Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach

We've really messed up on leaving it till now to bring him in. Maybe there were good reasons or whatever, but the situation right now isn't looking good. Even if it was Pep coming in, I'd be worried.

I do absolutely believe that these players are capable of better than they've shown the last 18 months, but my concern is that they've picked up some bad habits for a team that want to control games. Habits that will take a while to undo.

And our entire collection of forwards, not just strikers, looks way out of form and lacking in confidence also. Ten Hag has a lot to answer for here.
 
pocco said:
We've really messed up on leaving it till now to bring him in. Maybe there were good reasons or whatever, but the situation right now isn't looking good. Even if it was Pep coming in, I'd be worried.

I do absolutely believe that these players are capable of better than they've shown the last 18 months, but my concern is that they've picked up some bad habits for a team that want to control games. Habits that will take a while to undo.

And our entire collection of forwards, not just strikers, looks way out of form and lacking in confidence also. Ten Hag has a lot to answer for here.
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I don’t really follow this. Surely it’s obvious he’s got work to do. That’s why we’ve brought him in?

People will need to be patient but he’ll lift confidence immediately and he’s got a lot of young players who are coachable, along with some good youth talent in other groups.

The impatient people will rant as it won’t be a straight climb without blips . Expectations are all over the place here currently though.
 
TheReligion said:
I don’t really follow this. Surely it’s obvious he’s got work to do. That’s why we’ve brought him in?

People will need to be patient but he’ll lift confidence immediately and he’s got a lot of young players who are coachable, along with some good youth talent in other groups.

The impatient people will rant as it won’t be a straight climb without blips . Expectations are all over the place here currently though.
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I don't see what's hard to follow? You've basically made the same point in a different way. We're coachable, but probably no quick fixes like at other teams due to what they've been coached to do for 2 years. It goes against what most progressive coaches want to play.
 
The decision to not bring him in during the summer is more baffling every day

  • Ten Hag was coming off a very poor end to the season in the league
  • We wouldn't have had to pay the huge pay off amount
  • You would imagine Amorim was gettable if he's willing to join so early into the season
  • We could have gone for players in the summer who suited Amorim's style of play
  • He would have had time to try and coach the team in that style
He has a massive uphill task till the end of the season now.
 
He's got a massive clean up job here. ETH left a right mess far worse than any other manager we had after Fergie.
 
DJ_21 said:
Agreed. I’d have Mount and Bruno behind the ST. When mounts not fit have Amad play there.
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Yeah, this would be my preference in fitting the current players into Amorim's system. Probably with one of the current wingers out wide as a wingback, with a current fullback (Mazraoui or Dalot) on the other side.
 
Wait, I hope none of you expect miracles from this season, it's already dead & buried. Amorim starts to work for the 25/26 season the day his tenure starts and treats it all as a pre-season as we should.
 
SparcMac said:
Wait, I hope none of you expect miracles from this season, it's already dead & buried. Amorim starts to work for the 25/26 season the day his tenure starts and treats it all as a pre-season as we should.
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We are in three different cups and top 4 is possible, theres plenty to play for.
 
edgecutter said:
He's got a massive clean up job here. ETH left a right mess far worse than any other manager we had after Fergie.
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The mess he has left is hopefully a badly coached team and nothing else. Obviously time will tell but with the right direction Amorim can build his new team around some talented players.
 
pocco said:
I don't see what's hard to follow? You've basically made the same point in a different way. We're coachable, but probably no quick fixes like at other teams due to what they've been coached to do for 2 years. It goes against what most progressive coaches want to play.
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Basically I’m not worried
 
No wonder he wants his five assistants, the coaching and training task is huge to get these players to pass and move with fluency and create tap in opportunities and actually take them.
 
In some aspects, things are far worse now than with any manager pos Fergie.
I don't see one single player that is a must-keep here.
 
Shunty said:
What improvements have we seen exactly? They’re not good enough SJR said as much today. They’re shit
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For one, we didn't shit the bed after they equalized and defended much better. Less gaps between midfield, defence and attack. Some individuals were woeful, but the overall team performance was miles better than anything ETH did for the last several months.
 
The Mitcher said:
For one, we didn't shit the bed after they equalized and defended much better. Less gaps between midfield, defence and attack. Some individuals were woeful, but the overall team performance was miles better than anything ETH did for the last several months.
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We had this at the start of the season. The gaps between midfield and attack got better.

Decision to play casemiro with Ugarte will naturally give a bit more solidarity on top, but it doesn't change the fact that most of our attackers are really quite bad.
 
VP89 said:
We had this at the start of the season. The gaps between midfield and attack got better.

Decision to play casemiro with Ugarte will naturally give a bit more solidarity on top, but it doesn't change the fact that most of our attackers are really quite bad.
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They never once got better :lol:

Also, not seeing it with Ugarte.
 
TheReligion said:
Basically I’m not worried
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That's fair enough, we should be willing to give a reasonable amount of time to turn this around. I just can't help but think decisions in the summer have made it harder for the next guy now. These players seem to be driven into the ground, have been coached to do things most other coaches wouldn't want, some poor looking signings etc. It's just frustrating, but it is what it is. And like I said, maybe there were reasons behind all of these decisions, but the circumstances now are far from ideal.

He's been left in the Rangnick position, trying to rescue a team mid season who are so out of form and lacking confidence. Rangnick isn't a mug, contrary to what some believe, but look how he struggled. I just hope that Amorim is left with something to work with after the break.
 
Less
The Mitcher said:
For one, we didn't shit the bed after they equalized and defended much better. Less gaps between midfield, defence and attack. Some individuals were woeful, but the overall team performance was miles better than anything ETH did for the last several months.
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Less gaps? I thought the back 4 and the goalkeeper weren’t bad, but apart from
That I’m scratching my head. Time and time again Chelsea got the ball between the midfield and defense there were gaps everywhere. He has his work cut out is the kindest way to say it. I think the team has loads loads more potential than it’s showing.
 
pocco said:
That's fair enough, we should be willing to give a reasonable amount of time to turn this around. I just can't help but think decisions in the summer have made it harder for the next guy now. These players seem to be driven into the ground, have been coached to do things most other coaches wouldn't want, some poor looking signings etc. It's just frustrating, but it is what it is. And like I said, maybe there were reasons behind all of these decisions, but the circumstances now are far from ideal.

He's been left in the Rangnick position, trying to rescue a team mid season who are so out of form and lacking confidence. Rangnick isn't a mug, contrary to what some believe, but look how he struggled. I just hope that Amorim is left with something to work with after the break.
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Rangnick failed to do his one job, stabilise the team and it's results. He quickly decidided it was better to insult the team every week in his interviews and conferences than build a togetherness and get them on side after that disastrous start.
 
Shunty said:
Less


Less gaps? I thought the back 4 and the goalkeeper weren’t bad, but apart from
That I’m scratching my head. Time and time again Chelsea got the ball between the midfield and defense there were gaps everywhere. He has his work cut out is the kindest way to say it. I think the team has loads loads more potential than it’s showing.
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We were way better than under ETH, all those times were due to individual error. Not the team shape.
 
The Mitcher said:
They never once got better :lol:

Also, not seeing it with Ugarte.
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Yes they did (the gaps between defence midfield and attack), and it was reflected by the stats too. We also had far fewer shots on our goal.

Playing 2 DMs will give you more cover than 1. Irrespective of whether Ugarte has hit the ground running or not.

The consistency we have right now is our attackers are piss poor.
 
edgecutter said:
He's got a massive clean up job here. ETH left a right mess far worse than any other manager we had after Fergie.
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Wouldn’t say that’s true. Mourinho left a worse team. A bunch of players with massive egos. We’ve signed some decent players. We’ve just not got a settled system in place yet. There still playing under ETH chaotic tactics.
 
The Mitcher said:
Rangnick failed to do his one job, stabilise the team and it's results. He quickly decidided it was better to insult the team every week in his interviews and conferences than build a togetherness and get them on side after that disastrous start.
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Well ETH did the exact opposite and that didn’t work out either. He protected all the players. Never criticised in front of the media. The players don’t deserve being protected when they play awful week in week out
 
The Mitcher said:
Rangnick failed to do his one job, stabilise the team and it's results. He quickly decidided it was better to insult the team every week in his interviews and conferences than build a togetherness and get them on side after that disastrous start.
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His methods might have been wrong, but you could see there was little left in that team when he took over. 45 minutes of decent football against Palace i think, then back to the usual. I think with the best will in the world, when you take over a team with no confidence, issues all over the team, failing in the main competitions, it's going to be harder to get them going again.

Hopefully Amorim can start making inroads and get us playing better football, but some of the things our players do are going to need to be stamped out sharpish. And he's really going to have to work hard building confidence and enjoyment for our attackers, along with a coherent gameplan for creating them chances and situations to do their thing. This attack is so far off, through both previous coaching and ability.
 
DJ_21 said:
Well ETH did the exact opposite and that didn’t work out either. He protected all the players. Never criticised in front of the media. The players don’t deserve being protected when they play awful week in week out
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ETH threw them under the bus plenty of times. He was perfectly happy to let them get the shit he should have got. He set them up to fail whereas Rangnick couldn't be arsed.
 
pocco said:
His methods might have been wrong, but you could see there was little left in that team when he took over. 45 minutes of decent football against Palace i think, then back to the usual. I think with the best will in the world, when you take over a team with no confidence, issues all over the team, failing in the main competitions, it's going to be harder to get them going again.

Hopefully Amorim can start making inroads and get us playing better football, but some of the things our players do are going to need to be stamped out sharpish. And he's really going to have to work hard building confidence and enjoyment for our attackers, along with a coherent gameplan for creating them chances and situations to do their thing. This attack is so far off, through both previous coaching and ability.
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Rangnick didn't try, he just decided to create more chaos.
 
MadDogg said:
Thanks for that. Great post, you answered a couple of the questions I had about his system.

Just with the bits that I quoted, Martinez has easily the most composure, creativity and vision from all our central defenders, and indeed there aren't many in the world who are better. He has started this season quite shakily though (not just defensively, but also with what he's doing with the ball), but as long as he turns that around then I don't really have any doubts over that part of the game. My bigger worry is his lack of speed and whether he can cover the wide areas defensively when our wingback goes forward. Especially as our most central defender will probably be De Ligt who also has average pace.

With the winger/#10 roles, Amad in theory should fit that quite well. It almost feels like he's been trained to be more of a classic winger with us, but his skillset lends itself quite well to how you describe that role. The question will ultimately be whether he's good enough to do it, but hopefully he gets a decent run to prove himself one way or the other.
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Thank you!

Don't worry too much about the defenders individual carachteristics on speed and acceleration. Obviously it's better being fast, but the system and the defensive line will be so coordinated and the positioning (in relation to the space and also to the colleagues) will be so detailed and worked that the structure will work perfectly in a collective way. Coates was far from a fast defender (he was actually quite slow in the first meters running, on the acceleration) and he led the defensive line perfectly. Coverageg and the relationship with space and teammates will help a lot of the defenders to defend more as a team and the system will expose defenders way less to individual duels and 1x1 duels.

Just another point to add to your excitement: this guy started in Sporting in a moment of pure chaos, in a season when we had already had like 2 or 3 coaches before him. He did a few games and ended up in 4th place on the league (which was kind of unavoidable by the moment he started). We were nowhere near our biggest and historical rivals and competitors. The following season, he turned us into portuguese champions. We hadn't been champions in 18 years.

The context has some similar points (in the way United is currently nowhere near its current biggest competitors). He deals well with humble/modest expectations and overperforms. Mainly, I would say you will be very surprised at the first moments, there will be decisions who seem strange/unexpected and that will make you doubt his vision, but after a few months it will be clear it's the right way. Players won't play because of their status, careers, names and experiences - he will find the right players for every function of the system and will make that surprisingly work.
 
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edgecutter said:
He's got a massive clean up job here. ETH left a right mess far worse than any other manager we had after Fergie.
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I think he has which is why he has come in now rather than at the end of season, he now has 6 months to work with and review the squad before the summer window so he can work out what needs to be done to improve the squad.

We'll never challange for League titles or the Champions League if we are reliant on players like Zirkzee, Hojlund, Amad, and Rashford
 
edgecutter said:
He's got a massive clean up job here. ETH left a right mess far worse than any other manager we had after Fergie.
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And to make matters even worse, we're no longer in a position where we can just try to spend our way out of trouble.
 
RedRocket9908 said:
I think he has which is why he has come in now rather than at the end of season, he now has 6 months to work with and review the squad before the summer window so he can work out what needs to be done to improve the squad.

We'll never challange for League titles or the Champions League if we are reliant on players like Zirkzee, Hojlund, Amad, and Rashford
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Don’t think amad should be included in this list. He’s got better footballing IQ than all 3 of our forwards that started today. Zirkzee should never have been bought, we should have waited and then got the guy from sporting.
 
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