Ruben Amorim | 2025-26

[croadyman]

Remember our target for this year is to get back to Europe EL/CL, Top 6. We are on the right track. We are not expected to win every game. If we do, we would be challenging for the title. It's obvious that we don't have the squat yet. Many have already repeated here, we need 2 CMs and a LWB as minimum. Ideally, another good at aerial defence CB and hopefully another backup ST to bring on when we need to get a winning goal.

The new players for this year Mbeumo, Sesko, Cunha, Lammens and the entire team need to gel and find the rhythm. You can't build a team with strong mentality and consistency with 10 games. It takes time and we will improve.

We have improved a lot compared to last year. Have faith, support the manager and support the players. Give them time and encouragement instead of piling on pressure and negativity.

Don't support Dalot, he lost that by demonstrating complete lack of concentration when defending, really hope the penny will drop with Ruben about him costing us points.

 

[Adisa]

Just want him to show some fecking flexibility.

 

[mav_9me]

Even if we somehow beat Tottenham next week he'll still have only picked up 47 points from a full 38 league games which is a disgraceful return on our investment no other so called big club would put up with a manager performing that poorly

What if he wins the next 10 matches after that? Which is still only equivalent to 61 points for a season on the whole. Still not good enough?

Or you can you know think logically and evaluate this season on it's own and see if that's good enough by itself without using last season to bring this season down.

And I'm not even fully convinced by Amorim.

 

[acnumber9]

It’s a daft thing to say anyway. Obviously. There are loads of factors why the team finished bottom half last season. If United finish in the top half this season, then I wonder if that poster will admit it was due to our weak squad, and not just the manager.

If we finish top half this season it will simply be us reverting to where we were before this manager took over and back to the level of the previous manager who was sacked for underperforming. Though he won some trophies with that ‘terrible’ squad.

 

[Hammondo]

If we finish top half this season it will simply be us reverting to where we were before this manager took over and back to the level of the previous manager who was sacked for underperforming. Though he won some trophies with that ‘terrible’ squad.

When amorim took over we were not top 4.

 

[acnumber9]

When amorim took over we were not top 4.

Who said top four? I said top half and obviously I’m basing it on our finishing positions. I don’t think it was unreasonable to expect a new manager to overcome the massive one point gap to top half to have us finish no worse than we have since the 80’s.

 

[Hammondo]

Who said top four? I said top half and obviously I’m basing it on our finishing positions. I don’t think it was unreasonable to expect a new manager to overcome the massive one point gap to top half to have us finish no worse than we have since the 80’s.

Oh my brain read top 4. Sometimes performance and changes in the squad are more important.

We have seen for the first time since SAF a team that acts and plays with a good professional mentality. He's gotten rid of the bad influences and created standards.

Our football is clearly improving as is our squad, we are very much going in the right direction.

 

[Gordon'sHill]

If we finish top half this season it will simply be us reverting to where we were before this manager took over and back to the level of the previous manager who was sacked for underperforming. Though he won some trophies with that ‘terrible’ squad.

Yes, we need some perspective. Several things can be true at once. ETH was allowed with criminal negligence to assemble the weakest squad in our PL history with awful signings. But we still won a Cup final against City. Regardless, the manager cultists always seem to insist every new manager needs a year or two, to buy a new team and spend £0.5bn plus, not have any injuries etc. We have undoubtedly improved the squad, but I see limited progress in our football. 3 CBs and we still cannot defend crosses. Little creativity beyond individual brilliance, so when the likes of Mbeumo and Cunha are quiet like yesterday we struggle. Terrible game management, his weekly CB rotation sub is just silly. According to some posters yesterday then Amorim is right not to make attacking subs as he doesn't have an Ole or Sheringham on the bench. How on earth do other PL teams manage I wonder? Sesko was having an absolute shocker and actively giving the ball away. Mount if he is on the bench can cope with 15-20 minutes, and Zirkzee brings something different, Mainoo can be effective around the edge of the box. That's what management is about, giving the opposition something else to think about. Above all else, take off a CB and put on an attacking player when you are chasing the game, so the spare player is an attacker. That's just basics. My other concern is who is actually improving under his coaching? Other teams have managers that improve players, Glasner is a great example. Its been a long time since we had that. And of greater concern, where is the youth team progression, it seems to have stalled completely.

There was an interesting article last week on Amorim and his time at United. The first point was that when we announced his signing with great fanfare, there were some raised eyebrows across Europe. Several teams had looked at Amorim but not been convinced. Though Sporting did well it suggested that Benfica and Porto had their own issues. The other interesting point was that generally managers need to be super confident and egotists to cope with pressure and to convince players. It suggested there is a danger that Amorim has mistakenly convinced himself was that the reason for his success in Portugal was his general management and especially having good players in a weak league, rather than his system. Its certainly unprecedented for any top manager to be wedded to a single system, there are no other examples.

 

[acnumber9]

Oh my brain read top 4. Sometimes performance and changes in the squad are more important.

We have seen for the first time since SAF a team that acts and plays with a good professional mentality. He's gotten rid of the bad influences and created standards.

Our football is clearly improving as is our squad, we are very much going in the right direction.

I agree that sometimes performances are more important. I would disagree that they’re much better though. So far this season it’s been better than some of the lows of last season but it was Amorim that took us to those lows where even small improvement should be neither hard nor impressive.

 

[acnumber9]

3 CBs and we still cannot defend crosses.

This is part of my issue. We regularly leave players unmarked in our box. The centre backs don’t seem to know whether to pick up players or mark space. Only 6 teams have conceded less than us and our goal difference is still shit.

 

[JE-0801]

We’ve got no one to bring on especially against a side giving as good as they got. Don’t forget Brighton. Could’ve been 4-1 with the changes most wanted. Besides his substitutes are not designed for like for like in the hope the next best will get lucky. They’re designed to slightly change our formation based on player characteristics. Forrest were 6th last season and are a very good team just had a pisspoor manager for a few games. Besides we hit the post and had one cleared off the line. If that was Liverpool they would have been robbed by bad luck.
That was a good result with us off our game which will happen as we improve.

I’m not even talking about the result, I’m talking about the game management. Whether we end up losing the game, or draw or end up winning the game, when we are behind 2-1 in the scoresheets any coach or manager in Manchester United should take a risk to get the goal back by bringing more attackers to change the game and we literally have two attackers with wages of 100k and 250k p/w on the bench to bring on.

 

[Danimancer]

i say being 2 points of the second spot after 10 games isn't bad, may the progress continue!

 

[OverratedOpinion]

Just want him to show some fecking flexibility.

What do you mean by flexibility?

He made significance changes in how we build up and what he asks players to do already.

 

[hellhunter]

What do you mean by flexibility?

He made significance changes in how we build up and what he asks players to do already.

I agree that he's shown the flexibility we asked for in match preparation, that's nice to see. Next step has to be a similar flexibility during matches though, we usually keep trying the same way once the match has started.

 

[OverratedOpinion]

I agree that he's shown the flexibility we asked for in match preparation, that's nice to see. Next step has to be a similar flexibility during matches though, we usually keep trying the same way once the match has started.

I assume you are talking about Forest. What did you want him to change?

 

[stevoc]

But we nearly won the game with the players that were already on the pitch. Bringing on extra attackers or making too many changes has backfired for us just last week when Brighton came back.

Yes nearly, we might have won it though. We'll never know.



What I do know is though I don't like watching a United side that doesn't go for it attacking wise when we're chasing a game.

If Forest won 3-2 people would be on here complaining he made too many changes and messed up the formation.

We were already losing 2-1 by the time he eventually made his first change. I doubt he'd have been criticised for bringing attackers on to try to salvage a result.

 

[stevoc]

Mount isn't fully fit, and his other option is Zirkzee.

SAF, unlike Amorin, always had a deep squad of options and SAF liked to carry 4 legit strikers in his squad-- so he always had the opportunity to bring on fresh legs in the rare times that United were trailing.

I don't blame RA for looking at his bench and going-- well, either bring on Zirkzee or leave Sesko on and deciding to leave Sesko on. Zirkzee has 3 goals in 36 EPL appearances. Not exactly the same as SAF bring Ole or Sheringham off the bench for Yorke or Cole.

People need to get to grips that a.) the team needs help in the starting XI and b.) the team really has no depth except in a couple of positions.

RA's hands are tied to a degree. SAF, barring a couple of years, always had a standout CB pairing, so he could always gamble by adding a defender-- or my personal favorite, when he would put Giggs on as a "left back" in essence going 3 at the back. United can't keep clean sheets with 5 at the back. RA has to be a bit more pragmatic than SAF because he doesn't have the same horses-- not in attack, defense, goalie or midfield. It's a lot easier to take off a defender for a striker if you know your back 3 is Evra, Rio, Vidic-- because they are elite players.

17 points, 1 point behind second. Even after being screwed in the Arsenal game-- missing penalties in 2 other games and having a ball cleared off the line at the end of yesterday's game. Doing so with 1 striker who is young and is getting his first taste of the EPL. I'm not bored to death watching this team like I was under ETH and at least we are back to creating chances.

Lots of positives and most of the negatives are related to the squad which can't be solved in 1 summer transfer window-- it will take multiple windows to get a squad that has the depth that SAF had when he was managing.

Disagree with a lot of that mate to be honest.

 

[hellhunter]

I assume you are talking about Forest. What did you want him to change?

Not only Forest - I can't really recall many mid game adjustments he made. His subs are very often like for like and he also doesn't really alter the game plan.

Last match is a low hanging fruit, Sesko having been poor would've made for an easy adjustment by replacing him with Mount or Zirkzee, who both offer a different approach.

 

[OverratedOpinion]

Not only Forest - I can't really recall many mid game adjustments he made. His subs are very often like for like and he also doesn't really alter the game plan.

Last match is a low hanging fruit, Sesko having been poor would've made for an easy adjustment by replacing him with Mount or Zirkzee, who both offer a different approach.

Considering he has changed things up recently I don't see any reason to harbour on the past.

Sesko is also 6 foot 5 and the most likely route to winning the match seemed to be corners where they looked weak. Zirkzee for Cunha might have been a move but hardly something I was personally crying out for.

 

[Rusholme Ruffian]

We clearly have a different expectation from what we expect from United. I am OK with a draw but I want United to be ready to lose to go for a win in a game like this.

In a fully functioning, fully confident, well-oiled machine of a club/team (like it was in Fergie's day - given that I've seen his name mentioned a few times re: Saturdays sub decisions) I would fully agree with you. But come on, what is more important to the ongoing development and progress of this team - a hard-fought point away at a tough ground against a rejuvenated Forest side under a new manager, which keeps our undefeated run going, or bringing on subs who haven't proven themselves to be reliable in order to chase a win? The risk of being 'ready to lose' at this point in the team's ongoing development/improvement is that it damages the fragile confidence that we are currently rebuilding. And it's not like we shut up shop and played for a draw either, we got back on level terms and very nearly snatched a win. If I'm honest criticisms like this (and there have been many similar made be several posters) feel like a desperation to find things to throw at the manager. Any manager in the world - including Fergie I'm sure - would say that when the chips are down and confidence is low you make yourself hard to beat, being 'ready to lose to go for a win' comes further along the path.

The problem isn't the Forest game in isolation - it's the realisation that this is what we can expect in away games now. City Fulham Grimsby Brentford and Forest away is starting to become a significant enough sample size where the pattern is we fail to control games, fail to defend properly, fail to match the opponents' intensity. The Liverpool result feels like an anomaly.

Yeah, I saw you say this in an earlier post - basically that as far as you are concerned the die is cast now for the rest of the season. The thing is a few weeks ago all I read on here were comments about '1 point per game' and including last season's stats to pad out the argument. Well, we now have 13 points in the last 6. That changed, so why can't our away form?

 

[Shark]

What do you mean by flexibility?

He made significance changes in how we build up and what he asks players to do already.

I'm guessing what he means is if we desperately need a goal he should show flexibility in how we approach the game. SAF used to throw the kitchen sink, flooding the opposition box. Klopp did it too at Liverpool. Amorim seems too passive in these moments tactically.

 

[OverratedOpinion]

I'm guessing what he means is if we desperately need a goal he should show flexibility in how we approach the game. SAF used to throw the kitchen sink, flooding the opposition box. Klopp did it too at Liverpool. Amorim seems too passive in these moments tactically.

That's not really flexibility, it's being aggressive.

We generally have more attacking players on the pitch than Klopp or Sir Alex would do from the start so bringing on an additional attacker would make us imbalanced in a risky way. (Not that I'm saying we are a more attacking side than either of those managers teams, just personal wise)

There are definitely times he's been slow to change things but I don't think that's been prevalent this season and even when it has that's not really been the issue.

 

[NLunited]

I'm guessing what he means is if we desperately need a goal he should show flexibility in how we approach the game. SAF used to throw the kitchen sink, flooding the opposition box. Klopp did it too at Liverpool. Amorim seems too passive in these moments tactically.

And what should he have done? It‘s easy to criticize, but what is your suggestion?Bring on Zirkzee who is weaker in the air than Šeško?

We have seen what happens when we bring on Mainoo, it can unsettle the defense. That is the last thing we needed.

There were no obvious subs to make to impact the game, except to take off Dalot, which we did.

I can‘t take these arguments seriously, it is just moaning in my opinion.

 

[Shark]

That's not really flexibility, it's being aggressive.

We generally have more attacking players on the pitch than Klopp or Sir Alex would do from the start so bringing on an additional attacker would make us imbalanced in a risky way. (Not that I'm saying we are a more attacking side than either of those managers teams, just personal wise)

There are definitely times he's been slow to change things but I don't think that's been prevalent this season and even when it has that's not really been the issue.

Aggression/flexibility whatever you want to call it, whatever he's doing on the road when we're in desperate need of goals isn't working with the defensive substitutions. Even if you make the argument he has nobody on the bench, flood the box with pressure cause we have a giant of a CF in there who should provide a threat at crosses. What he's currently doing isn't working if plan A fails, which it has on multiple occasions on the road in particular.

 

[hellhunter]

And what should he have done? It‘s easy to criticize, but what is your suggestion?Bring on Zirkzee who is weaker in the air than Šeško?

We have seen what happens when we bring on Mainoo, it can unsettle the defense. That is the last thing we needed.

There were no obvious subs to make to impact the game, except to take off Dalot, which we did.

I can‘t take these arguments seriously, it is just moaning in my opinion.

The obvious choice would've been Mount for Cunha or Sesko. Dorgu for Dalot was a good sub

 

[Trex]

We're two point of City who are currently second. We're part of the chasing pack behind Arsenal. That's really all we could demand from this group when you consider the quality of the squad atm compared to our competitors.

Sunderland and Bournemouth have done really well for themselves to be in the mix but level on point with Tottenham and Chelsea, a point behind Liverpool and two behind City isn't a bad place to be after 10 games.

Key is to keep up the pace, probably a marginal improvement and hope one or two of this teams loose pace.

We're currently on 1.7 point per game, over 38 games that's about 65 points.

2024–2025 season

Rank	Team	Points
1	Liverpool	84
2	Arsenal	74
3	Manchester City	71
4	Chelsea	69
5	Newcastle United	66

2023–2024 season

Rank	Team	Points
1	Manchester City	91
2	Arsenal	89
3	Liverpool	82
4	Aston Villa	68
5	Tottenham	66

This is the top 5 the previous two seasons. With a marginal improvement we can attain 70 points which should be enough for a top 4 finish. Of course we could get worse but I like to believe we're a team on the come up.

We're a team who's goal is to get back in Europe and we look on course for that.

 

[OverratedOpinion]

The obvious choice would've been Mount for Cunha or Sesko. Dorgu for Dalot was a good sub

Mount for Cunha isn't really flexibility, it's slightly more defensive if anything.

Taking off our giant striker when our biggest threat is coming from corners doesn't seem like a good idea even if he's playing badly.

 

[hellhunter]

Mount for Cunha isn't really flexibility, it's slightly more defensive if anything.

Taking off our giant striker when our biggest threat is coming from corners doesn't seem like a good idea even if he's playing badly.

This is a fair argument, but how many times did we find our giant striker in the air?

 

[OverratedOpinion]

This is a fair argument, but how many times did we find our giant striker in the air?

Yeah we aren't very good at using strikers in general.

I'd still rather have him in the box when putting those corners in personally

Edit: It's interesting that utilising strikers is something Amorim needs to improve considering how fundamental Gyokeres was to what he did in Portugal.

 

[hellhunter]

Yeah we aren't very good at using strikers in general.

I'd still rather have him in the box when putting those corners in personally

Edit: It's interesting that utilising strikers is something Amorim needs to improve considering how fundamental Gyokeres was to what he did in Portugal.

Was thinking about that the other day. Maybe a bit simplistic, but Gyokeres could do what he did in Portugal because he dominated defenders, physically and athletically. Not sure anyone but Haaland can do this similarly in England

 

[FrankDrebin]

I'd say Ole was the last United manager to get our forward players look threatening.

 

[hellhunter]

I'd say Ole was the last United manager to get our forward players look threatening.

Probably the only one past Sir Alex. Might be totally making this up, but scoring goals seems to be a constant issue for us the last decade

 

[TheRedDevil'sAdvocate]

He's not going to sub either Cunha or Mbeumo off easily. Even when they're having a bad day at the office, they can create chances for themselves and make something out of nothing, and this is why he prioritized their signings. What you could argue, i guess, and since Forest weren't really interested in playing football after they went one goal up, is that he could move Cunha up front and push Bruno in the #10 position with Mainoo partnering Casemiro in the midfield. But we also (kind of) know that it's not a favourite tweak of his.

 

[pelterz]

If we finish top half this season it will simply be us reverting to where we were before this manager took over and back to the level of the previous manager who was sacked for underperforming. Though he won some trophies with that ‘terrible’ squad.

We were 13th with around a 26% win rate for the season when Eth was sacked and we’d basically played 8 of the bottom 10 teams. We’re at around 55% so far this season…

 

[Posh Red]

We were 13th with around a 26% win rate for the season when Eth was sacked and we’d basically played 8 of the bottom 10 teams. We’re at around 55% so far this season…

Which is a good comparison, as ETH had the summer to bring in new players (that’s ignoring the previous summer he had, too). We look a way better side than last season based on the start of the season.

 

[acnumber9]

We were 13th with around a 26% win rate for the season when Eth was sacked and we’d basically played 8 of the bottom 10 teams. We’re at around 55% so far this season…

That’s super and all but we’re 8th. Which is where we finished in Ten Hag’s last full season. Which was deemed by many fans to not be good enough. So what we’ve done so far is spend an additional £400m to end up where we where.

If we keep up our current points per game for this season until the end that would give us 64 points. Guess what position that would’ve achieved last season.

 

[Rusholme Ruffian]

That’s super and all but we’re 8th. Which is where we finished in Ten Hag’s last full season. Which was deemed by many fans to not be good enough. So what we’ve done so far is spend an additional £400m to end up where we where.

If we keep up our current points per game for this season until the end that would give us 64 points. Guess what position that would’ve achieved last season.

Well if we're going to do pointless extrapolations which ignore any kind of context then if we keep up the points taken in our last 6 games (the standard amount used as a form guide) then we'd end up on 77/78 points, which would have put us second last season.

 

[acnumber9]

Well if we're going to do pointless extrapolations which ignore any kind of context then if we keep up the points taken in our last 6 games (the standard amount used as a form guide) then we'd end up on 77/78 points, which would have put us second last season.

I didn’t know our current position was a pointless extrapolation. Also probably better to use the larger sample size than the shorter one. If you’d prefer we can base it on our last game and project we’ll finish on 45 points.

 

[Rusholme Ruffian]

I didn’t know our current position was a pointless extrapolation. Also probably better to use the larger sample size than the shorter one. If you’d prefer we can base it on our last game and project we’ll finish on 45 points.

Our current position is 2 points off 2nd place, having played almost everybody above us in the table already - should you choose to interpret it that way. Any extrapolation at this point in the season - particularly one that doesn't take into account our current trajectory - is of limited use. And to use it as some kind of evidence that we're no better off than we were under Ten Hag, without taking into account the horrendous mess of a squad he left us with just smacks of moaning because you have decided that the manager is shite and don't particularly want to consider the possibility that you may be incorrect.

United was - universally - viewed as being an incredibly broken, dysfunctional and toxic place at the time of Ten Hag's sacking, and had basically stagnated for 12 years. It's such a massive club that righting it was always going to be akin to turning an oil tanker around. The team was in 13th place, which was also the position that the xPoints table had us in the season before. Let's say this was happening at a different club - e.g. Liverpool as the only English club of a similar size - and all the details were the same we'd be thinking 'shit, their new guy actually looks like he's getting them back on track'. But cos it's Amorim, and you decided a long time ago that he was a failure, you're here moaning rather than attempting to see any green shoots of hope.

 

[lex talionis]

Out front line was off it v Forest, but we still produced enough scoring situations where we should have squeezed in another goal. But maybe "xG" says otherwise. A bit unfortunate for Amorim that defensive concentration lapsed during those mad three minutes.