Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach

What a strange analogy man. Posters in this thread, who don't prefer Amorim, are competing who will sound more intelligent sometimes.
To go back to your analogy it's builders company and he needs to provide tools for his business to be competitive. It's an idirect charge to a customer, but more as an investment. Same as investing into players for your squad.

Now we are comparing
sports science with pipes and bricks.
Also people who think Amorim needs time and should be given everything he needs act as if they are the only people who are genuine United fans..

Anyway, one of the clearest sign a manager is doing a bad job is there is a great divide in supporters.
 
Okay, lets talk about weak squad. When Ten Hag took over, we had Lindelof, Maguire, AWB, Shaw, Varane, Bruno, McTominay, Fred, Sancho, Rashford, Martial.

That is a weak squad too, we finished 3rd and a trophy in his first season. Even then, end of the season we were bad and we decided okay, lets back him again and see if we improve and got worse, still finished 8th and a trophy.

Now, with every extra training session that Amorim is doing, are we getting better or worse? We have had full week sessions for over a month now.

My point is not sack him, I want to see improved performances at least till the end of the season, to give us a reason to back him.
At the moment, he is worse than Ten Hag.

A coach is meant to improve players, which is why we hired a head coach. In almost every other club, coaches are tasked to improve players, only at United its not expected and it has to be transfer spend.

We are consistently stuck in this cycle. Hire a manager, give him 1 season free pass, make excuses such as he hasn't got his players, they cant fit his system, he needs x,y,z to play his system. Manager gets 150-200m per summer and slight improvement at the start and we get worse, then he is backed again because its his "first full season" and give him time to improve and get more players. Spend 150-200m again and then realise oops, its not improving, sack him and then bring another manager.

its the same cycle since Jose.
How could you forget Donny VDB? another outstanding club signing during Ole's time. We've been shite in the transfer market for years. It genuinely is hard to say who was the worst, but probably EtH takes the crown at this point. I wasn't a huge fan of Jose's recruitment either. I do think all 3 managers sacrificed a more progressive style of football for instant results and then when the realization kicks in that we have to progress further it all falls apart. Maybe we can take comfort in the fact that Amorim is so determined to stick to his principles and won't sacrifice them for a kind of false progress?

In my opinion, how well Amorim does in the cups will probably give him enough leeway for what has been a horrendous league season. An FA cup or a Europa League final will just give us a bit of belief in the manager and I do generally think we've looked better in European games than domestic ones.
 
:lol:
Even players in league 1 or 2 score goals, whenever they are. So it doesn't mean much.

Last Italian team to win UCL was in 2010. Some 15 years ago. In that period only 3 times has Italian team be in UCL final.

In that same 15 year period, there has been 2 English finals ( Spurs vs Liverpool, City vs Chelsea. ) thats is 4 times alone. In comparison 9 times has EPL teams been in UCL finals since 2010


Italian league is not up there anymore. Premier League is very very competitive
That is a good point. if you look at the list of players that have left United in the last 5 or 6 years and have actually gone on to do pretty well and achieve things it's a very small list, but the ones that have have mostly done it in Italy (Lukaku, Darmian, Young, Mkhitaryan etc.)
 
How could you forget Donny VDB? another outstanding club signing during Ole's time. We've been shite in the transfer market for years. It genuinely is hard to say who was the worst, but probably EtH takes the crown at this point. I wasn't a huge fan of Jose's recruitment either. I do think all 3 managers sacrificed a more progressive style of football for instant results and then when the realization kicks in that we have to progress further it all falls apart. Maybe we can take comfort in the fact that Amorim is so determined to stick to his principles and won't sacrifice them for a kind of false progress?

In my opinion, how well Amorim does in the cups will probably give him enough leeway for what has been a horrendous league season. An FA cup or a Europa League final will just give us a bit of belief in the manager and I do generally think we've looked better in European games than domestic ones.

We have looked better in European games because the teams we have played have been poor quality. Teams dont high press in Europa league.

I think you will see a difference when Real Sociedad game comes around, we have gone out to Spanish opponents every time we face them.

That is one thing that keeps me locked in with Amorim, he has not sacrificed for short terms results which has been the failure for the last 3 permanent managers..
 
We have looked better in European games because the teams we have played have been poor quality. Teams dont high press in Europa league.

I think you will see a difference when Real Sociedad game comes around, we have gone out to Spanish opponents every time we face them.

That is one thing that keeps me locked in with Amorim, he has not sacrificed for short terms results which has been the failure for the last 3 permanent managers..
I'm not entirely convinced by my own hopes on this front but I will say the fact that Amorim clearly favors football with a bit more of possession focus - maybe that actually might stand us in good stead against a Spanish team this time, and we won't be so easy to pick off.

Here's hoping anyway :lol:
 
I'm not entirely convinced by my own hopes on this front but I will say the fact that Amorim clearly favors football with a bit more of possession focus - maybe that actually might stand us in good stead against a Spanish team this time, and we won't be so easy to pick off.

Here's hoping anyway :lol:

yes but we have also been picked off at home by almost everyone. The problem we have is we cannot concede a goal because, we cannot score goals.

We barely score well crafted goals under Amorim, they are coming from the high press or second balls of set pieces. That is the most worrying thing for me, our chance creation is so low that we just cannot concede a goal.
 
It changes and has changed nothing. Precisely because we kept the manager-centric approach.
It changes everything. One of our (recent past) executives was prioritizing the buying of players on the basis of how much income we could receive from the shirt sales and did so for sometime; the managers that were here during this period were in no position to argue with him/ therefore defend themselves... so much for your manager-centric notion.

The operation of this club has not been 'manager-centric' since SAF left.
 
I dont want to believe he will not change.

He has to change. Even Arteta started with wingbacks, and changed into a flat 433.

He cant coach for 20+ years without changing his ways. He will change for sure, Amorim just needs to remove the handbrake from the team and we will perform.
He will not change, he has said that many times. He will rather be sacked than play 2 CBs.
 
I'm not entirely convinced by my own hopes on this front but I will say the fact that Amorim clearly favors football with a bit more of possession focus - maybe that actually might stand us in good stead against a Spanish team this time, and we won't be so easy to pick off.

Here's hoping anyway :lol:

I'm confident about Real Sociedad. They have to play both Madrid and Barcelona, then have Sevilla between our two legs. Granted Sevilla have been poor this Season but it's still a tough game. Sevilla are also starting to get some form together. We'll do well in the cups this year.
 
I don't disagree with what you've said.
But on the other hand there is a group of the fanbase that have unrealistically high expectations of any new manager and are not even prepared to give them a reasonable amount of time before they feel he should be sacked. And this is well before you hit the 3 year mark, it would probably be closer to 3 months.

There is yes. Some people have no patience at all though.

Though to be fair I'd imagine absolutely no fans expectations are being met right now. We're almoat at the point where we couldn't be doing any worse without getting relegated.
 
You will struggle to find examples of a recent successful plan in football that saw a team take a necessary 6-8 steps backward in league position. It is very rare and when it does it's not necessary it's just a massive feck up.
Yeah I was about to ask as there ever been a team that was in relegation form with a manager and then that same manager shot them up the league in the same season. The recent examples of Leicester and Forest had new managers appointed somewhere along the line who slowed that relegation form and then turned things around, not continue it and then shoot them up.

Never heard of it happening. Middling? Yes. Relegation form? No.
 
I would disagree with that. For any football club to spend as much money as we did with ETH in charge and somehow end up with this squad, the overwhelming memory of his time in charge will be much more about horrible transfer dealings than whatever tactics he used. Besides, a lot of the flaws in his tactics and approach came about from trying to get a tune out of a woefully mismatched and incompatible bunch of players.

It's actually similar to what we're seeing now. All the tactics nerds so obsessed with formations and tactics they can't see how the manager is being completely hamstrung by inadequate players in all of our most important positions. Which is going to kill us, no matter how the manager lines them up.
I think most fans who criticise Amorim realize that our players are not good enough. This is the largest single reason for our poor results.

Having said that, 3421 is not working so why not try 4231 for 5-10 games? It didn't work great under ETH but it still generated more points and it might work better with Amorim? But I guess if Amorim believed in it he would have tried it by now. But he doesn't give the impression of being tactically flexible.
 
It changes everything. One of our (recent past) executives was prioritizing the buying of players on the basis of how much income we could receive from the shirt sales and did so for sometime; the managers that were here during this period were in no position to argue with him/ therefore defend themselves... so much for your manager-centric notion.

The operation of this club has not been 'manager-centric' since SAF left.
That doesn't change the fact that the manager is not a scout or a DOF. Clubs employ entire departments of specialists to identify and acquire players.

The old school model of "give the manager who he wants" does not work anymore, as brilliantly exemplified by our last manager.
 
Was there a gun to his head? Or was his family held captive that they forced his hand? he could have said no thanks.

Faith, maybe the millions of ££ they are paying him.

Its totally silly to say, oh Ruben didnt want to come mid season, so we should not judge him at all.. He is head coach, he wont tell them who he needs, the club will buy the players.
They presumably made him an offer he couldn't refuse, a legal contract not an act of faith.

Not, judging Ruben is not the issue, its when and against what criteria, he is to be judged. I think the club have already made it clear the judgement will not be made this season and one of the reasons is they wanted him at the club right away was so he would be signed sealed and delivered, so that others sniffing around would not have chance to get in first... for once we seem to have been first off the mark.

Really... he is head coach , but he wont tell them who he needs (or wants).... oh my goodness are we going back to buying players based on potential shirt sales... imagine the conversation... "yes Ruben we have landed that Star C/F from ...XYZ.... he will sell 'zillions of shirts'..... what, oh your priority was a ball-playing goalkeeper... never mind, you are the head coach, its your job to turn him into the keeper you want... but make sure he still wears No.9"
 
You keep ignoring the fact they’re being asked to learn a new system, one that is clearly beyond the capability of some of these players. It’s exposing the limitations within the squad - and there are quite a few limitations.
How hard is it to learn a new system or rather how hard is it for a coach to teach a new system? Why is it that only at our club we are making these kind of excuses for the coach? He's had what 4 months at this club now? Is it that hard to show some signs of life in this team? His sole responsibility as a head coach is to work with and improve the players at his disposal. But, its still a disjointed mess on the pitch. We are no better now than when he first joined. Again, I'm not asking for title winning form before someone misunderstands me. All I'm asking is for him to show better than relegation form, have us somewhere between 8th-12th, but apparently that's very hard to do.

I've made this point earlier but watching the Everton game nothing of his system makes sense and makes me think it's going to be magically better with some new signings. Plenty of situations where our players were isolated with no passing options at all, Dalot playing as a wing back but inverts inside even when he was playing on the right, Ugarte our only natural DM/CM in 2nd half popping up on the right wing, Bruno and Mazraoui constantly swapped around different positions from game to game and sometimes even in the same game itself, Garnacho still playing as a left winger rather than the left sided no.10. We switched to 3 at the back yet arent defensively solid as we still concede 2-3 goals every game all the while creating square root of feck all.
 
They presumably made him an offer he couldn't refuse, a legal contract not an act of faith.

Not, judging Ruben is not the issue, its when and against what criteria, he is to be judged. I think the club have already made it clear the judgement will not be made this season and one of the reasons is they wanted him at the club right away was so he would be signed sealed and delivered, so that others sniffing around would not have chance to get in first... for once we seem to have been first off the mark.

Really... he is head coach , but he wont tell them who he needs (or wants).... oh my goodness are we going back to buying players based on potential shirt sales... imagine the conversation... "yes Ruben we have landed that Star C/F from ...XYZ.... he will sell 'zillions of shirts'..... what, oh your priority was a ball-playing goalkeeper... never mind, you are the head coach, its your job to turn him into the keeper you want... but make sure he still wears No.9"

I mean two can play that game....

Ruben walks into the meeting with WIncox, Berrada and Vivell.. "Guys, I need a ST but it has to be Gyokores only"... Okay but we can get XYZ who are similar profile but younger and cheaper... "NO, I only want Gyokeres" But Ruben you get Gyokeres for 80m and we wont be able to sign anyone... "No finance is not my concern, I want Gyokores to plat my system"

Well that isnt going to work is it? You will be the first one here to say... INEOS have messed up by overpaying and not backing Amorim as he needed XYZ including a ST.
 
I understand what you are saying, and appreciate why....but I would beg to differ.

First, (and foremost)we are not Real Madrid and not funded by the State.

Second, when a committee decides which players will come to the club (rather than just enabling) players to come to the club, the saying "a horse designed by a committee, finishes up becoming a camel", is more apt. The manager needs to chose his players, executives may opposes, offer reasons why not, ask the manager to look again, etc.
The only time (I would) agree with oversight which becomes on-site management, is if the decision is to appoint simply a coach not a manager.
However that would require
a) the executives know what they are doing, and carry total responsibility and
b) the coach is able to 'managed upwards' and when necessary be able to tell the executives, "you've made a mistake with this one, I cannot turn a sows ear into a silk purse".

Nope that's one of the reasons we've wasted over a billion quid post SAF.

A manager should have to earn that right over a number of years.
 
Hes probably not helping himself. There does seem to be an element of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. I just dont see great alternatives in both his team selections or other managers.
Throwing 18 year olds into a team that's drowning just doesn't seem sensible particularly when a large portion of your starters are 20.
Casemiro doesn't have legs to play midfield - well Eriksen is the alternative so ...
Switch to a 433? Great, who's playing on the wing now that Garnacho is our only winger? I guess Dorgu and go back to Dalot at left back which everyone loved. Or Bruno maybe and try and build a competent midfield without him (has to include no legs casemiro presumably).
Maguire is a decent cb but has a glaring weakness. You cant drop him or you start giving away goals on set pieces every week because theres feck all height in the rest of the team (unless you play casemiro i guess). Where do you fit him in? You stick him central and he becomes responsible for our offside line which hes consistently terrible at, you put him out wide defending the channel and he gets killed by wingers.
Our central spine is just lightweight (Hojlund, Mainoo, Bruno, Eriksen, Martinez, Lindelof) or off the pace (Casemiro, Maguire, De Ligt, Zirkzee). Some compensate better for it than others. Some are closer to a decent level than others but its weak compared to any and every premier league team. Technique can be ignored because they all routinely feck up 5 yard passes for some reason - its a mixed bag.
 
Messi missed a number of games throughout Guardiola's tenure there and they had a positive record. They had a positive record without anyone, really.

Messi is a good example of the limitations of the 'profile' thing. Guardiola would have not achieved anything outside Barcelona if he insisted that his system required a Messi-type player, because he wasn't going to find that player anywhere. Instead those abilities or talents had to be spread elsewhere.

I don't think anyone denies that you need some traits on 'your' squad in order to execute certain tactics. The arguments are mostly about how many of these traits do you need. It would be absurd to expect any squad to play like prime Barcelona, but the opposite is also absurd: that without specialist profiles for your tactics nothing will work in any way.
 
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What are you on about here? Ten Hag signed or promoted 80-90% of the squad he had last season. His whole plan from the very beginning was transitional football. Way back during his first season he said:

Saying you want to be the best transition team in the world and then signing Martinez/Eriksen/Antony etc. still does my head in
Hes probably not helping himself. There does seem to be an element of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. I just dont see great alternatives in both his team selections or other managers.
Throwing 18 year olds into a team that's drowning just doesn't seem sensible particularly when a large portion of your starters are 20.
Casemiro doesn't have legs to play midfield - well Eriksen is the alternative so ...
Switch to a 433? Great, who's playing on the wing now that Garnacho is our only winger? I guess Dorgu and go back to Dalot at left back which everyone loved. Or Bruno maybe and try and build a competent midfield without him (has to include no legs casemiro presumably).
Maguire is a decent cb but has a glaring weakness. You cant drop him or you start giving away goals on set pieces every week because theres feck all height in the rest of the team (unless you play casemiro i guess). Where do you fit him in? You stick him central and he becomes responsible for our offside line which hes consistently terrible at, you put him out wide defending the channel and he gets killed by wingers.
Our central spine is just lightweight (Hojlund, Mainoo, Bruno, Eriksen, Martinez, Lindelof) or off the pace (Casemiro, Maguire, De Ligt, Zirkzee). Some compensate better for it than others. Some are closer to a decent level than others but its weak compared to any and every premier league team. Technique can be ignored because they all routinely feck up 5 yard passes for some reason - its a mixed bag.
Pretty much this. People can throw all the tantrums they want, but I genuinely don't see many adjustments available with how horrid the pool of players we have available right now is. Apart from chucking in youngsters and hoping one or two hit the ground running, the team is what it is. Which is depressing when looking towards the rest of the season.
 
There is a perplexing, almost masochistic, willingness among vast swathes of Manchester United's support-base to sink to unspeakable depths, suffer for suffering's sake and lay multiple seasons to waste, in the belief that the manager-of-the-hour is uniquely up to the task of restoring the club as we take a few steps back to then take a giant leap forward (because magic, that's why!) while side-stepping inconsequential short term objectives and expectations, that actually need to be met to boost flagging morale, earn credit for the future and keep the money flowing to facilitate the refurbishment of the first team squad. Might seem strange to supporters of other major clubs, especially well-run ones or where there's a tendency to consider new appointments with a healthy dose of skepticism, but it is what it is.

Perhaps certain folk are too disillusioned with the present and this is them concocting a bright future to compartmentalize and console themselves, at a time when there's not much to be optimistic about? Or perhaps this is informed by Ferguson's anomalistic tenure. Where he led the club to 11th and 12th placed finishes in the league, before turning things around and going on to dominate English football. Except, he had previously earned some credit by virtue of stablizing the results in 1986–87 (from 6 losses and 3 wins in 13 matches to 8 losses and 12 wins in the following 31 matches) and finishing 2nd in 1987–88 (with the highest points tally in club history, if memory serves). And, crucially, the competitive landscape of English football back then was rather dissimilar to what we have in the present moment. Manchester United doesn't just need to overcome the likes of Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal now, who have stolen a march on us, but also clubs that are hungry and punching above their weight class in Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest. Every season in the wilderness gives others the opportunity to chip away at our previously towering economic advantages and takes us further away from our ultimate sporting objectives, and makes it even harder for us to re-establish ourselves.

By the end of this campaign, Amorim would have managed 40 matches or thereabouts — typically, that's a good enough sample size to “judge” a manager. If a manager says a lot of the right things but can't have his team operating a level that is greater than the sum of parts and keeps surrendering points in winnable games to arrive at a points-per-game ratio of 1.00, maybe it's not the right manager for Manchester United, qualitative issues with regard to the playing staff notwithstanding. And even though many of us were enthused by this appointment, he must give us something tangible to build our hopes around, or we're grasping at straws and operating with blind faith.
Back of the net! And there are even those among us saying relegation would be a nice system cleanser! There's no guaranteeing we'd bounce right back up and instead might go the way of Blackburn.

Of his 22 matches in charge, his record is 9W 4D 9L, or a win rate of 40.91%. Ten Hag was sacked with a win rate of 54.69%. In the league, he has 15 matches with 4W 3D 8L. Add the remaining 11 league matches, for a sample size of 26. He'd have to win 9 of the next 11 to even hit a 50% win rate.

He's not winning 9 of the next 11. (Ipswich, Arsenal, Leicester, Forest, Man City, Newcastle, Wolves, Bournemouth, Brentford, West Ham, Chelsea, Aston Villa). If we function as we have been, we win 3 of those (Ipswich, Leicester, Wolves) but I wouldn't bet on it. Winning 7 of 26 is an insane stat. I don't see how Brexit Jim would trust Amorim with that record.
 
It's funny to me seeing people who vehemently defended ETH for 18 months straight turning on the new manager so quickly. Suddenly all those excusees and mitigating factors don't matter that much.
Could it be they have seen the error of their ways, and have learned that giving blind allegiance to a manager out of his depth is never going to work? People had faith in Ten Hag because he said the right things and lead us to believe he was a few players short of his master plan. Patience was finally exhausted before the FA Cup win, and he should have been given the boot then [after the win]. To say that these same people can't judge these shit results and shit performances under Amorim as being, well, shit, is disingenuous.
 
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That doesn't change the fact that the manager is not a scout or a DOF. Clubs employ entire departments of specialists to identify and acquire players.

The old school model of "give the manager who he wants" does not work anymore, as brilliantly exemplified by our last manager.
Managers never were scouts or DoF, but they would go and look at any players the scout recommended, or send one of their coaching staff. Managers are not DoF's but they advise such people on their needs, with recommendations.

The overview of football at the club would be developed via the DoF and hence they would be instrumental in who would be recruited as the team manager.

If the manager retains responsibility for the success of the team on the field, then s/he should retain the final say on who is recruited to the first team squad.

Coaching may well be a large part of a managers role going forward, but management of people is still the vital role element. The coach's knowledge of systems, deployments, patterns, etc. has to be underpinned by a range of people-management skills, persuasion, motivation, compassion, understanding etc of human behavior, as well as the 'hard-nosed' decision making skills. The coach may be a brilliant on-field technical expert, but these skills can only be delivered effectively with people who have also traditional management expertise and can deliver the 'hard decisions' when necessary.

Coaches can, in trying to find that extra 5% performance output, get too close to players, in such circumstances a degree of separation is required between the roles of manager, coach and player.

In traditional terms the Manager was No.1 in overall charge of the squad, the No.2 was the Coach....but it very often doesn't work the other way around, as exemplified where coaches step up from No.2 to No.1 but are unable to maintain the 'bounce'.
 
Could it be they have seen the error of their ways, and have learned that giving blind allegiance to a manager out of his depth is never going to work? People had faith in Ten Hag because he said the right things and lead us to believe he was a few players short of his master plan. Patience was finally exhausted before the FA Cup win, and he should have been given the boot then. To say that these same people can't judge these shit results and shit performances under Amorim as being, well, shit, is disingenuous.
At the same time we had proven and solid winners in Jose and LVG. I understand your point but what managers are out there and available?

Pep wouldn't do anything with this United team. Jose tried. LVG tried.

The only man I can think of that could really get the team going is Ancelotti. And he's going nowhere.
 
Saying you want to be the best transition team in the world and then signing Martinez/Eriksen/Antony etc. still does my head in

Pretty much this. People can throw all the tantrums they want, but I genuinely don't see many adjustments available with how horrid the pool of players we have available right now is. Apart from chucking in youngsters and hoping one or two hit the ground running, the team is what it is. Which is depressing when looking towards the rest of the season.
Dalot Maguire Yoro Mazraoui
Casemiro Ugarte
Dorgu Bruno Garnacho
Zirkzee

Sub in Eriksen after 55 min.

Can't possibly be any worse.
 
At the same time we had proven and solid winners in Jose and LVG. I understand your point but what managers are out there and available?

Pep wouldn't do anything with this United team. Jose tried. LVG tried.

The only man I can think of that could really get the team going is Ancelotti. And he's going nowhere.
Not with these players, they didn't. Shaw is the only holdover from LVG to present day (I think). I believe 100% that both Mourinho and LVG would get a better tune out of these players than Amorim. That does not mean I want either of them to take over, or that I want Amorim sacked. I want Amorim to start winning, plain and simple.
 
Not with these players, they didn't. Shaw is the only holdover from LVG to present day (I think). I believe 100% that both Mourinho and LVG would get a better tune out of these players than Amorim. That does not mean I want either of them to take over, or that I want Amorim sacked. I want Amorim to start winning, plain and simple.
Shaw probably is. I can't think of anyone else.

That's a fair point but they did have the opportunity to get their own players in. It's not like they didn't spend any money.
 
Shaw probably is. I can't think of anyone else.

That's a fair point but they did have the opportunity to get their own players in. It's not like they didn't spend any money.

And it's an opportunity that none of them should have had, that's a big reason behind our squad being worse after each ovehaul and most importantly poorer financially.
 
Hes starting to remind me of Van Gaal a bit and that's not a good thing! I don't understand how he is still playing this system and not changing things.
 
At the same time we had proven and solid winners in Jose and LVG. I understand your point but what managers are out there and available?

Pep wouldn't do anything with this United team. Jose tried. LVG tried.

The only man I can think of that could really get the team going is Ancelotti. And he's going nowhere.

They were both past it by the time they came to United.
 
They were both past it by the time they came to United.

And neither has any positive experience building their own teams which is a core issue for United since SAF retired.