We were in for Baleba and we don't necessarily know who else. It seems to be forgotten now but back in close season, ie only a few weeks ago, we were virtually unanimous that we would need several transfer windows and two or three years to get to where we need to be. I think that was true then, it's still true now, and we have made progress.
Ruben Amorim | 2025-26
- Thread starter Cheimoon
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We played terrible football vs Brentford
This is the problem, we can focus on little details all we like but they happened. Bruno missed penalties and Chelsea got the red card.
Regardless of those things, we are not doing enough in games.
I was quite clear that I will give Amorim the start of the season but he has not really done enough. We cannot go into games after full week of training not knowing what United will turn up.
I watched Brentford v City, they did not give Brentford a sniff in the first half.
This is how I judge what a top team is... watch Arsenal, City, Liverpool and when they play these teams, they dominate, they control the game, its not a basketball game. We dont seem to be able to do that, mixed with individual errors and lack of tactical set up.
F-k me, Ruben's had his 'economic Maguire' moment.
Bruno isnt a wide 10 so his best position is in CM in this system. He played well there last year. I don’t think Bruno is the problem, he still has plenty of opportunity to join the attack from deeper - his CM pairing is the bigger issue - but we can’t solve every problem in one window.
We certainly have the players capable of doing it. Everyone was trashing Sesko but he’s scored in consecutive games and we finally have someone who has the positional awareness to play the no. 9 role.
As has been pointed out about 100 times already, wide 10s (Cunha, Mbeumo) and central 10s (Bruno) are not the same thing.
F-k me, Ruben's had his 'economic Maguire' moment.
Who cares. I’m all for sound criticism of the manager but why give this sensationalist bullshite any attention.
Yes, they would normally be. But i don't understand the consensus that if he had scored v Fulham in the 40th min, we would have gone on to win, which seems to be what prior poster was implying.
We were not able to hold onto a 1-0 lead after scoring in the 60th. So why would you bank on us holding onto one for an extra 20 mins?
Ok so what we're saying is that under Amorim's system, there is no position that gets the best out of Bruno. Because the choices are either as a wide 10 (where he doesn't have the speed or ball carrying ability required), or as a central midfielder (where he doesn't have the positional discipline or athleticism required).
So we kept a 31 year old with no obvious position in the team that gets the best out of him, rather than take 100 million to reinvest in the midfield.
Insanity.
So we kept a 31 year old with no obvious position in the team that gets the best out of him, rather than take 100 million to reinvest in the midfield.
Insanity.
Why do I care how many times its apparently been said if I haven't seen it.
Bruno isn't a CM either is he. Less so than a "wide" 10. So do you realise how daft that reasoning for this would be?
I'd rather have Bruno as a number 10 and a CM we actually need than what we have now.
I appreciate Amorim probably can't do no wrong for you, but if his system is so particular that we have to get down to if a player is a wide or narrow 10, and if he is a narrow 10 he can't play there, then it is never going to work. That's just ridiculous.
That's a rather bleak way of looking at it. An alternative way is that he's our best and most productive player and has been for years. He's also our captain, our most influential player, and widely considered world class. The desire to keep him would therefore have been a no brainer.
Where he is playing in CM is not ideal, but that is a choice made by Amorim where the formation and strategy take precedence over the interests of individual players. Amorim did have the option to tell Bruno he should go to Saudi at the end of last season, but instead went out of his way to prioritize asking him to stay.
If CM was such a massive concern, he could've easily told Berrada, Wilcox, and Vivell that buying a CM was more important than a striker, but he didn't. He then also allowed Eriksen to leave instead of offering another year to preserve a bit of depth, and further allowed Collyer to go on loan to West Brom. All of that should tell us that Amorim didn't consider CM a priority at the level many others did going into the summer, and is generally content with Bruno and Casemiro playing there. That is imo a bit of a risk since if either get injured or suspended, we would be left with very thin options.
I think we are back to seeing the first team coach as the person who makes all these decisions, we explicitly have at least a basic football management team to manage these things. It wasn't on Amorim to decide whether Bruno went or not, or to allow a player to go on loan, or indeed to sign a CM as a priority. The coach will have views on all these and make inputs, but not the final decision. I tend to agree with the original poster that from a team development perspective taking the money and reinvesting it would have been far better for the club. But reports more recently seem to have questioned how much the actual offer was and it sees Bruno didnt want to go. I do agree though its left us thin in CM and surprising we didn't address that, but I assume comes to issues over funds available and realistic targets. You also though end up defending Amorim's system that we can all agree doesn't put players in their preferred positions
Yes, I'm sure transfers are a group decision. Several including Ratcliffe and Amorim himself have previously said so.
Amorim did steer Bruno into the direction that he wanted him to stay, which he eluded to during the Hong Kong presser during the post-season Asia tour.
Amorim doesn't have the gravitas to make that call. Nor do INEOS for that matter.
Sure, but nobody is/was expecting us to play like Arsenal, City and Liverpool this season.
The more accurate yardstick for progress in a season in which the aim is to finish 5th-7th are teams like Newcastle, Villa, Forest, Bournemouth, etc. And they are/were also much more flawed than the teams you cite, and much less able to consistently dominate weaker teams.
If we "only" drop points in half our league games this season, we're on track to achieve this season's aims. And inherent in that relarively low bar is the fact that we were always going to struggle to a degree the teams with actual title ambitions weren't.
Now we might not even be performing to that level under Amorim, but if the discussion is whether he's "done enough" then comparisons to Arsenal, City & Liverpool are pretty irrelevant.
Good points.
Interesting watch.
3:25 - the way Amorim dropped Slimani is eerily similar to how he dropped Rashford and Antony
3:25 - the way Amorim dropped Slimani is eerily similar to how he dropped Rashford and Antony
And if we had better fans this place wouldn’t be so toxic…
"People who question the manager are fake fans!"
Exactly though. It’s small margins. Anyone that can’t see improvements made this season needs to open their eyes. We looked a lot tighter in defence against Sunderland. We’re actually starting games a lot better… under previous managers we never started games strong but always grew into games. Now we’re going into games with the right mindset but still lacking the clinical finishing.
I just think some people are being way too harsh on him. We’ve played Arsenal, Chelsea, city in our first 6 games. Them 3 teams are miles better than us… Brentford is the only game we should be questioning realistically.
Brentford hasn't been the only questionable performance so far. That second half against Fulham was awful as well and we almost blew it against Burnley. Then there's the Grimsby game. The less said about that one, the better.
We haven't been good this season. There have been some patches of decent play, but we are still a supremely inconsistent team with an utterly chaotic way of playing football and a giant hole in midfield, that is made worse by the formation and system we employ. Even with the recent performance against Sunderland being alright, I shudder to think where we might be in the table, once we've gone to Liverpool, Tottenham, Palace and Forest over the next few games. I'd love to be more optimistic, but I find it much more likely, that we'll see many more Brentford-esque performances in the near future.
To be fair, Bruno could quite easily play in either of those positions to a high level and be much more comfortable than he is curently in central midfield.
The best way is to minimize the role of WB, which again requires Amorim to tweak his system a bit. Our team cant keep their tempo 90 mins thats true but neither do the opposition teams we face, well no team in the world could keep up the tempo for 90 mins, unless you're 2009-2011 Barcelona team.
Thing is I've never known any system which deployed 2 midfielders acing at the art of possession football, thats never happened in my 30 years of watching football.
What we can do is to change the formation which Amorim wont do or if we persist with this formation the best thing we can do is to soak up the pressure and counter with fast attack.
Fair enough, but for a lot of people, myself included. That will have to start translating into consistent positive results. The performances improving in some aspects in some games is great but when we've still got a 50% loss rate this season it can be difficult to muster too much enthusiasm.
We did but I'd like to see that replicated over a couple of games in a row against teams that haven't just been promoted from the Championship before I'll start to think our defending is moving in the right direction. Because a week before away to Brentford we looked as woeful as ever.
Very true. He needs to play a bit more pragmatic I think until we sort the midfield out, and then just let the front 3 Cause havoc. Defending against Brentford was a shambles. Also we need to work on our away form. That’s where we need to play a bit more defensive… at OT we can run riot like we did against Arsenal but be more clinical.
Wow okay, so putting the club before the current manager is toxic? Worst take I've seen in a long time.
There's probably a Amorim Fan Forum for you to join if you look long enough.
Almost 600 pages in this thread and I still don’t understand why Amorim is held to a different standard than any other head coach in the history of the league. Do you?
The answers seem to be he gives good talking head and he’s a cute boy — but I took those as more in jest than factuality. It kinda explains why some fans are die-hards for Amorim, but why so the people who hired him? Saving face? Sunk cost fallacy? Sheer bloody mindedness? Did Jim sit down and watch Amorim’s league winning team and fall in love, like seriously in love so hard he could literally feck the shit out of that PUMA Orbita Ultimate PL size 5, and now he’s nailed his colors to the mast?
The answers you seek are discussed at length within the preceding few hundred pages.
Is that what you’re doing though? I mean seriously mate. We’re in this mess because we’ve kept chopping and changing managers. My opinion could change again after 5 more games. That’s just the way football works… we’re 6 pts behind top yet we’re in a crisis… come on man. Let’s wait until we’re miles away before judging anything… let’s look at some positives, Šeško is improving, Mount looks like a quality player all of a sudden, Mbeumo and Amad have a great understanding on the right…
I have no idea myself. Surely a combination of factors, longing for Lisan Al Gaib, him looking good and showing lots of passion, getting rid of players the caf declared toxic and of course a lot of sunken cost.
It's not all bad at the moment, this season is isolation isn't a disaster, but we're always moments away from one with our utter lack of consistency
Are we?
There are a lot of reasons why we're in this mess, but this isn't one of them
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90% yes. Changing managers have included changing style, changing style have included changing squad.
^^^
Correct, every manager weve sacked post Fergie other than Moyes has had longer than 2 full seasons which is much longer than most other big clubs give managers
We are in this mess because Alex Ferguson bought a racehorse that came with a Gypsy curse.
I
But we aren’t a top team. It’s a 3 window project minimum. A tough proposition but possible. Thinking we’re up there with Liverpool and the rest is a poor reference point for any analysis. We were 15th last year with two different managers and lost the worst Euro final in history. We’ve also still got most of those players. We are making progress though. Our recruitment is already hugely improved even if we are skint. Anyone else stunned that Shaw is fit in a World Cup year? That’s the level of shithousery the club is dealing with.
It's very possible if that horse hadn't have been involved there would be no Glazer involvement.
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