Who said he cant adapt?
Why do fans think that adapting means changing a whole formation?
Didn't he adapt when we played Arsenal and Liverpool away?
Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach
- Thread starter sewey89
- Start date
Who said he cant adapt?
Why do fans think that adapting means changing a whole formation?
Didn't he adapt when we played Arsenal and Liverpool away?
Absolutely. It's not like our squad is full of prime Modrics, Ronaldos and Rooneys (even then I'd argue these types of players would probably adapt to any style and formation). Also, try between 8th and 10th for the bolded part and we're on to something.
Neither. Maybe he's married to his 3421. Perhaps, as a young manager, Amorim himself doesn't have the answer to that question yet. Something that, in this case, vindicates Liverpool's reservations when they looked into the possibility of hiring him.
But the fans on here who offer him their unwavering support argue a simple point that doesn't have to do with playing three at the back. They argue for the need to finally implement a proactive game plan and against what the immediate return to a 4231 insinuates. They agree with the manager when he says that we will be just wasting time by postponing a change that needs to be done and is already a decade too late.
I know this place has a tendency to glorify the position of the manager, but we're not there yet with Amorim.
It's better to adapt to these players(that just got the manager that brought them in and got the best out of them for one season, fired after they resorted to their norm) so we can get 3rd and then 6th or 7th and then even worse the next season. Instead of trying(notice I'm writing trying) to build on something that is sustainable and a squad that's sustainable, so we can have success over time and not just go through what we've gone through since SAF left. (Some random thropies here and there, without any sustainability).
Seemed to be working quite well under Ruud, tweaked a few things and they looked much better than under EtH, there seemed to be a lift.
I see no lift under Amorim so far, no response at all and not just talking about the results.
Going from one of the worst performing managers in the league, to a new charismatic promising manager with new ideas, you'd expect some response but it's more of the same.
We will play well vs top teams, and grind out some results vs minnows but I'm not sure what change we can expect. Maybe some signings?
Agreed, it really isn't a councidence that almost none of the top managers play it in such a way. It may work for a season here and there and then even those managers go back to a system with 4 defenders.
So far I think Alonso is also married to it, but he has specialists for it.
The David Moyes vibes 
This thread is absolute carcrash, getting worse with each passing day.
Please, at least lock it during games.
Literally every time a player misplaces a pass, a few posters instantly open this thread to shit on Amorim, it's pathetic.
This thread is absolute carcrash, getting worse with each passing day.
Please, at least lock it during games.
Literally every time a player misplaces a pass, a few posters instantly open this thread to shit on Amorim, it's pathetic.
You can say this but you can also say... look how many top managers use 4 at the back and it doesn't work? Does that mean the system is bad?
Nice wum, was appointed to implement his system and should 8 weeks later abandon everything.
For starters, it's not more of the same.
The only real opponent ruud faced was Chelsea, so it was nice and loved seeing him doing a job but its not like he had a real challenge. We have seen this before. Also see his current job, he is not a miracle worker either.
I try to stay positive. The what if debates are pointless in my oppinion.
The majority of the best teams/best managers play 4 defenders.
Especially those that created lasting sides that dominated their leagues/Europe for years.
There are really a handful teams/managers that dominated playing 3 at the back, for a longer period of time.
It is usually out of pragmatism, and can work very well for a while
But other than that, to me it's a really awkward system.
Especially this 5221 we are effectively playing.
A proper 343 with wingbacks and wingers, fair enough.
Also for everyone that's crying about the formation and Amorims stubborness to his system. Every team that's top 7-8 atm has managers that made the players adapt to their system, they didn't cave into "the players need this or want this", they have a system and they are making the players adapt to that system, just like Amorim is trying(but not that simple when the MU players have the footballing IQ of a toddler).
Right..
Well that's all well and good but alot of younger managers now are using the 3 at the back. Alot of teams that play 4 are inverting their full backs into a 3 at times too.
I dont think its about formations, its more about the system of how we want to play and getting players that can play the system.
We dont have a LB, we can talk about the system but we didnt have one for a 4 at the back either. Its a position we need to fill for the past 3 seasons.
I know we don't have the perfect squad for 3-4-2-1 but people keep talking about the system and I don't think there's much point banging on about changing system when our goals are coming from individual errors, set pieces etc.
Course we're not going to be perfect with the 3-4-2-1 until we recruit players, but we'd help ourselves massively if we didn't keep making daft mistakes. He spoke about how we keep conceding the first goal in yesterday's press conference.
Course we're not going to be perfect with the 3-4-2-1 until we recruit players, but we'd help ourselves massively if we didn't keep making daft mistakes. He spoke about how we keep conceding the first goal in yesterday's press conference.
Ruben has warned everyone that he is indeed married to 3 at the back formation. Whoever made the call to hire him will take the responsibility for the outcome. The Board have now no choice but to shape the squad the way Ruben wants/needs which requires players with specific skillsets. Hopefully, everything works out well and we are back in races for major titles in the next 2-3 years. If not, I am not sure we will have adequate resources for yet another major rebuild.
We would have to back him heavilly to shape the squad the way he wants/needs but the problem is he only has 1 way of playing and when that gets found out by the other teams (which it will quickly) what happens then, we'll back to square 1 and looking for a new manager to invest heavilly in.
We dont have resources for any rebuild. We cant even sign a left back from a lower half serie a club. Look at the players we could probably get rid of - heaton, lindelof, evans, shaw, malacia, casemiro, eriksen, mount, antony, rashford. Theres a mixture of age, ability, and weetabix bodies in there.
You’d be lucky to get £50m out of that, most are leaving for free anyway, no ones paying a dime for mount and shaw because of fitness issues, people try to insist Rashford is worth lots of money but no one even wants him on loan.
We cant really spend, and we cant sell to buy.
I worry for Amorim because he mainly has to work with what he has, which is a baffling collection of players who mainly have no athleticism, no technical ability, and no football IQ. We cant outrun teams, we cant break low blocks, we cant compensate by keeping the ball. What was whoever built this squad smoking?
Exactly. People seem to think that adapting means going to a 4-4-2 or completely different formation rather than adjusting it to the opposition which he does do. At some point though you have to try to play the way you want to play and thats causing us issues against the "lesser" teams. Its higher risk and our players keep making fundamental mistakes that cost us goals and games.
I honestly dont understand why we appointed him when our squad simply didnt fit his style, we needed a tactician who could come in and find a way to get our current squad playing decent Football rather than someone who is going to have them playing a way they arnt built for and serving up awful Football aa a result.
Exactly. the squad building over the years has been so poor, the method of teams doing poor, new expensive shiny toy... fans get excited for 3 months and cycle starts again.
Casemiro, Anthony and Hojlund are prime examples where we have overpaid by 50% on these players, whilst we still keep players to rot.
INEOS want to get rid of players before new one comes in, if we get rid of the players you mention, without any transfer fees, that is a saving of over £90m a year on just wages. 80% of those players dont even play, so its not like we will miss them.
So even if we can get £50m combined for those players, it gives us a £140m opening in our books.
There are 2 options here:
Change the system / formation to suit players like what some fans want for short term results to get us 7th 8th in the PL. Then we go next season and the same crap happens, we are 9/10th in the PL because the manager cant play his system.
There is evidence of that, Ole tried it failed, Ten Hag done it failed, both adapted to the players and when they tried implementing their system after a season, it became worse.
Instead we are trying an approach where the manager gets us playing his way, it might mean in a season where we are 13th, we finish 12th and we start next season much more positively because the manager is playing his style.
I know what I am taking out the 2 options.
Exactly why we looked and moved on. Would have meant we would have had to tear up the whole foundation of the club from U16s onwards if we wanted to implement his style and vision. Luckily, we decided to bring in someone who could get the best out of what we had and build on it. Just really can't understand how that was such an alien concept to your decision makers!
Not on a wum at all. I've consistently posted on the parallels with Mikel and he was someone who realised vey quickly he needed the prima donnas out and the workers and kids fully on board with his 'non negotiables' plan. He played, 4, 5, 3 at the back, whatever it took to STOP CONCEDING goals before he decided he needed to fix the attack.
Amorim is trying to do too much in too little time, imo, and definitely should be given the space and time he needs. But from afar, it looks like he's started hacking at his own leg with an axe.
This will be an unpopular opinion, and I think he is a muppet, but I think that is why Ashworth supposedly wanted Southgate.
Just to work with what we have - I still think we are best equipped personnel wise to set up in a 4231 and sit deep and organised. Try and utilise the pace we have in Garnacho and Rashford and Hojlund and Diallo to run in behind on the counter etc and allow Bruno positional freedom. It masks a lot of our deficiencies in terms of playing possession ball and the lack of legs. I think where ETH went wrong was we were still trying to press and leaving gaps between midfield and defence rather than the midfield 2 sitting deep. It would be like a return to Ole Ball almost.
We already know the limitations of that - It wont win us any titles or cups but might have seen us higher in the table than we are. I dont see how we get the personnel in in any decent time frame to implement what Amorim wants. Feel like we literally have to tread water whilst we wait for the financial side to recover. But we are going to be treading water in the bottom half and I just dont see Amorim lasting, not that I dislike him or dont rate him as a manager, just horses for courses and all of that. We have some total crud in the squad but if you think of a hypothetical 4231 of Onana, Mazroui, de ligt, martinez, dalot, ugarte, mainoo, bruno, diallo, garnacho, hojlund its not a bottom half side personnel wise, not saying its top 4 either, but we are underperforming.
I mean based on his sporting team he wants 343. So yeh fair enough.
The wages are the bigger factor I agree. Just still see these posts suggesting we can spend about £300m in a window if we sell those lot for unrealistic amounts of money.
The problem is that even if we allow high wage players to find a free transfer, we’ve overpaid so much on wages they will never find an equal offer and sit here til their contract expires. I dont think we will ever get rid of Casemiro - if Saudi wanted him they’d have done it by now in my opinion. He’ll be here until the end of next season I think
At this point, from our history, we should not be putting any money into forecasting how much we can sell for. We should actually forecast 0 income for those players, then whatever we get is a bonus.
We have had this in the past with Pogba, Martial, Varane, players on high wages leave on free because no one can afford them.
So we have to find a way of getting rid, just to get the wages off the books, which allows us to sign players.
100% this. I feel this isn't mentioned enough. 3 at the back is way more common then a lot of our fans think It is. Pep started inverting fullbacks, then moved on to push Stones into midfield, either way it was a back 3 when they had the ball.
Arteta was inverting Zinchenko at one point to create the box midfield manager's love right now. ETH used dalot in the same role.
I think a big plus for amorims system, at least while at sporting was that he didn't require that specialist fullback that had the qualities to play both midfield and fullback. As sporting regularly sell players, wingbacks are alot easier to replace for a team like sporting.
Amorim may not be the right guy. I think he is, but whatever happens he should not change his approach, nor should the next coach.
I've read some rubbish on here but this takes the cake.
Question for you, do you think Forest have a better squad than United??
This - the people saying "just get him the players for his system" don't seem to realize the club is broke.
Feels like fans used up all their patience on the previous managers. Now they given up after 2 months.
I would say its not just about paper player ratings fifa style any more though. On paper no, but then again on paper Chris Wood has 14 goals and our top scorer is on 6.
But if a team relies on a system and all the players fit into that it starts to build something greater than the sum of its parts. We have the inverse of that.
There are other tangibles - how fit are our players compared to other sides regardless of ability? How far do our players run in a match? How injury prone are our players? Wheres the sports science level at between the clubs?
And some intangibles - attitude and mentality for example? When I have watched Forest play their players are giving it everything every game. I thought they got battered by Liverpool but they stuck at it and got a point. The only time I have seen us fight it out like that recently was Arsenal in the FA cup. We usually just meekly give up when we go a goal behind or when we are getting outplayed.
Our players seem to turn up for ‘big’ opponents atm but then theres just no effort and application against ‘smaller’ sides. Clear mentality and workrate issues with them, obviously even in pre season which is why we are so unfit
It’s the United way, we bend to every new manager, spend hundreds of millions to get them a smorgasbord of their favourite player, only to realise they aren’t good enough.
Our fans have moaned for years that we should have a head coach and a DoF recruitment team that decides how the club will play and the players/managers to fit that, however the second we hire a new manager 80% of them suddenly want a clean slate and new squad to suit the new guy before expecting decent results.
Bizarre lot.
Its because we always took money for granted. Like a lottery winner who had no worries about money and spent and spent until one day they looked in the bank and had no money but had also not paid off their debts on top of that.
Massively overinflated transfers and wages? No problem. Big dividends? No problem. Overhanging debts with high interest repayments from a leveraged takeover? No problem, dont even bother reducing the capital amount just roll over the interest so that in 20 years its just as bad as day 1.
Its caught up with us, big time.
Every transfer saga thread in here over the last 10+ years: "just give him what he wants, it's not my money!"
Arteta and Edu did a great job at Arsenal with the squat. They were ruthless at times and it definitely paid of. But if adaption mean becoming the next stoke I am not sure I want that (just kidding).
Stop conceding is a priority for RA too. Most of our conceded goals are from individual errors and/or set-pieces. I think if you look at the stats we are more compact then before (all stats except the goals conceded).
As mentioned by others adapt doesn't mean abandon everything you believe in.