Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach

How do we get out of this slump we are in and start winning again? Obviously sacking Ruben isnt the answer at the moment (its far too soon for that) and we dont really have the money to spend big in January so unless we somehow land some good loan signings im really not sure how we turn this around given the state of our squad at the moment.
 
If results are still the same at the end of January , what then?
Do we keep saying this? How long til he's had enough time?

I'm definitely not advocating pressuring Amorim, but he has zero excuses for the poor performances so far. The team has fallen even lower than under EtH, playing an alien system.
He needs to be held accountable, he doesn't need to be pressured though, the two don't always go hand in hand.
Managers should get time to leave their mark. If half way through next season we are doing poorly, then yes questions should be asked. A month in, when we've had a fixture overload, in a period where most new managers to the league struggle in (especially those who took over just before the busy winter period), before he's had any transfer windows... Yeah it's fair to expect some struggles.

Check out how Klopp did with Liverpool in December and January after he took over (a month earlier than Amorim). It's not that surprising. Not that Amorim will turn into Klopp, but it's inevitable that new managers will struggle in this period.
 
I see improvements on a lot of things we do, however, I can't wrap my head around the set pieces. How are we so bad, and yet, nothing changes? You can't win many games if you concede from almost every third set piece you give away.
 
A lot of what happens on the pitch is pre-planned: triggers for runs or when the press happens, patterns of movement and passing, and so on and so forth. Players don't actually make a ton of creative decisions on those on the fly all the time; most of what happens are variants of patterns practiced in training until they became automatic - at which point the in-game creativity is more about being able to recognize what pattern fits a situation and improvising around it as required.

If that sounds like coaches are drilling things into players through a lot of repetition, then you got it exactly right. And that's exactly what you can't do during the season if you have midweek games. Teams generally have only one on-field training session per day during the regular season (sometimes two during pre-season, but not even always), and the day after the game is for recovery. I think the game before the day is match-specific prep (learning to anticipate things that are specific to the upcoming opponent, and specific routines that will work will against them), plus there are rest days - meaning that you often have only one day between matches to work on the routines.

That's really very little and means that drilling in routines during the season is very slow at top clubs. (It's better at lower levels, since they don't have European football and will often be eliminated from domestic cups earlier.) That's why pre-season is so massively important for a new coach. As it happens, I actually saw a reference on the forum today to a BBC article that discusses this:

Link: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/cgm9evp4177o

For my purposes, the beginning is really the key part, when Amorim mentions (well, implies) that he has had only four sessions where they could really work on drilling in his system.

(To get back to my point from a few posts ago, the subsequent bit is also interesting, cause you can see that Amorim himself also thinks a summer transition would have been preferable; but it was apparently now or never for United, so he decided to go with it. Which in turn means that United management and Amorim are both very aware of the limitations of his current situation and how difficult that makes the transition to Amorim's style - and will likely back him through that even if results continue to be poor, as long as relegation isn't a real risk.)

But to go back to the topic of this post: so this shortness of training moments is a real thing. It's not a whiny coach looking for excuses, it's really the difficult reality of bringing significant change to a club mid-season.
It's extremely hard to believe he only has 4 training sessions since he was hired.

But he has another 5 months to improve the squad. I don't think there should be excuse that the players won't understand the tactic, or no improvement on some players.
 
I've seen Pep with a title winning squad containing the likes of peak Aguero and KDB scrape 4th on goal difference.

He got his players and the rest is history. We may never reach that level of success with Amorim but make no mistake, a manager who has an identity and style of play will always require players with specific profiles.

Back the manager, whether the storm and pray that we get recruitment right.
I mean, you might as well point to their current season instead of one that didn’t happen.
 
One thing I would want Amorim to start doing is play some academy kids. Like is Amass that bad , why not train him for lwb position. Maybe give Collyer the minutes you are giving Case or Eriksen. Promote that 16 year old CB and give him mins from bench than giving Lindelof any minutes.

In the Jan window he is not going to get many new players, would be lucky if we even sign one. So just use the academy graduates
 
Dysfunctional or not, we are better than most of the team we are losing at the moment. Im genuinely terrified for the club now. I don't think anyone got any clue how to stop this slide yet. Hopefully, he will find his feet quick. This is very very grave.
 
It's extremely hard to believe he only has 4 training sessions since he was hired.

But he has another 5 months to improve the squad. I don't think there should be excuse that the players won't understand the tactic, or no improvement on some players.
As I said, I suppose he means sessions where they are not recovering from the past match or prepping for the next, but have time to work on overall patterns of play. Four also seems few to me, but I don't know the details of the schedule and training rhythm, and it anyway couldn't have been more than 10 or so: he's only been at United six or seven weeks, and with a mid-week game every(?) week, there are just very few days left when you're not doing match-related training work.

Someone else can do a proper count, but Amorim anyway might not have meant 'four' literally; it could be just an approximation he used to indicate that it's not been much. And that's true regardless of whether it's been four or six or eight such sessions.
 
I hope they will get rid of rashford, bruno, lindeloff, shaw, dalot, casemiro and few more useless aholes before they get rid of amorim. I'll consider his reign as a success.
 
As I said, I suppose he means sessions where they are not recovering from the past match or prepping for the next, but have time to work on overall patterns of play. Four also seems few to me, but I don't know the details of the schedule and training rhythm, and it anyway couldn't have been more than 10 or so: he's only been at United six or seven weeks, and with a mid-week game every(?) week, there are just very few days left when you're not doing match-related training work.

Someone else can do a proper count, but Amorim anyway might not have meant 'four' literally; it could be just an approximation he used to indicate that it's not been much. And that's true regardless of whether it's been four or six or eight such sessions.
Yes, I agreed that it was somehow misspoken, and it doesn't really matter.

Also I just want to clarify that I'm expecting by the end of 5 months that players should be comfortable with his tactic and role and we see some improvements. With the players we have, we shouldn't be near relegation fight.
 
One thing I would want Amorim to start doing is play some academy kids. Like is Amass that bad , why not train him for lwb position. Maybe give Collyer the minutes you are giving Case or Eriksen. Promote that 16 year old CB and give him mins from bench than giving Lindelof any minutes.

In the Jan window he is not going to get many new players, would be lucky if we even sign one. So just use the academy graduates
I don't see how playing worse players helps really. The academy kids will be the worst starting players in the EPL. Do that and we will end up in a relegation fight.

He has to win some games to get the players behind him, else he won't get the time he needs.
 
I get the impression there’s a number of people on here who are so keen to criticise the bloke they’re using a hypothetical future that hasn’t happened yet to have a go at him. How’s about we hold off on discussing a terrible run of results that goes on until the end of January until after all those bad results actually happen?!?

Oh and “zero excuses”? Come on now.

At the end of the day we’re judging Amorim on such a small sample size of games that it’s impossible to form any definitive conclusions, good or bad. Too many variables in terms of difficulty of fixtures, opposition performance, individual errors, (lack of) time on the training pitch etc etc etc It’s frustrating to have to cool our jets and just let a few more games happen before deciding if he’s good or shit. Especially when everyone wants to vent after a couple of disappointing results. But that’s what needs to happen. And if everyone would just chill the feck out meanwhile then the caf would be a much nicer place to hang out on.
Yeah how anyone can say that he has zero excuses when he’s literally had no preseason and a packed and difficult fixture list is beyond me.
 
He's finally sorting out the Rashford situation, gets really big credit from me for that. Wouldn't surprise me, if some players drop in form, because they know, if Rashford isn't safe anymore, nobody is.
 
All those can be implemented during regular season. When approaching actual games, they're talking about tactics. They're practicing tactics. They're implementing tactics. Players can get familiar in actual games, and in trainings they must also have. In terms to get familiar with players, what is so special about pre-season that interacting in regular season can't do?

Conditioning part is hard for me to comment, as I don't know much. But does it mean players need to have a certain period of only non-competitive games for this "conditioning" to be successful? As pre-season also involving games. Also we've been rotating heavily that sometimes to detriment of the team.

They can be implemented during the season but it will be very slow because scheduling means that there isn't actually many full training sessions, most of the sessions are focused on passive recovery and installing gameplans that are within a tactical framework that was set during summer. And no in normal circumstances they are not really practicing new tactics or implementing new tactics during the season, a manager can decide to still do it but it will lead to significant inconsistency which is what we are seeing and what Liverpool or even Arsenal saw under Klopp and Arteta.

To give you a clear example, during preseason you have several hours per day that you can allocate to tactical drills with the entire squad during the season you maybe have 90 minutes per week or every two weeks and it is almost guaranteed that it won't be with the full squad. And those in season sessions do not include much actual field implementations unless you want to destroy your players conditioning.

There are two aspects of conditioning that makes it nearly impossible to switch quickly, the first one is the season planning, players are trained to physically peak at a certain period during the season and this process starts during preseason, the other thing is that the quicker you want the change to happen the more intense the training has to be which is a big source of fatigue, in the short term it leads to worse performances and injuries especially when you have to play competitive games twice a week.

Basically there is no shortcut on these things, you need time for both of these things and time isn't something that you have during the season, unless you really don't care about results.
 
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Well thanks for the insults.. Sounds about right coming from someone who refuse facts to just throw insults for their lack of understanding..
Go check your 'facts' and come back. Lack of understanding indeed.
 
Go check your 'facts' and come back. Lack of understanding indeed.
Not really. We are the worst team in the league attackingwise when the score is equal. Then we have to start attack since we are losing the games. We are still at like 10th place in xG no matter how you put it. You think a 5-2-3 is what will take us forward?
 
Not really. We are the worst team in the league attackingwise when the score is equal. Then we have to start attack since we are losing the games. We are still at like 10th place in xG no matter how you put it. You think a 5-2-3 is what will take us forward?
No offence, but that sounds made up as well. I get that not all is rosy, far from it, and the formation change surely shook up things in addition. Do you think we look worse in the attacking department than we did in ETHs last games?
 
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Why does he always get asked in his pre match conferences ‘what do you want from the fans’ do the media not watch the games? The fans give everything, every single game even despite us losing. And Amorim acknowledges this.
 
If real change doesn't come with some pain, it isnt working....there is no where to hide currently and we'll find out how serious the club really is from top down. 60% of the players will never be good enough starters and their wages are too large for them to be benched, they need to go....
 
Amorim has had the worst start as a United manager for almost 100 years. Not since 1932 has a United manager lost 5 of his first 10 games.

My guess is that Amorim will be gone from the club by this summer at the latest.
That would be beyond idiotic. Not gonna happen. No matter the results.
 
Not really. We are the worst team in the league attackingwise when the score is equal. Then we have to start attack since we are losing the games. We are still at like 10th place in xG no matter how you put it. You think a 5-2-3 is what will take us forward?

So if you ignore the parts of the game when we’re trying our hardest to score we have the worst xG in the league. Good one. Here’s another great Amorim stat. If you ignore the parts of the game when the opposition are trying to score no other club has an xGA as low as us. Impressive, eh?
 
Amorim has had the worst start as a United manager for almost 100 years. Not since 1932 has a United manager lost 5 of his first 10 games.

My guess is that Amorim will be gone from the club by this summer at the latest.
Relentless negativity. I can’t imagine being a “supporter” and talking about the demise of a new manager almost as soon as they arrive. What joy do you get from Manchester United? It doesn’t sound like much.
 
Not really. We are the worst team in the league attackingwise when the score is equal. Then we have to start attack since we are losing the games. We are still at like 10th place in xG no matter how you put it. You think a 5-2-3 is what will take us forward?
So a specific scenario then. Not worst for xG. Bad all the same.

I don't think any formation takes us forward with the squad that Ten Hag left. I said before the season started that the forwards are nowhere near good enough.
 
So a specific scenario then. Not worst for xG. Bad all the same.

I don't think any formation takes us forward with the squad that Ten Hag left. I said before the season started that the forwards are nowhere near good enough.
Well since that game Everton have won 4-0 against wolves, 0-0 against Arsenal and Chelsea and 1-1 against City.

Since that game some of the players have barely gotten another chance and our form have dipped.. Why not just play that starting eleven who played good and won the game comfortably? Isn't that on Amorin? Exclude the fluke City game and we have been really really bad
 
We finished 2nd and 3rd before ten hag but it wasn’t good enough, he replaced the team with the biggest like of shit I’ve seen
He finished 3rd with a lot of his new players too. The problem is more the system has changed and key cogs like a RWB and LWB are just not there, coupled with the fact that our organization for set pieces has become far worse under Amorim, something he needs to take ownership of.

It was also a daft club decision to go for youthful strikers with potential and not ready made ones.
 
Well since that game Everton have won 4-0 against wolves, 0-0 against Arsenal and Chelsea and 1-1 against City.

Since that game some of the players have barely gotten another chance and our form have dipped.. Why not just play that starting eleven who played good and won the game comfortably? Isn't that on Amorin? Exclude the fluke City game and we have been really really bad

:lol: why do you keep trying to exclude/ignore everything that doesn’t align with your agenda?

“If you ignore the goals he’s let in, Onana’s the best keeper on the planet”
 
Relentless negativity. I can’t imagine being a “supporter” and talking about the demise of a new manager almost as soon as they arrive. What joy do you get from Manchester United? It doesn’t sound like much.
At the moment I don't get much pleasure out of watching United. You almost have to be a masochist to be able to find joy in the current form.
But I've been a football fan for so long that I can recognize comments like yours. Fans who think you have to be a certain way and think certain things to be a "true" supporter.
It's so tiring.

Could it really be imagined that there are United fans who do not think exactly like you? Maybe even fans who were never particularly comfortable with the hiring of Amorim from the start and thus perhaps have a shorter patience than yourself? Or is it completely impossible for you to imagine?
 
I think perhaps Erikson needs to play behind the striker for a few games to try and get some attacking patterns working that others will then be able to learn from.

Also we looked more of a threat with Amad as a wingback.