndySmith1990 said:
They are operating on a level of blind faith, but instead of simply being honest and saying so, they instead have to make up daft excuses to validate their stance, which is the annoying part.

I've said many times I'm fine with Amorim still being here next season. But that is simply because he's a likeable guy and I'm curious to see if anything changes after a few changes to the team. It's absolutely not based on his performance so far, which is undeniably appalling.

I'll never understand the mindset of those who feel it necessary to blindly defend managers by blatantly lying. What does anyone get out of it? Let's just call a spade a spade and acknowledge Amorim is a disaster so far, and maybe just maybe, he isn't the right guy. We'll find out next season, because Ratcliffe sure as shit isn't going to write off another season hovering above the relegation zone
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That's mostly how I see it too. I don't see a need to sack him yet and I'm happy to keep him on next season, but what really annoys me is the common sentiment of "there's a master plan and if you can't see it, you're not a real fan / you're an idiot / you're a bad person".
 
Licha-Vidic said:
It's a half glass scenario,
1. Probably the tactics are poor. You need to accept also this might be true. Have the humility to accept probably a back 3 team is not cut in the modern EPL.
2. Probably the squad is poor, you need results. You know the shortcomings of your team, it is 'athleticism', but why not cover the shortcomings of your team, get some points, solve the 'athleticism' issue during the transfer window.

In Europa we will do well, it has already become an emotional tournament for us. Thats how cup competitions are won.
In the league where it's not about emotions but tactics and cleverness we will struggle.
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Think there’s a bit more to it than that.

Another thing is that, in the PL our players aren’t physical enough, but in Europa we are able to do the same to other teams. Spurs in the final will be a problem for us if we get there.
 
criticalanalysis said:
We did okay against a fairly average Wolves team that didn't do much outside of defending well tactically. If we did this against an up for it Newcastle team away and lost 1-0 fair enough.

It wasn't that we were pinging balls out from the back, playing through an aggressive high press and shutting down their attacks. It was just low quality on both sides and them being happy to let us have the ball aka 'control'.

I can excuse the result if we were showing consistent moments of real technical or tactical quality but that's not the case in this game and has been the same for 5-6 months.
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Whilst what you're saying is true, you can only ever prepare for the opponents that are in front of you, which is what Amorim did. It wasn't the most exciting of games on the whole (certainly not when compared to Lyon) due to the shuffling of the pack with the players that played. I thought the preparation and overall play was more than good enough to win, and we should have won. All managers will get games like today where you make all of the right moves, but the ball doesn't go in.

I have been critical of Amorim, particularly with the second half performance against Newcastle. With this though, I can't place the blame with him. When you've got a striker that has only scored 3 goals in the league all season, you're really up against it.
 
We’ve got a decision to make

Back him in the summer in this system

Or get rid and bring in a more adaptable coach
 
hellhunter said:
We weren't terrible yeah. But we created an xG of 1.1. People act as if we blew Wolves away. We should've won with what both teams created, but it wasn't this daylight robbery people paint it to be
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Correct me if I'm wrong but xG doesn't factor in missed crosses, which was a major problem today when a ball was nicely whipped in but bugger all people got to it.
 
Mr Pigeon said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but xG doesn't factor in missed crosses, which was a major problem today when a ball was nicely whipped in but bugger all people got to it.
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No you're totally right, but it's still the best metric available outside of using my own eyes. And that would be silly
 
Licha-Vidic said:
The issue is, we need to win games. How comes when the game is lost and tactics are over the window, we start to play well.
When we chase games through instincts, we usually get something but ordinarily when playing through tactics we usually play very badly.
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I thought the same thing this morning funnily enough. I didn't post this consensus on Thursday night as I thought Amorim and the team were responsible for the result but when you critically assess the perceived danger of the team, the players are more threatening when going gung ho.

It's the exact reason why Erik Ten Hag won the FA cup last season with the Liverpool fixture a prime example. Tactics, organisation and philosophy out the window it's essentially the players using their own intuition to score.

I have said for weeks now that I can't see Amorim being a success and this is one of the primary reasons, his system is bearing very little fruit. I would have loved even if United were negative and defensively responsible but even in a game where the team is playing against 10 men, the manager still has 5 defenders on the pitch and if you count the defensive orientated midfielder it's a tally of 6 defensive players across 10 positions.

So no matter how fans frame it we cannot be surprised at the teams lackluster ability to score or to offer any form of penetration against the opposition because on average the manager is fielding a team where 60-70% of outfield players are defensive in every single fixture.

It's very frustrating but the more time progresses the stronger my convictions about Amorim are and without being boastful I had the same reservations about Erik during the infancy of his second season. The reservations differ in terms of criteria behind what's letting both managers down but on the surface it's fundamentally the same issue insufficient tactical approaches.
 
dubplate warrior said:
I found his interview after the last game quite interesting as he basically acknowledged why his methods aren't working in the premier league, athleticism. I'd be really interested to see how we look against Bilbao, who whilst being a good team aren't as physical as any team in the league.
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Thats the one hope that I have for the game against Bilbao- that we might win the tie because we’re generally fitter than most Europa League teams while being way off the required standard in the league. We battered Sociedad in that 2nd leg and the difference in physicality was almost like us vs Newcastle a week ago.
 
Cathy Ferguson said:
It is not a single game or a couple of games. It is the same poor performances bring serwed since he arrived. Where is the progress? What is he exactly improving? We seem a bit more solid than under ETH but he was a terrible manager. Our attacking play is as bad as it ever was. If he needs 15 top players to win games then anyone can be manager.
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Honestly, I hear what your saying, I'm not suggesting it's anywhere good enough but he was brought in to change the whole set up whilst having to use players the previous manager brought in who couldn't even play the way he wanted them to.

The summer is huge in a lot of ways, he needs to move a few on and get players in who fit the profile he needs, which in itself is a gamble as like I readily admit, it's not been good enough so far, but we have to give him a chance otherwise it was a pointless exercise bringing him in.
 
Cathy Ferguson said:
Well, that was my point...

And what are the chances we sign a top striker this summer considering our terrible scouts and limited funds?
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Sell players and spend a lot on a striker, not sure who wants to come depends on if we qualify for CL etc

it's a position you can't buy cheap, if we end up selling 150m worth of players, at least 80m should be going trying to persuade the likes of Osimhen. I can't see us buying a top striker under INEOS though
 
Darkhorsez said:
100% this. Not sure why we feel the need to place blame on the manager. We were unfortunate to lose the game.
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You lose 2 or 3 your unfortunate, you lose 11 out of 22 PL matches something is inherently wrong!

When did Man United have similar standards to Burnley and Ipswich?
 
Woziak said:
Why is it bizarre, he’s a rookie that’s never managed in the EPL and has 27% win rate and 50% loss rate, you get him 5 or 6 more players like Dorgu and next year we are still in the bottom 5, then what?

How is that an upgrade on two trophies, 3rd and 8th place, how?

We set up with 7 defensive players and he’s learning on the job as I said he qualified for his first European Semi Final by the skin of his teeth in 7 years of his managerial career on Thursday!

Please someone tell me why he’s so special because he’s honest, sometimes you can be too honest?

Ruben has 23 points in 22 PL matches, most fans would be willing to give him much more of a chance if he wasn’t so stubborn and inflexible.

He’s made so many rookie 101 mistakes this season and that’s on Berrada too, he wanted him.

Amorim will decide his and Berrada’s fate. We don’t score because we are set up so defensively and don’t have the ability to play through teams, we’re a dull team set up by a vastly overrated coach, like I said he will get 8-10 PL games next season and if he hasn’t achieved 1.8 points per game and shown significant improvement, he’ll be sacked.
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Didn't he say that his 3421 system is not working due to the PL's athleticism? And the guy refuses to play any other formation. He will be gone by December unless we have a spectacular window.
 
I feel he has clearly failed on his mandate so far. 6 wins, 5 draws and 11 losses in 22 Premier League games is absolutely pathetic. We haven't scored a goal in 11 of those 22 games (shocking). We have scored 26 and conceded 34 goals in these 22 games for a negative GD of 8. All around shocking stats. No one can convince me that what he has had available is only good enough for that. He has been appalling in the league, no question about it.

We don't seem to have a style of play and still concede too many goals despite having 6 or 7 defensive or defensive minded players on the pitch. We give nothing performances, not excelling in any area of the pitch.

The only thing keeping him in the job is that the management already made a feck up this season by keeping Ten Hag in the summer. They probably are afraid to pull the trigger because of the money wasted in the ETH and Ashworth blunders.

He has put all the eggs in the Europa basket now, and I hope for his sake and ours that we win that tournament. It would be a truly disastrous season if we falter in Europa. No pressure for a team that is known for crumbling under even a semblance of pressure, huh?

If we fail to win Europa then I would let him go. I don't think anything else he has done justifies putting our trust in him.

Good to luck to him for those three Europa games. I doubt we are winning any of the remaining PL games: Three of of which are away at Brentford, Bournemoth & Chelsea and the two at home are against West Ham & Villa.
 
Raoul said:
How about one top player who scores goals.
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A striker who could get into double figures plus a keeper who doesn't make a mistake every two matches and I think the team will get significantly better. A lot of people are insistent that we're still playing like utter shite but I don't see it. I think we're controlling the majority of our games now and just totally let down predominantly by two players. Unfortunately, those are two players in the two positions most directly involved in scoring goals and not conceding them.
 
Fooza said:
Don't need to watch matches to come up with nonsense, go watch what Amorim said, he didn't want them sitting back. Stop coming up with assumptions on what the manager have said unless you have evidence to back it up
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Yes, don’t trust your own lying eyes, but do trust the post-game rationalizations from the head coach.
 
Superunknown said:
Whilst what you're saying is true, you can only ever prepare for the opponents that are in front of you, which is what Amorim did. It wasn't the most exciting of games on the whole (certainly not when compared to Lyon) due to the shuffling of the pack with the players that played. I thought the preparation and overall play was more than good enough to win, and we should have won. All managers will get games like today where you make all of the right moves, but the ball doesn't go in.

I have been critical of Amorim, particularly with the second half performance against Newcastle. With this though, I can't place the blame with him. When you've got a striker that has only scored 3 goals in the league all season, you're really up against it.
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My and a lot of other people's issue is not the preparation. It's what's actually happening on the pitch i.e coaching and yes 'patterns of play'.

I hate to say this but ETH was all about preparation too. We do prepare 'well' for teams except that seems to be the only thing that is done. It excuses and puts so much of the blame on the players, who are executing his 'preparation' or 'plan'. For example why do we always seem to freestyle every single goal kick? At no point can you say 'yes I can see Onana is going to play it short, so that the CCB will draw an attacker and pop off a quick pass to the wide CB so we can play through their press'. Repeat that across the whole pitch. No consistency other than the personnel and formation.
 
Wing Attack Plan R said:
Yes, don’t trust your own lying eyes, but do trust the post-game rationalizations from the head coach.
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On this I'd like to trust what the manager actually says because I've seen these players for quite awhile do the same habits for a previous manager just last season. So I must have been having 'lying eyes' for years. To some of you it genuinely astounds me that you've erased everything previously before Amorim
 
Fts 74 said:
Honestly, I hear what your saying, I'm not suggesting it's anywhere good enough but he was brought in to change the whole set up whilst having to use players the previous manager brought in who couldn't even play the way he wanted them to.

The summer is huge in a lot of ways, he needs to move a few on and get players in who fit the profile he needs, which in itself is a gamble as like I readily admit, it's not been good enough so far, but we have to give him a chance otherwise it was a pointless exercise bringing him in.
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If we are to back him then we shouldn't spend on specialist 3421 players that is for sure. It is not Klopp who we brought in, it is an unproven young coach from Portugal. Why on earth give him cart blanche to change the whole setup?
 
Fooza said:
On this I'd like to trust what the manager actually says because I've seen these players for quite awhile do the same habits for a previous manager just last season. So I must have been having 'lying eyes' for years. To some of you it genuinely astounds me that you've erased everything previously to Amorim
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It’s simply that your argument doesn’t make sense. We sat back. You heard RA say that isn’t what he wanted, so you say we couldn’t have sat back. I don’t put any stock in post-match interviews, particularly from head coaches in The hot seat.
 
Posh Red said:
Complaining about the manager after a game where the opposition had a single shot on target from a free kick, and United had several clear cut chances and dominated the game, is quite obviously ridiculous, at least I thought it would be obvious.
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If it were a one off yes, but its a repeated problem. Whilst the team is average, its not quite as bad as this, and the set up combined with the lack of a good goalscorer is causing this lack of goals, which then it only takes one moment to punish.
 
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