What percentage of shots from the outside do you expect to be goals? To me, it's more about the threat of shooting than the actual shot. If you can draw the defense out of the box without having to go all the way back to midfield, then things obviously become less clogged. I'm fine with Bruno taking those shots...just as I was with Licha taking them and Maz as well. I'd like to see Ugarte and Mainoo do more of it, too.
Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach
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What percentage of shots from the outside do you expect to be goals? To me, it's more about the threat of shooting than the actual shot. If you can draw the defense out of the box without having to go all the way back to midfield, then things obviously become less clogged. I'm fine with Bruno taking those shots...just as I was with Licha taking them and Maz as well. I'd like to see Ugarte and Mainoo do more of it, too.
Thank you. I agree, his constant moving players around, playing them in unfamiliar positions and then changing them to a new position next time seems counterintuitive when you're learning a new system.
I'm all for change and I'm all for something new. But, at least give the players a chance to learn it. Then tinker around. Even Onana is probably struggling because the back 3 aren't settled.
Sure his PR game so far has been better than the football side, but damn that's harsh.
Bruno has the 3rd highest amount of shots from outside the box in the league and he has the 8th highest amount of shots in the league but he is the 39th best scorer. When Bruno shots, the defense won, it's like forcing Gobert into a corner three.
People don’t care about systems; they want results not excuses.
The recent social media post about extra training following the Leicester game, along with comments describing this as the worst United team in history, and the statement about preferring to have my goalkeeper coach on the bench, all indicate that much of his media output seems aimed at rallying those mouth breather who believe that professional athletes in the top flight are lazy.
Bruno can have decent technique with long shots but he's inconsistent with it. Not only that but he often takes pot shots which are momentum killers. When we can't get a good ball into the box, it's been cleared out and/or he feels like we're 'not attacking' enough, he'll go for one when we should have been recycling and trying to build again.
As others have said, he's not exactly prolific with long rangers, so most of the time he takes them they are become possession losses. For a team like us that struggles to even get the ball in the final third this is a big problem.
Bit of a Ruben's Cube isn't it?
I don't disagree with you or @JPRouve. My point is simply tactical because teams are shutting us down by packing the box. We struggle to get shots off, period. I'm just saying that maybe more of the midfield should shoot more from outside the box to try and draw the defense out, not necessarily Bruno.
It's possible of course he cares more about the clubs fortunes over his own career. But he'd be rare in that regard if that is the case.
It’s not unreasonable to expect the manager to improve individual and team performance.
If we add 1-2 transfers each window then we may challenge for the title in 10 years.
In the meantime, Amorim needs to get improved results now.
In my opinion, his PR game has been a mess, too. "Maybe the worst team in Man Utd history", he'd play his 63 year old coach but not Rashford, and so on.
I understand that some fans like this because "he is telling us the truth", but actually these things are objectively not true! And most important of all is: I can't see how these things will help with our morale and make us play better. I think that they will make us play worse, not better.
After all, his job is not to be an objective journalist and tell us the truth. His job is to create a team, make these players play better as a team than their individual abilities, and win games. So far, he is failing in all fronts.
We already have the 4th highest %-rate of our shots coming from outside of the box in the PL (36% compared to Arsenals 25% and Liverpools 27%). I would say that shooting from distance is not a problem in itself, but that the closer to the goal you get, the higher the probability of a goal (at least theoretically), i.e. that shots from closer range should be the ambition not the other way around.
There's obvious reasons for still going for long range shots though, e.g. players strengths, or for tactical reasons to lure the opponent out to block shots, avoiding counters etc. But I'm 99% sure that any defendig team would favour facing long range shots rather than having to defend deep in their own box.
As per Bruno, compared to the other top 40 players with most shots in the PL, his shots have the highest average distance to goal with 21.5 yards (I'm guessing that number could be inflated by freekicks).
Tuchel is a better manager than Amorim so no surprise TBF.Chelsea’s back 4 > Tuchel’s back 5 went alright like
Funny example too because he also expressed a desire to take over in the Summer instead. He eventually, like Amorim, took the job though and made the best he could out of a tough situation.
Amorim aint making the best, quite the opposite, it’s like he’s making it as difficult as possible for himself and his players.
Appears so
I don't agree necessarily, Ruben Amorim is clearly going to live and die by his philosophies, he's not going to start tweaking them to achieve short term results.
EtH abandoned all of his principles and ideas within about ten minutes of walking through the door. Then we had to sit and listen to him tell us how great we had played every week and how it was only injuries to Shaw and Martinez that prevented us from winning the treble.
Amorim is performing the open heart surgery that we actually needed on the squad and he's fronting up afterwards and telling us his real opinions on how bad it is!
Whilst this is harsh, this was my first thought when videos immediately surfaced of him arriving and making players 'run back' in training. I'm so dead to all the PR noise these days, it' all complete BS, I just look at the what we see on the pitch and make my opinion based off that.Harsh on @horsechoker
Agreed, and it's also a bad thing if we have no follow up in the box.
Our players are inherently shit at actually running into the box, any chances the keeper parries wouldn't end up in our players paths and possession would just go back to the opponent
Sure, why not. Managers have no abilities that separate them, if you are patient a team will have the same results whether they are coached by SAF or Pulis.
Amorim-haters out in full force patting each other on the back tonight. Resorting to ad hominem comments against the manager pretty much show there's an agenda here and everything is being said in bad faith. We laugh at RAWK but we have way bigger twats in our fanbase.
Two things I noticed this week. One of Liverpool's goals against Tottenham was as if they were playing ice hockey the players were flying up the pitch one touch passing and bang back of the net. Absolutely the fastest slickest football you could want.
Plymouth. Ok, they were playing the biggest game of their lives, but the effort and commitment compared with what I see our players doing was a different level. When I see our players, I assume that they are trying their best - but when I watch the last 20 minutes of their match and saw the effort, not skill, pure effort and determination and we are miles of bloody Plymouth in that area.
I think he'll be fine but progress will be slow, while we switch out players with not much room to manoeuvre financially.
CBs should be last on the list, we're OK there. Wing backs, CMs and strikers are what will make the most impact.
CBs should be last on the list, we're OK there. Wing backs, CMs and strikers are what will make the most impact.
Have our results been better, we've lost our last 2 home league matches and 5 out of our last 8 matches in the league that's not even better than Ten Hag when he was sacked.
We have beaten 2 sub par teams in the Europa League though so if your counting that as better form fair play to you, if we were unable to beat either of them we may as well pack it in, neither would finish in the top half of the championship
Dumbing down his entire system to simply having an extra centreback is… very stupid. The role of literally every player on the pitch is different. That’s what a system is. The pressing, the movement, the passing, the positioning. It’s from back to front, it’s not just a slight positional change in the back line.
I get though that the Amorim haters (after barely a few months - mental) need his system to be just a simple tweak here or there in order to justify their disdain, because then you can rightly say he’s not doing good enough with the same players etc etc. Instead of letting the man instil his system into a squad that is capable of doing it. There is no guarantee he will get it to work but it’s frankly ridiculous to be writing him off already. Christ.
Calling people Amorim haters is ridiculous. Within a few games he was talking about relegation and is averaging 1.1 points per game. No one was expecting us to charge up the league but we were expecting some green shoots of improvement in our play. The things in his control - tactics and XI choices are fair game to criticise.
Chelsea’s back 4 > Tuchel’s back 5 went alright like
Funny example too because he also expressed a desire to take over in the Summer instead. He eventually, like Amorim, took the job though and made the best he could out of a tough situation.
Amorim aint making the best, quite the opposite, it’s like he’s making it as difficult as possible for himself and his players.
You’re seriously comparing our squad to that Chelsea team he inherited? They had Rudiger, Thiago Silva, Azpil, James and Chilwell as CBs and wingbacks, Kante and Jorginho bossing it in midfield. That’s a significantly stronger base to the team than what we have. Pre injury prone Mount and Havertz were also excellent for them going forward and probably better than anyone we have too outside of maybe Bruno.
The squad clearly needs an overhaul after a decade of shit transfer activity. Yet it’s also being compared, when needed to suit an argument, to squads which had some of the best defenders and midfielders in recent history.
If you can’t see some green shoots then that’s on you. The results against City, Arsenal and Liverpool are definitely green shoots. He just needs better players for his system to start performing against teams that we need to break down further.
I think I know what you're getting at, we look like a toddler trying to open a fridge, we've got a vague idea what we're supposed to be doing without the tools to get the job done, and wandering the ball about then being caught on the break by teams sitting deep is painful, but it's also why we're doing better against decent calibre opponents and away from home, because the other side are less likely to pack the box.
Whether it's shooting from distance or not we need to sort it!
He himself said it wasn’t that different to what players were already playing. Do enlighten us as to what is so different. A good You Tube video with some amateur Pep’s might be able to help you with it.
And who the feck wrote him off?
There is a lot of concern over Amorim and whether he can turn the ship in the right direction, but most of the issues we face are not issues he created, but actually problems that have been percolating for over 3 seasons now.
I reckon that our problems can be broken into 3 or 4 categories:
1. 50% of the problem: Very few physically superior squad members / lack of physicality, pace, strength, even technical ability
* You can only find a couple of players that can consistently win individual battles. Garnacho and Amad (sometimes). Look at Madrid, they have superior athletes in almost every position. City, Liverpool, Arsenal… Hojlund and Zirkzee have the bodies for it, but consistently lose out. Only Garnacho and Amad create by beating their markers. Bruno is creative, but not in that way. In the era of SAF, we had flying wingers and strong 9s, a midfield of steel.
* This is 100% a recruitment issue. There is no purpose in our transfer business. We aren’t going for particularly fast players or strong players, etc. Mourinho, say what you want about him, but he definitely wanted power, strength in his sides. I blame this on ETH, and Murtagh and even INEOS for the last crappy window.
2. 25% Mentality: Lack of leadership on the pitch. Bruno is too whiny as a leader, we need more steel and a captain who holds players accountable. Hoping Amorim can find the right player in this area. I would rather see fighting spirit and red cards than allowing players to waltz through the midfield and defense.
3. 15% Striker: we bought strikers that don’t score and have no elite characteristics/ attributes. Is there anything that either Hojlund or Zirkzee are elite at? If you can’t score goals you are going to have unpredictable results.
4. 10% Formation: The Caf talks about this ad nauseum, but it’s not really that big of a factor. The 3-4-2-1 isn’t what we spend our time in, really. It’s a 5-4-1 when defending and a 3-2-5 when attacking. Most top clubs have a 4-5-1 or 4-4-2 when defending and a 3-2-5 when attacking. Amorim is really not that different, the only thing you can say is different is that he always wants 3 CBs and a 5-4-1 when defending.
Our biggest problem is that we have a squad that is mediocre athletically, and unfortunately, Amorim needs time and money to address that issue.
If the formation is 10%, which I think is maybe too low but not by much, then I don't think time on the training ground will make a big difference and that's why we see very little progress so far. Against Leicester it was like Amorim had had 2 days with the ream. We need 6-9 new players but have limited cash, that is why this will take time/years. Winning the EL might be very important.
We've become such an emotional and needy fanbase, traumatised by the last 10 years or so which is understandable. We want a quick fix and have fears that everything will inevitably go tits up, because they always do, right? (based on the last 10 years or so). Let's look at the current situation. We had a terrible start to the season, languishing in the bottom half, under a manager who spent over 600m, so we go out and hire a young sought after manager who's team is dominating their domestic league after not winning a league title for 19 years and who are sitting top of the champions league group stage. This young manager plays a system completely the opposite to how we play, this manager asks if he could join in the summer as he will need a full preseason and some players to get our team used to changing the way they play, but our hierarchy insist that it's now or never, so he accepts the challenge and joins us. Amorim's Sporting play a dominating style of football, where they keep the ball and bully and beat down teams, while United for the last 10 years have been playing underdog counter attacking football, where we struggle to beat low block teams and occasionally beat the bigger teams by counter attacking with pacey wingers. This manager is tasked with changing the whole culture of the club and how we should play football, and he's having to do it with no preseason, no additional players, and very limited training sessions due to the busy schedule. I'm quiet comfortable with that even though I hate seeing our team lose matches, but I know the gains will follow the pain. Once it clicks and we have a settled team (could happen in Feb, March or even April), then we finish the season on a high, go in to preseason on that high where players know their roles and the system, and we can fine tune the squad with 2 or 3 players to have all the jigsaw pieces, then we should look good going into next season. This to me looks like the plan, it may work and it may not, but Amorim has been clear with us that this is what he's trying to do from day one, and yes he's had curveballs thrown in his direction like the Rashford situation and Mounts injury (he was counting on Mount as being one of his most important players), but he's sticking to his guns and is being open and transparent with us, which is very refreshing.
While I do agree with allot of what you say I definitely think more can be done to solidify the way we play. My main issue is the incessant chopping and changing of players all the time. Just pick the players you want in your starting 11 and play them all for 5 games on the spin. I know Hojlund is good at stretching the opposition but Zirkzee has done well recently just let him start a few in a row.
We need consistency with players in their correct positions for a period of time, let them grow into it and have some experience as an 11. What you say about the physicality is definitely correct but there are things we can do.
Good post. We have to back Amorim 100%. Another good post I came across online:
I'm Portuguese. Growing up, people always referred to Porto, Benfica and Sporting as "the big 3" here in Portugal, but throughout my life Sporting had always been a level below Porto and Benfica. They had last won the league back in the 2001/2002 season, I was too little to even remember it because I was born in 1997. I remember questioning throughout the years "why is Sporting even mentioned as one of the big 3 anymore?", until Amorim took over. I cannot overstate how big of an impact he had at that club. Sporting was finally able to win the league under his management and the team he managed to build was genuinely quite outstanding, considering the low budgets Portuguese teams have to work with.
As big of a club as United is, the truth is that right now being a United coach is a pretty mean life. It is not a job that many would want. High risk, low reward. Amorim had Champions League football at Sporting and under his guide they were still the best team in the league, he could've won another league title this year and had a good run in Europe as well. The writing was already on the wall, Sporting was clearly going to dominate Portugal this season if he had stayed. He could've waited another season and gotten a job at another big club elsewhere.
I believe Amorim is at United for all the right reasons. I really believe he wants to challenge himself and that he wants to do right by your club. This is being said by a Porto fan, by the way. So there is no bias here. He is a genuinely good manager and I wholeheartedly believe everything he does is for the good of the club. I've already seen a few United fans turning on him for the way he treated Rashford, claiming that it was personal. It's just not true, he's not like that, and the fans have to stop being so empathetic towards a player who has been in the top 10 highest earners in the Premier League for years whilst not even having been able to break 10 G/A last season. United are already struggling financially as it is, and they're having to pay over 300k a week to a player who apparently can't even be bothered to give his best in training. Regardless of how talented he is and how much you love him, the reality is that Rashford's contract was a one sided deal that benefited only him, and the portion of the fanbase that's claiming "he dedicated his life to this club!" seem to almost be implying that he had done so for free and out of the kindness of his heart, and also seem to never question whether the club had been getting their money's worth, which they absolutely haven't.
Regardless of what happens this season, United have to back him. You have to stop being stuck in this endless loop of swapping managers because it should be clear by now that there is no man on this planet that can singlehandedly turn this club around by himself, certainly not overnight. Give him time, give him a few years. Stop panicking everytime the team loses, he hasn't had a chance to buy the players he needs and is having to work with a team built by several different managers who had different play styles. The squad is a complete mess at the moment.
You need to trust the process. Know that Amorim is a good manager, know that you made a good decision in picking him up and know that things may get a lot worse before they get better. If the fanbase doesn't fully commit to a manager and immediately resorts to putting pressure on the board to sack him every time he goes on a series of bad results, United will be forever stuck in limbo.
Suppose 90% of the world's teams operate with 3 at the back over a period of the last 50 years, and the remaining 10% is operate with 4 the back. There's a 90% chance that the most successful team in any given year will be a team with 3 at the back. Over 50 years of that being the case, the vast majority of the world's best and most successful teams will be overwhelmingly be a team with 3 at the back. Now imagine there's a guy trying to implement the unpopular 4 at the back system; you get it..........they'll tell him he's rigid and that he should play 3 at the back because historically most of the successful teams in history played with 3.
You've got to realise that the argument you're making is flawed and skewed, and it's sheer confirmation bias.
You've got to realise that the argument you're making is flawed and skewed, and it's sheer confirmation bias.
I think the specific complaints are:
In rest defence, it's a flat back five, both your wing backs are deep and holding the line with your CBs. With a 4 ATB system that would be four players instead of five so clearly there's a bit of a defensive bias inherent to the system. On the transition then once you win the ball, you start a man short. Some of it can be made up by having really athletic, attacking wing backs but generally it biases towards being less attacking as a result.
So let's say we're out of the rest defence --> counter attack situation and the ball went out for a GK. I don't think there's much of a difference here. Both build up in a 3-2 shape and have interesting ways of making that work. Our 5 ATB is a bit static and there's no real variation here. The 3-2 is constructed with the three CBs + 2 CMs for us currently. I haven't seen much variation where as in typical 4 ATB systems you see a wide variety:
----------- DM --- FB -----------
------ FB --- CB --- CB ------
----------- DM --- #10 -------
------ FB --- CB --- CB ------
----------- DM --- CB ---------
------ FB --- CB --- FB -------
You get the point. The variation makes it harder to press and easier for you to find solutions when building up. This can be fixed in a 5 ATB system of course, other teams like Leverkusen have no problems generating these rotations.
In attack again if you compare the front fives -- they're made of CF, LW, RW, #10, FB vs CF, #10, #10, WB, WB. Again a touch of bias towards defence because we're using two wing backs in the place of a traditional #10 and a traditional fullback but maybe it averages out. We talked about the 3-2 system above. Some coaches are ditching the protection of the extra man at the back on transition and are going with a 2-2 instead (2x CB, 1x DM and one other guy -- say an inverted fullback or the second CM). The theory is that if you have better quality players than your opposition then you're generally going to score more than them. Increasing your attacking threat and amplifying your quality advantage there is better than preventing the odd goal here or there on the counter. Ange is the biggest proponent of this. You can never really do this with a back five system -- the 3 CBs are permanent fixtures and will remain there.
The last bit is recruitment and need for specialist players. Precisely because the 4 ATB system is so dominant, it's much easier to find both players and managers for this system. You have to assume any new managerial appointment might be sacked and you need a plan for the next 5 - 10 years. Who's the next coach? How do you avoid the squad churn that comes from shifting systems? What if you go to 4 ATB and need Rashford and Garnacho again but you've already sold them?
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I think it’s only 10% because we’re rarely set up that way… if I look at the back 3, Maguire is excellent in the air, but we know he lacks pace. Licha is good with tackling, but is not great in the air.
I do think the mentality makes our lack of athleticism more difficult to overcome. You look at the SAF teams… well, Gary Neville wasn’t particularly athletic, but when you’ve got a maniac like Roy Keane demanding performances as well as delivering crunching tackles, it makes everyone more focused and playing on the edge a bit.
We basically wasted 450m of 600m spent during Ten Hag’s era. Only Maz, Ugarte and potentially Yoro are good enough for a top 4 squad.
I think the Caf is obsessed with the formation when actually it’s still 11 v 11… I don’t think there are any “specialist” positions, you just have different preferred attributes for the wingbacks. The 10s are of similar profiles to a natural 10 or wingers (considering so many wingers are inverted now). Everyone else has jobs that really don’t change that much from a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1.
Again, it’s our formation when defending, 5-4-1, and attacking, 3-2-5 that are more important. Let’s be honest, Dalot doesn’t have the attributes of a wingback and neither does Maz, which is why transitions / counterattacking is a bit slow.