Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach

Valencia Shin Crosses said:
You didn't give me an XI though, you left two options open :lol: Sort of my point, there are multiple positions where it's a coin flip whoever you choose.

Also not even having a wingback on the left is certainly a choice, poor Martinez will get rinsed over there.
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I put the two options because it's really quite interchangeable but I would go with de Ligt and Hojlund as my personal preference. I'd also have Bruno playing more conservatively (if that's possible on the left) and Ugarte covering that side as help. To be fair it doesn't matter who's in front of Martinez, there's always been a chasm of space there in several games now and he will have to deal with it. At least with Bruno, who hopefully won't be marauding forward leaving gaps and with Ugarte, the space will be reduced.

I think my team is closer to a 'strongest' first 11 than, what it feels like to me, a somewhat overly arbitrary rotation Amorim is doing (even if I sympathise with his approach).

Feck it, I like my team. Amad creating chances and spaces for others to also have a go at or Bruno delivering a ball to Casemiro's head after a late run in the box. Beauty and beast.
 
That was utter dogshit today. I’m still not sold on the formation. We’ve restricted our attacking players from 4 to 3 whilst not having better options as wing backs. Even if the formation was meant to make us better defensively, it hasn’t achieved that.
 
RDCR07 said:
We weren’t really the better team. We didn’t dominate possession. We barely got 2-3 passes together before losing possession. Iraola did a masterful job of staying compact while pressing high up. I expected a much better performance at home from us.
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We had 60% possession and 23 shots at goal. We had by far the better xG.

And I know people get triggered by stats so think back to the chances we missed. Bruno alone had two gilt edged chances to score. Dalot and Maz both had great chances too. Garnacho missed a 1v1. Bournemouth seemed to score every time they got in our box. I can’t think of any decent chance they missed.

I do think Bournemouth played well. And I wouldn’t argue with anyone who said they deserved to win. They were clinical and we weren’t. That’s an important part of winning football matches.

The point I was making is that they didn’t “beat us easily”, despite the scoreline, and I stand by that.
 
I like Amorim, but I suspect he underestimated just how bad the squad is, and the relative strength of the 'lesser' PL teams, especially coming from a three team league which is what he has essentially been used to in Portugal.
 
TheGame said:
That was utter dogshit today. I’m still not sold on the formation. We’ve restricted our attacking players from 4 to 3 whilst not having better options as wing backs. Even if the formation was meant to make us better defensively, it hasn’t achieved that.
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And yet our chance creation and Xg have gone up since this formation shift. Possession stats have too. I know things should be a lot better but I can't really understand the formation criticism. It's better to get the players used to it now rather than go back to the old formation that really wasn't doing much good under our previous managers anyway.
 
AneRu said:
Surely can't be as bad as Malacia and Dalot have been. The major difference is that he is a player with a huge upside whereas the other two have no upside at all and have questionable mentality.

After watching ETH on Amad I can't believe people still think just because a coach doesn't pick a player then that means he ain't good enough.
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People will really go to any lengths to convince themselves that x player who is being overlooked will fix the team.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not rate Dalot or Malacia one bit, but Amass is 17, and has never played senior football.
 
Time to settle on a first XI with hopefully some help in January.
 
Champ said:
It really hasn't.
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I think you’re confusing mistakes with formation/system. We are conceding cause of individual errors. Nothing Amorim or even Ferguson could do anything about that. Players aren’t good enough technically or mentally.
 
Posts are so fecking disingenous and dishonest here it boggles my mind.

"They are 6th, we are 13th"

Trying to make the gap bigger than it was. As if it was some David vs Goliath battle.

Before the game Bournemouth had 25 points from 16 games with a +3 GD and we had 22 points with a +2 GD. We could have leapfrogged them if we won by 2 goals....Not that it matters. League is gone for us and its performances that count. This was bad and hopefully next one will be better.

Try to win arguments all you want but don't try to be a sly mother f-er.
 
Best to take stock, he's been in charge of 4 weeks of games, we were sat in 13th when he arrived.

He's improved some of the match stats like possession and transformed the touches in the oppositions box but results are similar. We still have a very odd squad of young and too old players and struggle with the physical aspects as seen so clearly against Forest at home and Spurs away and so often in the past two years like Bournemouth last year, we're a soft touch. Today might've been 3-3 or another 3-2 home defeat, we did create a lot of cutback style shots for Amad and Bruno.

He warned of pain because this squad is so much on it's arse. Probably has one good effort a month in it.

I feel some are discounting clubs, Forest are in 4th, Bournemouth 5th. Forest have so many players at top fitness and size, we can't handle that type of team and need to transform our fitness and swap out others.
 
Not sure this is the right thread but is there any world in which De Ligt, Maguire and Yoro (or perhaps Evans) start? Be nice to have a taller backline to deal with set pieces (not suggesting Martinez is entirely at fault but still).
 
redshaw said:
Best to take stock, he's been in charge of 4 weeks of games, we were sat in 13th when he arrived.

He's improved some of the match stats like possession and transformed the touches in the oppositions box but results are similar. We still have a very odd squad of young and too old players and struggle with the physical aspects as seen so clearly against Forest at home and Spurs away and so often in the past two years like Bournemouth last year, we're a soft touch. Today might've been 3-3 or another 3-2 home defeat, we did create a lot of cutback style shots for Amad and Bruno.

He warned of pain because this squad is so much on it's arse. Probably has one good effort a month in it.

I feel some are discounting clubs, Forest are in 4th, Bournemouth 5th. Forest have so many players at top fitness and size, we can't handle that type of team and need to transform our fitness and swap out others.
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Good point about the age profile. It’s such a mess. Made even worse by Rashford being (correctly IMO) sidelined, as he is one of only two peak age attacking players.
 
Feels like opposite of Ole and ETH (at times) when we were racking up "undeserved" points with low xG, but the team generally didn't have a clue as to what they were meant to be doing on the pitch and scraping by results with Moments FC. Both eventually got exposed after years have gone by.

While individual errors have let us down more often than not, it's a problem that, while it'll take time to fix, can eventually be rectified with better personnel.
 
No excuses for him, bad game, he coached a bad game. I've seen enough to know he has the right ideas and I believe in him but this was bad from him and the players. It's a good thing as it was needed to completely let everyone know how huge a change is needed in the playing squad. Back him in getting some of these players out and bringing players to fit into the new system. I won't judge him fully till he gets in better suited players and gets rid of some of the current players.
 
It seems we tend to lose in moments rather than being dominated, at the very least we can say Amorim's tactics allow the team to control the ball a lot better but we tend to lose in moments, set peices or lose in possession or rash mistakes like Maz stupid tackle.

Hopefully Amorim works this issues out somehow.
 
From now on he must stop rotating and stop playing Malacia. Time to play Yoro more and Mazraoui at RWB.
 
jem said:
Not sure this is the right thread but is there any world in which De Ligt, Maguire and Yoro (or perhaps Evans) start? Be nice to have a taller backline to deal with set pieces (not suggesting Martinez is entirely at fault but still).
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It's tough because our left side is already desitute, so benching Martinez makes it even more useless as a way to progress the ball
 
DevilRed said:
I know its hindsight, but we were told this summer that the club would recruit under a unified tactic/style of play moving forwards.

I can't for the life of me imagine that it would be a 3 at the back formation that requires wingbacks, after what we just splurged this summer.

Bring back Ruud already.
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You can have him back.
 
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Hoof the ball said:
It's demonstrably not when the statistics bear the evidence that we concede fewer touches in our own box than under ETH; we concede less xG per game than under ETH. What do you have to say to conceding less than 1 xG in each of our last 7 games? Did we achieve that under ETH's two-CB's? Yet we've done it seven games in a row in a completely new system that has had almost no training time at all to implement.
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If we are playing three centre backs, I would expect to be collecting clean sheets. Not to look worse from set pieces and corners, and hiding behind improved xG.

I'm not slating Amorin, but we still look shocking defensively despite extra defensive personnel.
 
Werewolf said:
Or we could, I don't know, have some patience and wait for him to settle down and have the time to work with the team before throwing maybes and speculating about his level ?
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Isn't that what everyone is doing anyway by saying give him time, that he's the right man etc? We said that about every manager since SAF retired, but this start has been as bad as any manager we've had, and how you start is vital in management.

I think we just have to be realistic, he's not an experienced manager, this is only his second job having only worked in Portugal, he's about as untried and untested as it gets, of course this is a major risk the club is taking. That's all I'm saying, this has similarities with ETH, another coach only proven in one league.
 
Winrar said:
Feels like opposite of Ole and ETH (at times) when we were racking up "undeserved" points with low xG, but the team generally didn't have a clue as to what they were meant to be doing on the pitch and scraping by results with Moments FC. Both eventually got exposed after years have gone by.

While individual errors have let us down more often than not, it's a problem that, while it'll take time to fix, can eventually be rectified with better personnel.
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Yeah, it’s the opposite of “Moments FC”. Amorim has been cursed with zero moments of individual brilliance (unless you count Amad’s pressing) but at least 2 or 3 moments of horrendous defensive errors in every match we play.
 
maximus419 said:
Isn't that what everyone is doing anyway by saying give him time, that he's the right man etc? We said that about every manager since SAF retired, but this start has been as bad as any manager we've had, and how you start is vital in management.

I think we just have to be realistic, he's not an experienced manager, this is only his second job having only worked in Portugal, he's about as untried and untested as it gets, of course this is a major risk the club is taking. That's all I'm saying, this has similarities with ETH, another coach only proven in one league.
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It's been as bad, sure, but the context is very different.
 
Irwin99 said:
And yet our chance creation and Xg have gone up since this formation shift. Possession stats have too. I know things should be a lot better but I can't really understand the formation criticism. It's better to get the players used to it now rather than go back to the old formation that really wasn't doing much good under our previous managers anyway.
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Not sure on the chances and xG. That's one of my gripes so far.

6 league games for 8.03 xG, an average of 1.34. for non-penalty xG it's 1.21 a game.

In Ten Hag's 9 this season it was 14.78, averaging 1.64. Non penalty xG = 1.55 per game.

It's the defensive side of xG where we've tightened up quite significantly, and as you say posession has increased a lot. In general we're in more control and obviously we were very wide open under ETH. Fairly blunt attack under Amorim though up to now.

Edit: The fact that it's small sample sizes should be emphasised.
 
TheGame said:
That was utter dogshit today. I’m still not sold on the formation. We’ve restricted our attacking players from 4 to 3 whilst not having better options as wing backs. Even if the formation was meant to make us better defensively, it hasn’t achieved that.
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Yup.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Good point about the age profile. It’s such a mess. Made even worse by Rashford being (correctly IMO) sidelined, as he is one of only two peak age attacking players.
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Rashford despite his age is another example of past his prime player though. He's physically shot and has nothing now the electric pace has gone.
 
Chipper said:
Not sure on the chances and xG. That's one of my gripes so far.

6 league games for 8.03 xG, an average of 1.34. for non-penalty xG it's 1.21 a game.

In Ten Hag's 9 this season it was 14.78, averaging 1.64. Non penalty xG = 1.55 per game.

It's the defensive side of xG where we've tightened up quite significantly, and as you say posession has increased a lot. In general we're in more control and obviously we were very wide open under ETH. Fairly blunt attack under Amorim though up to now.
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I don't think so..
Even today , we should have scored atleast 3 ..
Bruno, Amad would have a goal any other game week..
Garnacho missed 2 sitters ..
As did Hojlund
 
From the naked eye we are controlling games more, have more touches in the final third and are having more shots. Not sure if the stats back that up but that's my impression.

I hope all that isn't just a new manager bounce. I really like Amorim but we really need to start picking up more points.
 
TheGame said:
That was utter dogshit today. I’m still not sold on the formation. We’ve restricted our attacking players from 4 to 3 whilst not having better options as wing backs. Even if the formation was meant to make us better defensively, it hasn’t achieved that.
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We're creating chances and getting ourselves into positions where we should create more chances. Left wingback is a clear priority. Amad should be playing RWB for home games.
 
The Serpent said:
Paying the price of not sacking ten hag in the summer and buying more crap to build on top of the crap he brough to the club suit him in the summer

Out of LVG,Moyes Mourinho, Ole, Ten hag easily assembled the most expensive overpriced and most useless team I've ever seen in my life as a United supporter
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MDL, Mazraoui, Yoro, Ugarte and Zirkzee are crap?
 
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