That’s insane considering the sheer amount of avoidable goals/giveaways through individual errors we’ve conceded. I’m sure city also had quite a few within theirs, but I can only comment on what I watch.
Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach
- Thread starter sewey89
- Start date
Do we just cherry pick our luck now? As I said, we had an injury crisis last year which was extremely unlucky and a chaotic style of football which contributed to poor underlying data, which I agree is unsustainable. But you don't finish 8th instead of 15th because of "luck". This is a league not some cup you can fluke game after game. This idea that we finished 7 places higher than our quality suggested and we got "lucky" over a 38 game campaign to be so drastically different to your supposed level is hugely exaggerated.
Expected point tables don't just reflect quality of players too. You're just taking one isolated takeaway from that and ignoring everything else to force fit a weak narrative.
Our squad is much better than finishing double digits.
As already stated, that was owing to the style of football and the injuries more than the quality of the players. And the stat that matters is that he finished 8th, not 15th.
This is such an insane narrative for me. He was 7pts off top 4 when he got sacked. It was early in the season. Take a look where Chelsea started last season and where they ended up.
And two more things - 1) I never said I liked them. I don't need to like them o know they're better than 13th. 2) we've brought in at last 4 players that would improve the XI since last season too.
Last edited:
Ten Hag didn't improve the first XI in the summer by any significant degree which was my concern in the summer.
We were massively lucky to finish 8th. Teams very rarely go from underlying stats of 14th one season to top 6 (where some seem to think this squad is) without upgrades to the first XI.
We were massively lucky to finish 8th. Teams very rarely go from underlying stats of 14th one season to top 6 (where some seem to think this squad is) without upgrades to the first XI.
If we lose at Fulham which on form is more than likely and then struggle against Palace, which considering our recent performances against weaker teams is possible. Surely Ruben's position starts to become untenable? I'd prefer we stick with him whatever happens, but the banging on the doors will get very loud indeed...
Yes you do. It does happen and did happen. Injuries have nothing to do with over/underperforming underlying stats.
"The only stat that matters is that he finished 8th" is only true if you want to ignore all context of the discussion.
This was the exact issue under Ten Hag this season though. If you just took the Brighton, West Ham and Palace games where with semi competent finishing alone we'd have won by a large margin, that's 8 more points...which would have put us in 3rd place at the time he was sacked.
This is hypothetical obviously and i do think ETH going was inevitable. My issue is the performances since then have gotten worse. Goal scoring is still the big issue but now I can't think of many games where we've even created the chances in the first place, and rather than having games where I think "we should have won that" the few games we have won have mostly been lucky and involved the other team messing up chances.
We've gone from the finishing of our forwards being the issue to our ability to even get them in the game being the issue.
If only everyone here had the same attitude!
Yes, the team didn't work under ETH either.
I had hoped that when ETH was sacked his few obsessive fan boys would either follow him off somewhere else or at least pipe down. Ten Hag has been done to death, no manager in the history of the PL has been given such free reign over transfers and signed so many of his former players or ones that he knew, and still failed utterly miserably. The performances did not improve when players came back from injury, there was no coherent style of play and along with the inept senior management ETH has assembled the worst squad in our PL era. Injury crises under ETH were predictable and a direct result of his overplaying key players and his chaotic ping pong football that put huge pressure on players whenever we lost the ball (which was constantly). Anyone with a bit of self awareness might move on now.
No, you don't.
If you want to sit and pretend injuries at the backline all season have nothing to do with underlying stats such as goals conceded or shots on goal, you do you. I don't really see a point entertaining any debate with that logic.
I've taken all the context into account. Multiple times I've given the context of injuries and style of football contributing to the expected points being poor but some people want to ignore that and claim the players were all just really bad. These are the same posters who wanted the managers head for his suicidal style, insinuating anyone else could do better with the the squad. You can't have it both ways.
Only from Sky and Talksport. Maybe a few idiots online. I honestly think sacking a manager who has had not even been allowed to make one transfer would be utter madness. I know that’s not your opinion. But we need to block all the outside noise. Get to the end of the season and go from there depending on what money is available and give this guy a chance to rebuild. I have basically wrote this season off especially the league think we have enough to survive. Was thinking an outside chance of Europa but going off Thursday night we looked well short there so most likely its a dead season and this summer is when we see what happens
Hahaha, thanks….i think!?
I mostly agree, but I think this fan base does sometimes expect things to change out of pure hope, than logic. We do need momentum going into next season, and somehow end this season on a high. Be it with the football improving, results or a Europa League triumph. I think Ruben will feel he has to do this too, because at the end of the day he's not Guardiola or Klopp, so there will be an element of mistrust until we can at least see glimpses of his "idea" working in this league against opposition like Fulham or Southampton, and not only the bigger games. He'll need to prove that it's going to be worth investing potentially £100m+ in the summer for this system to INEOS even with this current crop of players imho. The reality is the team isn't going to be vastly different next season either.
Last edited:
Only from silly aspects of the media. Amorim has inherited a disaster. As someone has previously stated, since his appointment, we need to treat this as a pre-season. Sounds crazy, and i don't like it, but it's where we are.
However, I do want to see Amorim be far more considered in his media quotes; and I want to see his system beginning, just beginning, to really function.
Accepting this season is a bit of a write-off in the league at least, what do you think will be expected of the manager next season?
Will it be back to the "this team needs to be finishing in the CL places" narrative straight away? Or are we in an Arteta/Arsenal situation where people will accept multiple seasons outside the CL places in a row.
In Arsenal's case they finished 8th, 8th and 5th in the first three full seasons. If we finish around 12th this season and 8th next season, is that seen as progress?
Will it be back to the "this team needs to be finishing in the CL places" narrative straight away? Or are we in an Arteta/Arsenal situation where people will accept multiple seasons outside the CL places in a row.
In Arsenal's case they finished 8th, 8th and 5th in the first three full seasons. If we finish around 12th this season and 8th next season, is that seen as progress?
Looks like the best he can hope for is a teenage LWB and perma crock forward on loan to save our season. Good luck Ruben!!!
Can somebody explain to me the difference between a wingback, and a good old-fashioned attacking fullback? Because if you read this thread you would think that finding one (let alone 2!) is akin to performing some kind of impossible alchemy.
I guess it depends on the money spent in the summer. If he gets the same sort of investment in his squad as previous managers then we’re back to hoping for top four challenge next season, title challenge the season after. If not, then all bets are off.
Unless there are clear upgrades to the first XI then we can't expect to be close to top 4.
Ten Hag failed to improve the first XI in the summer and here we are.
The money isn't there now either.
The players overperformed. Ten Hags coached a 15th place finish. The players overperformed to 8th.
Have to agree that it's getting a bit silly. A modern day fullback (in the Premier League) is expected to be just as dangerous going forward as they are tight with their defending. They're expected to have great stamina, good timing, a good awareness of what's around them and a tenacity to drive at both ends of the pitch. Even the 'wingers' (imo, there's a whole discussion to be had about whether there are that many top class traditional wingers out there anyway. Most tend to want to drift in-field and are played on the opposite sides for this reason) are expected to work hard defensively and help the full backs out or at least offer something defensively.
Spot on. So whilst there may be some 'pure-bred' wingbacks out there - who are a perfect hybrid of an attacker and a defender - surely what we're really looking for are a set of fit-for-purpose modern fullbacks and wingers? It's not reinventing the wheel. Depending upon the opposing team and/or specific players you might decide to go with your attacking fullback, or your hard-working winger in the wingback position, or maybe a more defensive minded player on one wing and a more attacking one on the opposite flank. It's just not that deep.
Shaw could do it (if he was ever fit), Dalot is in poor form but showed against Liverpool that he can do it. Amad can do it. Even bloody Antony and Malacia have showed some promise in those positions. Rashford could absolutely do it if he had the correct mindset and desire but sadly can't even be arsed to try. Garnacho is showing sign of improvement but will probably be leaving anyway. We have signed too many players over the past few years that don't have the correct natural athleticism or attitude, and if we can sign a couple of wide players that have that then things will improve immeasurably.
We dont just not score goals, cant keep clean sheets either, norhing really working atm
Its got nothing to do with Ten Hag as a coach, if you bothered to read the posts.
We have a squad better than finishing 15th or even 10th for example. The reference to ten hag was merely even he could achieve 8th.
As for the rest of your post, there's a lot of stuff I agree with, but I won't bother getting into. This is an Amorim thread - our level is better than what we've shown since he joined and hel be the first to say that. It's weird some posters think that's not the case.
Really struggle to understand what's so debatable about that. We're poor and he's a part of that, I'm sure he'd be the first one to agree
I dont know, we have people claiming our true level isn't higher than 15th or 10th or whatever. It's absolutely nuts. We have quite a few good players.
Football is a game where you need 11 players at pitch, quite a few good ones aren't enough.
And quite a few are. The squad itself is capable of higher than some would want others to believe
just look at teams like Bournemouth, Brighton, Villa, Newcastle, Forest.. without even mentioning the obvious ones, they all have 5+ players that would walk into out first 11
player by player we're no higher than 9th-10th team, we have a decent CB options, no full backs, two good midfielders without any backup and 1-2 good attacking options
Nonsense
ok, name a team that is in the top 9 positions with a worse first 11
PL Stats since the League Cup Final in Feb 2022. I'm using this group of stats as this is where the wheels began to fall off for ETH. I'm only adding clubs that have been involved in every game weekend since that date. I.E. Removing newly promoted/relegated clubs.
I've sorted the below table by Goals Scored as it illustrates the problem we've had. We simply don't score goals. We're the joint 3rd worst goal scoring team from the below. Everton have only lost 1 more game than us during this time period. Liverpool have scored 76 more goals than us. That's an average of 1 goal more per game during this time period. It's nonsense to say we're a good team, we're one of the worst offensive teams in the league and have been for over 2 and half seasons.
I've sorted the below table by Goals Scored as it illustrates the problem we've had. We simply don't score goals. We're the joint 3rd worst goal scoring team from the below. Everton have only lost 1 more game than us during this time period. Liverpool have scored 76 more goals than us. That's an average of 1 goal more per game during this time period. It's nonsense to say we're a good team, we're one of the worst offensive teams in the league and have been for over 2 and half seasons.
| Rank | Club | Games | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Liverpool | 75 | 49 | 19 | 7 | 177 | 81 | 96 | 166 |
| 2nd | Man City | 74 | 51 | 13 | 10 | 173 | 72 | 101 | 166 |
| 3rd | Arsenal | 75 | 48 | 16 | 10 | 171 | 70 | 101 | 163 |
| 4th | Newcastle | 76 | 38 | 14 | 23 | 159 | 107 | 52 | 131 |
| 5th | Tottenham | 73 | 31 | 12 | 30 | 143 | 124 | 19 | 105 |
| 6th | Chelsea | 75 | 32 | 19 | 23 | 137 | 115 | 22 | 116 |
| 7th | Aston Villa | 74 | 38 | 17 | 18 | 130 | 103 | 27 | 134 |
| 8th | Brighton | 77 | 26 | 25 | 24 | 123 | 117 | 6 | 109 |
| 9th | Brentford | 75 | 24 | 16 | 34 | 117 | 120 | -3 | 91 |
| 10th | Bournemouth | 75 | 30 | 16 | 28 | 110 | 116 | -6 | 106 |
| 11th | Fulham | 73 | 25 | 18 | 30 | 108 | 113 | -5 | 93 |
| 12th | West Ham | 74 | 26 | 17 | 30 | 106 | 143 | -37 | 95 |
| 13th | Nottm Forest | 75 | 25 | 18 | 31 | 102 | 120 | -18 | 89 |
| 14th | Man Utd | 74 | 33 | 13 | 28 | 101 | 105 | -4 | 112 |
| =14th | Crystal Palace | 74 | 24 | 22 | 27 | 101 | 104 | -3 | 94 |
| 16th | Wolves | 75 | 22 | 13 | 39 | 95 | 142 | -47 | 79 |
| 17th | Everton | 74 | 21 | 23 | 29 | 76 | 104 | -28 | 78 |
2 key things happened around that time:
- Rashford's purple patch ran out (10 games, 10 goals). It was obvious our attack was poor without it (although anyone calling it out got shot down)
- Eriksen got injured. I remember saying at the time it was a disaster for us. He's never recovered. The only midfielder we had that could pass well.
Ten Hag never filled the gap of either. Just wasted money on forwards and inferior midfielders.
Add in things like Casemiro predictably falling off a cliff and weirdly not using Fred who was key in many of our best performances.
All we've really done to the first XI since is:
- Varane to De Ligt (not an upgrade)
- Casemiro and Eriksen to Ugarte and Mainoo (not an upgrade currently)
- Martial to Hojlund (downgrade)
- De Gea to Onana (not an upgrade)
Why the he'll can't he play Zirkzee as a false 9 behind amad and garnacho
Every game he misses the ability to do this by either play Bruno as an AM or bringing Hojlund on for Zirkzee.
Both our inverted forwards are not creative enough for Holland and neither are our wingbacks- why not make the central striker play creatively with 2 inverted forwards?
Every game he misses the ability to do this by either play Bruno as an AM or bringing Hojlund on for Zirkzee.
Both our inverted forwards are not creative enough for Holland and neither are our wingbacks- why not make the central striker play creatively with 2 inverted forwards?
Do you think we'll have a shot this half?
Apparently we had 1 but I couldn't tell you when.
Was so silly to rush him in before the end of the season, especially knowing he'd be drastically changing tactics.
INEOS are even more clueless than the Glazers/Woodward.
It's hard to believe we've managed to regress under them.
INEOS are even more clueless than the Glazers/Woodward.
It's hard to believe we've managed to regress under them.
We look very slow to make passes when upfront. And when on what may be a break it all gets slowed up and then back to the centre backs and then play behind from the back again.
I’m starting to wonder whether that’s tactics or the players not knowing what to do/ lazy
I’m starting to wonder whether that’s tactics or the players not knowing what to do/ lazy
Would it be kneejerk that I'm not sure if this guy has a clue how to organize a team in the PL?
Yep