Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach

Is it down to the system or the players that our build up play is so slow?
 
sugar_kane said:
Rúben is being given a free pass on a lot of the things Ten Hag was criticised for and I honestly believe that the sole reason is that one has hair and the other doesn’t.
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Because he’s working with the squad that ETH built, which is clearly atrocious. And he’s trying to implement a playing style, something fans also lamented under ETH. Like Klopp at Liverpool, I don’t expect him to deviate when it’s having teething problems otherwise it’ll just never happen. He has his principles, which got him the job, so he has to stick to it. Don’t give the “I can’t play Ajax football” bollocks like his predecessor, which again went down like a lead balloon with fans.

Basically he’s giving everything we wanted, unfortunately results and performances aren’t there. But there are major extenuating circumstances around that. Give him time, if it’s not looking great by this time next season then it’s time for a discussion, but this season is a free hit given all of the above. We just have to suck it up and not expect instant success with all the changes happening.

I think he might have had more success if he stuck with the 4231 counter crap, but that’s just doing what ETH did and what was part of his downfall. He’d be a fool to go down the same route, as we know first hand it’s not sustainable and that it just exposes more issues which are less of an issue in this system (ie exposed midfield and defence).
 
Toshey said:
I continue to be amazed.

So people actually want Amorim to revert to hoofball because that's the only thing our fragile little superstars are kinda okay at?

feck that. Even if we finish fecking 14th. The place needs to burn and be repaired all the way from the foundations. Otherwise we're going nowhere, just like we've been going nowhere for years!

In the past seasons we had INSANE amount of luck to get some kind of results - Mainoo producing wonder goal, Mctominay and Maguire to the rescue in last minute, Rashford purple patch, Antony somehow scoring a late goal while falling on his ass etc.

For the little time Amorim is here, we OBVIOUSLY have much better structure. It's been individual mistakes that fecked us.

And also, last night we played the whole half with 10. And we still managed to put pressure on Wolves and create situations where competent players could equalise or even win. During ETH's reign a red card means "ok, we are done".

Let. It. Burn.
Don't try to salvage a lost season, trying to please our pathetic footballers.
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This!
 
Oo0AahCantona said:
If we revert back to a 4231 Amorim is done and we are fully back in the 2 seasons of mediocrity, manager sacked, another 300m spent, ground hog day.

Someone has to take a decisive decision to implement a style of play and a system over a medium to long term. The reality is this season doesn’t matter, next season doesn’t matter. Every team who has gone on long term successive winning seasons has had a number of back to back growing pain seasons to get there.

Arsenal who are light years ahead of us in the process are still miles off winning a title.
Chelsea have spent 1.5 billion and been a laughing stock for what 3/4 seasons? And only now are begining to look like it’s coming to something.
Liverpool spent decades doing what we are doing now and was only until klopp had multiple seasons to implement his take on the club they became what they are now.
City spent their way to the top yes but it didn’t happen overnight there was a lot of trial and error.

If someone can point to a club that has been down in the dumps, changed a manager and suddenly became an instant juggernaut without any changes id like to know about it.
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I agree.
It's gonna take the next two transfer windows to steady the ship. There's no reason we can't fix the biggest problem areas quickly this January.
We could:
Buy back Fernandez at LWB for cheap.
Offer Napoli a loan deal for Osimhen or swap Rashford.
Then we need another CM and we can get the rest in the summer.
Providing we sell Rashford, it could even be sooner.
 
sugar_kane said:
Rúben is being given a free pass on a lot of the things Ten Hag was criticised for and I honestly believe that the sole reason is that one has hair and the other doesn’t.
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I'm giving Ruben a free pass this season because he's trying to implement a system and style of play with a lot of the shite Erik brought in. None of the players are Amorim's (apart from Ugarte who played under his previously and as it happens looks one of our best players).

If he does an Erik on it, says we can't play the way he wants so he's gonna play it safe and go back to 4-2-3-1 and try to shithouse or counterattack a few extra wins here and there, that's when I'll go in on him. Cos it would have all been for nothing.
 
Oscar Bonavena said:
I'm giving Ruben a free pass this season because he's trying to implement a system and style of play with a lot of the shite Erik brought in. None of the players are Amorim's (apart from Ugarte who played under his previously and as it happens looks one of our best players).

If he does an Erik on it, says we can't play the way he wants so he's gonna play it safe and go back to 4-2-3-1 and try to shithouse or counterattack a few extra wins here and there, that's when I'll go in on him. Cos it would have all been for nothing.
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and you’re certain the hair isn’t a factor?
 
Oo0AahCantona said:
If we revert back to a 4231 Amorim is done and we are fully back in the 2 seasons of mediocrity, manager sacked, another 300m spent, ground hog day.

Someone has to take a decisive decision to implement a style of play and a system over a medium to long term. The reality is this season doesn’t matter, next season doesn’t matter. Every team who has gone on long term successive winning seasons has had a number of back to back growing pain seasons to get there.

Arsenal who are light years ahead of us in the process are still miles off winning a title.
Chelsea have spent 1.5 billion and been a laughing stock for what 3/4 seasons? And only now are begining to look like it’s coming to something.
Liverpool spent decades doing what we are doing now and was only until klopp had multiple seasons to implement his take on the club they became what they are now.
City spent their way to the top yes but it didn’t happen overnight there was a lot of trial and error.

If someone can point to a club that has been down in the dumps, changed a manager and suddenly became an instant juggernaut without any changes id like to know about it.
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I'm glad more people on here get it than those panicking. It's like hiring a top class manager at a store doing crap and when it doesn't instantly change within the month criticising him. Long-term crap needs time to undo.
 
It's hard to highly rate a manager who's so wedded to one system. He could turn out to be a great manager but right now, he's playing everyone out of position except Maguire and Hojlund.

This situation has been created by INEOS, so it's more a criticism of them than Amorim. Even so, it's hard watching him fumble around trying different square pegs in the round holes of his beloved formation.
 
The media is already starting to turn on him. Do feel sorry for him. We are the place where careers come to die
 
You kind of have to admire the balls of Amorim to move into a house that was visibly on fire
 
SirMattBugsby said:
It's hard to highly rate a manager who's so wedded to one system. He could turn out to be a great manager but right now, he's playing everyone out of position except Maguire and Hojlund.

This situation has been created by INEOS, so it's more a criticism of them than Amorim. Even so, it's hard watching him fumble around trying different square pegs in the round holes of his beloved formation.
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Dalot has been having to play on the left ages before Amorim arrived. The club refusing to buy a competent LB/LWB has been an issue on the CAF for years. Rashford has form has been terrible for years and so has his effort.

How many of our conceded goals in the last two months have been unforced errors or from set pieces. How is that based on formation?
 
jderbyshire said:
I think it means getting the team to adjust to the new tactics, even if that means sacrificing some points - which is all that's happening.

The overreaction is crazy. Trust the process.
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Fair enough of course - I just don't think its an overreaction to say we are shite and should be doing better whilst still accepting he needs a lot of time to get it right.
 
OK so the general census is the squad is terrible even though I do not buy that it is lower table bad but isn't a sign of a good manager, one where they are able to get players to perform above their means?

We saw it when emery took over at Aston villa, we see it with iraola at Bournemouth, same with even pep who made players look really good and then once sold they were never able to replicate the same performances.

I can't think of a single player that has really shined under amorim, you could argue diallo but that is probably more down to actually being played instead of completely frozen out like he was under the previous awful manager?
 
pocco said:
Because he’s working with the squad that ETH built, which is clearly atrocious. And he’s trying to implement a playing style, something fans also lamented under ETH. Like Klopp at Liverpool, I don’t expect him to deviate when it’s having teething problems otherwise it’ll just never happen. He has his principles, which got him the job, so he has to stick to it. Don’t give the “I can’t play Ajax football” bollocks like his predecessor, which again went down like a lead balloon with fans.

Basically he’s giving everything we wanted, unfortunately results and performances aren’t there. But there are major extenuating circumstances around that. Give him time, if it’s not looking great by this time next season then it’s time for a discussion, but this season is a free hit given all of the above. We just have to suck it up and not expect instant success with all the changes happening.

I think he might have had more success if he stuck with the 4231 counter crap, but that’s just doing what ETH did and what was part of his downfall. He’d be a fool to go down the same route, as we know first hand it’s not sustainable and that it just exposes more issues which are less of an issue in this system (ie exposed midfield and defence).
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Well said. Couldn't agree more!

It's not Amorim's fault. This mess is on the club and ten Hag. We should've followed through with the plan of firing ten Hag in the summer then Amorim would've had a pre season and I have no doubt we would be in a much better position right now. But we didn't so like Amorim said we'll have to suffer for a bit.
 
LordSpud said:
The media is already starting to turn on him. Do feel sorry for him. We are the place where careers come to die
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The media are idiots, I was watching something the other day with some of the so called big names in media, and one said with a straight face that ETH did a decent job in getting rid of the deadwood at United, but then had to be reminded that all he did was replace them with even worse and more expensive deadwood.

That's what you're up against with them, all that ETH left Amorim with will be forgotten, and every other story will be about a negative one about Amorim and United.
 
SirMattBugsby said:
It's hard to highly rate a manager who's so wedded to one system. He could turn out to be a great manager but right now, he's playing everyone out of position except Maguire and Hojlund.

This situation has been created by INEOS, so it's more a criticism of them than Amorim. Even so, it's hard watching him fumble around trying different square pegs in the round holes of his beloved formation.
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Who are these square pegs in round holes?

Let's take yesterday's starting XI:

- Onana was playing as GK - round in round.
- Maguire, Yoro and Martinez were playing as CB's - round in round
- Ugarte and Mainoo were CM's - round in round
- Amad and Bruno were #10's who could drift wide - round in round.
- Hojlund was playing as a striker - round in round.

The only two players we can say are not suited as WB's are Maz and Dalot. However, they are both FB's, Maz being one of the bright spots this season who can adjust to almost any position & Dalot has played as LB/LWB plenty of times both here and previously at Milan.

I think people want to blame the formation as it is the lowest hanging fruit. In reality we are failing at getting the basic principles of football right.

- Our GK can't catch a ball or push opposition players aside as he has no command of his box.
- Our CB's are not able to move the ball fast enough out of the defense. Martinez cannot defend channels and "Arry likes to stand on the ball.
- Our midfielders and attacking midfielders cannot pass the ball. Our Captain likes to play low percentage balls and is horrible in tight spaces. He loses his calm and acts like a petulant child when he doesn't get his way, which is often.
- Our striker cannot hold the ball and spends most of the time wrestling with defenders and losing out. He has a horrible touch as well.

Now maybe we can go back to playing low block counter attacking football and call it transition football to make it sound cooler than it is, but that won't take us anywhere. I am okay that Amorium is ready to live or die with his preferred style of playing. I rather that then finish 7th and be in the same shit again next season.
 
Paul778 said:
Dalot has been having to play on the left ages before Amorim arrived. The club refusing to buy a competent LB/LWB has been an issue on the CAF for years. Rashford has form has been terrible for years and so has his effort.

How many of our conceded goals in the last two months have been unforced errors or from set pieces. How is that based on formation?
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Yeah, he can't do anything about the LB problem. What he can do, though, is play Mainoo, Mazraoui, Bruno, Garnacho and to some extent even Amad and Lisandro in their right positions.

I think he's overcomplicating it. All he had to do was learn from ten Hag's mistakes. Make Amad a starter and shift Bruno to midfield to provide more legs and cover for the holding 6 (Casemiro/Ugarte). Instead, he's made an already messy situation messier.
 
Insanity said:
Who are these square pegs in round holes?

Let's take yesterday's starting XI:

- Onana was playing as GK - round in round.
- Maguire, Yoro and Martinez were playing as CB's - round in round
- Ugarte and Mainoo were CM's - round in round
- Amad and Bruno were #10's who could drift wide - round in round.
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Martinez isn't great at defending wide channels. Mainoo is a dynamic 8 whose skill set is under-utilized and defensive weakness exposed as one of the 2 central mids (if anything, he'd probably be more suited to the left-sided 10).

Amad is a right winger who should stay right. Bruno is a central attacking midfielder who should stay central. The wide 10s, imo, doesn't afford Amad enough space and forces Bruno wide.

Not to mention, the formation has forced Garnacho out. I know he's frustrating, but he's one of our more talented/promising attackers. Even if he does play, the wide 10 position forces him to be more technical, which isn't his game.

I agree that there are bigger problems than the system, but the system isn't helping matters.
 
Cathy Ferguson said:
Our players might be poor but are certainly better than what Iraola had when he started.

Are you happy with what Amorim has done so far? Any successful tactical changes you want to highlight?

My take is that the board must now back Amorim in the next 3 windows so that he can implement his 3421. The decision has been made. Way way too early to say if he will succeed. ETH was also successful in a minor league and so far Amorim hasn’t done anything special in my opinion.
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Whether they all are or not is questionable.

I'm happy with the shape and the level of control over possession, the pressing is good and defending overall from open play has been much better. Set piece defending has been unforgivable, I'm not a big fan of zonal defending on setpieces, mistakes happen far too often, because of individuals not taking responsibility for their area and doing their jobs properly. It should be mixed or man for man marking.

In attack it's the same shite, no composure, poor decision making, poor passing, poor movement, poor control etc. I'm beginning to think peak SAF could be the manager and it wouldn't change, most of these players are just monumentally thick and aren't capable of any better in the attacking third.
 
Lee565 said:
We saw it when emery took over at Aston villa, we see it with iraola at Bournemouth, same with even pep who made players look really good and then once sold they were never able to replicate the same performances.
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Iraola started with 6 losses and 3 draws.
 
SirMattBugsby said:
It's hard to highly rate a manager who's so wedded to one system. He could turn out to be a great manager but right now, he's playing everyone out of position except Maguire and Hojlund.

This situation has been created by INEOS, so it's more a criticism of them than Amorim. Even so, it's hard watching him fumble around trying different square pegs in the round holes of his beloved formation.
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We hired a manager with a modern approach to the game we shouldn’t be forcing him to change his ways to suit this lot of overpaid underperforming shower of shite we need to be backing him and his system

Short term we’re pretty fecked but we need to get some deals done in January and we might start see it coming together. Long term I’m certain the club will be in a better position this is our ‘open heart’ surgery that’s been needed he’s weeding out the players who don’t want to be in for the fight it’s going to take time
 
Comparing ourselves to Bournemouth is utterly pathetic. Iraola had a whole pre-season to work on his ideas, he didn't walk into a job midway through a season. He had six to eight weeks in pre-season. It's also worth noting that in Bournemouth's first ten games they played Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, Brighton and West Ham (who had won a European trophy just months before). How many of those games do you even expect Bournemouth to win anyway? They're certainly not Ipswich (newly promoted), Wolves (in the bottom three), Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest. I'm not sure the two situations are really that comparable.
 
Nestor Mahkno said:
My father was very panicked and critical after the game today, and yes although it is a bad result, I saw a structure and way of playing that remained intact despite first going a man and then a goal down. Amorim knows what he has at his disposal and warned us early on what was coming, this is the storm. It takes time, patience and skill to essentially put the squad through a partially unfolding preseason in the middle of the Xmas period, particularly when the club in question is one of the biggest in the world.

Every defeat is a calamity, I know, but it was a calamity of a different sort when we beat Wolves on the opening day of the PL season a couple ago when they hammered us all game, that was embarrassing! Now, Ruben is getting at least segments of his philosophy into the players heads, but yeah it's taking time, when there is none. Added to that he's taken the bold stance early on that the biggest earner is the biggest problem, culture change takes time and you need everyone pulling together giving their all. Bruno seems off, as did Kobi today and Garnacho is slowly coming back into the fold, but at least we can see progress in every game. I actually thought we played better when he made those changes, even if Erikson can't press.

Selling Rash (hopefully) will free up funds, and you never know, look at Fulham and Everton today, football is a funny old game as they say, and we might surprise a few people over the next few games. The fanbase need to give everything to try and make this work, I don't want to just hang on and hope a counter attack nicks a draw or a win, I want us to take the initiative even if we risk losing like we did today. It will come but this was always going to be the toughest part, it's now Ruben needs us the most!
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I was actually pleasantly surprised that we did not fall apart once the substitutions were made, on the contrary, we got a hold of the match to a degree. If this was Ten Hag, we would've been on the back foot most of the time.
 
Castia said:
We hired a manager with a modern approach to the game we shouldn’t be forcing him to change his ways to suit this lot of overpaid underperforming shower of shite we need to be backing him and his system

Short term we’re pretty fecked but we need to get some deals done in January and we might start see it coming together. Long term I’m certain the club will be in a better position this is our ‘open heart’ surgery that’s been needed he’s weeding out the players who don’t want to be in for the fight it’s going to take time
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Yeah, I can agree with that. Would rather back the manager.

The timing of it is so poor. It's like deciding to perform that long-awaited open heart surgery when the body is in sepsis. Amorim will likely have to deal with largely this group for the rest of the season. Just hope he atleast gets a decent LWB in January.
 
Delano said:
Using Iroala as an example actually proves the point that you should stick with your formation and system.
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It does in a way.

The people mentioning Iraola would be sweating lava with 1 win in 10 and obviously didn't pay attention to Bournemouth last year.
 
The guy does not have the players, other managers the same. It's going to be a long time before he gets it right. One thing this group over the last few years and more they can make you dislike them very quick...
 
Insanity said:
Now maybe we can go back to playing low block counter attacking football and call it transition football to make it sound cooler than it is, but that won't take us anywhere. I am okay that Amorium is ready to live or die with his preferred style of playing. I rather that then finish 7th and be in the same shit again next season.
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Only problem is that finishing 13th or 14th this season doesn't offer any guarantees that it won't be the same shit next season also.
Getting better gradually is more realistic and sustainable than being top 5 after you were bottom 6.
 
I don't think there's any point comparing us to other clubs anyway. We're a different beast. As shit as we are, half the battle is the fact that every team is up for a game against United, and we don't have players that can cope with that.
 
Amorim needs a goalscorer in January more than WB.
Someone with smart movement in the box would do wonders for us.
Hojlund does not have smart movement yet and Zirkzee can't be bothered to move, so...
 
Amorim inherit a bad squad assembled by a subpar manager and board! Ineos are the guys that ruined our season! Instead of appointing amorim in summer they wasted a preseason and a summee transfer window! Not to mention sacking their newly appointed dof
 
Tbh this is exactly how we thought it was gonna go. We know all about our current squad and what it offers. There are a few decent players, a load of squad level players, some who's legs have gone and some who aren't good enough period. Nobody was going to come in and make this squad play above its level as the work rate, and talent level won't allow it.

What was going to happen is Amorim was going to get an extended period of finding out who is up to the level required, who can adapt to his system, and who simply isn't up to it and needs to be shipped out. We also were going to have to go through a period of bad results that showed the overall level of the squad with regards to how we intend to play under Ruben, and ultimately, the recruitment needed to get us to the satisfactory level we need to be at.

It's from that satisfactory point that the team begins to gel as a TEAM, not as the squad of individuals that we currently have. We can't expect anything immediately, and Ruben himself even told us, we are going to go through difficult moments on this journey before we start to consistently see proper results. It is not a quick fix, but we've got the man in charge that can fix it. We need patience and the right recruitment/sales to ensure we make the most of this opportunity.

This season is basically an extended pre season now, given that we waited until a month ago to make the managerial change we knew that we needed. Only after the summer transfer window can we properly start to judge the actual process of the team.
 
It's kind of wild how each post-Fergie manager has left behind a mess of a squad. ETH done great to win a cup and get 3rd after inheriting Ole's shambles. Now Amorim has taken on a really poor squad left behind by ETH.

Amorim has a huge task on his hands. I honestly would bin off 90% of this squad.
 
Robbie Boy said:
It's kind of wild how each post-Fergie manager has left behind a mess of a squad. ETH done great to win a cup and get 3rd after inheriting Ole's shambles. Now Amorim has taken on a really poor squad left behind by ETH.

Amorim has a huge task on his hands. I honestly would bin off 90% of this squad.
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Yep. People say “oh he has to get the best out of these players we spent 600m on” but the reality is there aren’t any tactics in football that are ideal for a squad that is full of players that either aren’t athletic enough or technical enough.

Sure we could revert back to 4231 transition ball and let Bruno roam etc but ultimately that’s just going to be putting a temporary solution while prolonging the inevitable. Right now these players are being exposed for what they are, because you can see the system putting them in good positions and then the individual utterly fails, instead of some of those preclvious times with ETH where the excuse could be made that players weren’t set up to succeed.
 
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