Who's writing off the season other than some of the fans? It's not Amorim, the club, or the players as far as I can tell.
Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Imran (@Annihilate Now!) are here to discuss three 1-1 draws.
The first got us knocked out of the FA Cup, the next puts us in a good position in our Round of 16 Europa League game, and the latest was an actual decent performance against Arsenal at Old Trafford.
All hopes for the season now rest on the Europa League - does Amorim have the squad to win it?
RedCafe
Oh yes, make it about me, just like every problem is about Amorim.
Beautiful *chef kiss*
I'm simply calling out the state of this thread and the complete unwillingness of many posters to stop doom and glooming day after day.
If you read the last 50 pages, you'll rarely find a meaningful discussion about what the shortcomings in our play are and how Amorim can adress them.
It's 80% negative noise, complaining and doubt.
And I'm calling it out, deal with it.
Can't wait to celebrate a good win in two days, and watch this thread NOT grow.
Oh OK, frankly who cares? Fans are and will always be fickle. I thought there'd been a leak from the club or something.
Is there anyone that made every problems about Amorim? I have read that trope several times today but don't really see where it comes from.
Amorim is so great, what an awesome coach, it's so great, they just spent 25m for a young unproven WB that's apparently so crucial for his system, it will be just like ETH over again spending money for his signings, he has this apparent Championship quality squad barely above relegation since he's come in, his genius knows no bounds!
What is this football, how awesome must he be to trash Southampton 3-1 after being dominated for large parts of the game, he must be the greatest ever!!
I need to write at least 5 posts a day to explain how great Amorim is, I have to be heard!
And probably he stopped the Old trafford roof from leaking, the messaih!!
The opposite side of your terrible post. Is it funny? Is this how you think conversations happen? You can have a normal discussion while disagreeing with people without trying to mock them for having a different opinion to yours.
I find it often very typical to have the stance to want improvements in lift, but not willing to wait or pay for it.
You know what it probably isn't no, but it's a fecking depressing timeline.
One that has been made longer than necessary by the club fecking about and wasting time on Ten Hag when he should have been sacked over a year ago.
The shortcomings are that our players are really poor and they are ill suited to play 3421. That is why Amorim is showing so little progress after 3 months. We lack technical and physical ability. Amorim has promised to try the same concept for forever, 'I will not change'. Our press is bad, defenders too slow to play a high line, and our attackers are championship level. There is no magical tactical formula to make this team a top 5 team.
Thankfully that madness will stop with Dorgu in
So many absolute babies in here with no patience. It's really quite remarkable.
Why are we putting so much pressure on an unproven 20 year old LB with only 53 senior appearances in his career?
What's the pressure? He just has to add berrer balance than an atrocious existing combination we currently have.
I know there are limited attacking options but it's strange Amorim plays 5 defenders as often as he does when there's such a marked difference in our success as a team when we go a bit more attacking in the wing back areas. Hopefully the Dorgu signing will lift us a little bit in this respect.
There was a lot of clamour for us to sign a striker in the window, and understandably so, but I actually think a number 10 would've been more important for team balance and flexibility in how we used Amad in this system. It's immaterial now but it's surprising more effort wasn't made to do something there.
I think having a physical left back with an actual left foot would help the balance of the team almost automatically, especially given just how bad Dalot has been.
Put Amad back in WB. He is still very good even playing WB. Dorgu and Amad WBs should be the way forward.
This also allow Bruno and Garnacho to play the 10s roles.
That gaping hole in the middle of the field happened right from the first match of preseason up until those final four games of the season when he finally changed his tactics (barring an odd game here or there against a top team that he set up much more defensively). The injuries had nothing to do with us effectively playing one player by himself in the middle of the park, throwing an extra person forward. That was 100% a deliberate tactic (something that he changed this season when he started playing with a second CM again instead of a second #10). You could argue that the defensive line being so deep was due to injuries, but even that would be only somewhat true. They were still sitting deep during times we had barely any injuries, and even in ETH's first season we had the 14th deepest defensive line in the league.
People point to Maguire and say he forces us to sit deep, but in reality he happily played in the 4th and 6th highest defensive lines in the league in Ole's two full seasons (indeed the best season of Maguire's career came when we had the 4th highest). We also saw other teams have to put out a mismatched group of fairly slow defenders continue to play quite a high line.
Your last line is true to some extent. But I'd say there's a lot more potential for improvement in a system that has control over a system that is all about transitions, even if the early days are similar. It doesn't mean that that improvement will definitely come, but there's reason to be hopeful.
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People are deluded. As good as Dorgu is, we dont have a right wing back, no CM partnership, bad AMC's and no striker along with a below strength CB three.
Its going to be a very long and shitty season.
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Under ETH, it used to be Martinez and then Onana were thought to be the players that could massively improve our style of play.
Brighton is also a better team than Palace. Those glimpses may be visible because of the difference in the quality of the opposition rather than an improvement in our football.
Neither Collyer or Ugarte do not have a very good passing range. We would look more inept in attack without a passer from the midfield as our build-up or ability to hit teams on the counter would be even worse than it is now.
Each of our managers have come in and tried to sideline a player in order to stamp their authority. Whether it was Chicha and Rafael under VG or Shaw, Pogba under Jose or Ronaldo under ETH. We'll see the utility of sidelining Rashford in due time, but I don't see it as move towards "developing true collective of players who buy into his vision".
Training time is an essential, however lack of it shouldn't stop us from doing the basics. The basic structure of the team shouldn't take eons to implement.
Our squad is not optimum and we shouldn't expect Amo to perform miracles with it. However, it's not as terrible as to lose five of the seven premier league games, not opening our account in more than half of them.
I think statistics can be very misleading. The reason for the better win rate with attacking wingbacks is more likely due to the quality of opposition. As in, Amorim is more likely to play attacking wingbacks against lesser opponents, therefore the statistics are skewed.
Happy to be proven wrong if anyone has a list of fixtures to compare.
and you know this how?It wasn’t even cautious this season vs Liverpool
Our next signings need to be stronger in possession n more athletic, I'm sick if us getting bullied and outrun every week.
I agree this squad likely isn't a top 4/5 squad. However, a worse squad with injuries finished 8th last season and won a cup. Having strengthened the squad in the summer (which general consensus was that it was a good summer window), and now with a talented manager at the helm, where is the new manager expected to finish if this season is not a write off?
I think it's actually the opposite way around. The times the defensive wing backs have produced better results has been in some of the more difficult matches. Away wins to Fulham and Man City, drawing at Anfield and beating Arsenal in the cup. We did also lose to Arsenal in the league using them, for balance.
We've produced some really poor results at home in the league against teams you'd expect us to beat. Palace, Brighton, Newcastle, Bournemouth. Wolves away as well. 1 goal combined in all of those games using defensive wing backs. I'd maybe make some concessions for the Newcastle match where Ugarte and Fernandes were both suspended, and they were on a good run.
The match we lost with an attacking wing back was home to Forest, but we did still score twice there, and could've won if not for some really horrible defensive errors. I felt we played well in possession that day, compared to many of the drab matches we've experienced in other home defeats.
Interesting - so clearly going for attacking wing back is the way to go for home games atleast. Problem is we need Amad also in attack. Dorgu hitting the ground running would be the best thing for this team!
Some people see 5 at the back and just assume everything will be defensive and cautious. It’s mental.
So tell me how attacking can it be, when you have 3 CBs. Even if they are comfortable on the ball they are CBs for a reason, they don't have the mobility or passing skills of a midfielder, nor the positional freedom to drift far upfield. Then the wing backs needs to be as good defensively as they are offensively, or close to it. Garnacho is an attacking player, he couldn't be wing back in Amorim's system. Then you have at least one defensive midfielder, currently Ugarte. So you start with at least 6 out of 10 outfield players with limited to medium attacking skills. Tell me how offensive that is? I remember being at OT under Mourinho when he started 2 defensive midfielders and we lost 2-0 against a relegated team. It was a shambles. Is this really much better?
That performance against Liverpool was one of the reason I think Amorim can come good.
We haven't that much control against Liverpool (at Anfield of all places) in quite a while.
Also, I found the comparison to Klopp and Pep first season was silly.
Klopp took over from Rogers who almost took Liverpool to the title if not for Slippy G.
Pep also took over a title winning City from Pellegrini.
They are already good teams on the verge of being great.
United was 8 and performance wise we shouldn't even be surprised if we got 15 last season.
He needs to play Dorgu and Amad as the wingback, Amad is better there than a 10
The idea that 3 CBs necessarily lead to defensive football or that it can't be attacking is highly misleading. Gasperini, Bielsa or Cruijff(with Barcelona) have almost exclusively played an attacking and aggressive brand of Football with back 3s. Even Inter are currently playing a fairly attacking brand of Football with a 352.
There is no material difference when it comes to attacking or not attacking, 442s, 433s, 4231s are as often negative or positive than any back 3 systems because fullbacks are often not attacking at all.
I think you need to look at the game by game performances as compared to what they were under EtH, as he had a considerably longer period to implement a style of play as compared to Amorim who has only been in post a matter of two months, I feel you are being too myopic with your analyses. Brighton might be a better team than Palace on paper, but attributes and characteristics in terms of quality are just part of it, you have to look at mentality, collective spirit, desire and belief too, only the other day Brighton got spanked much worse than anything that's happened to us this season. Compared to EtH who had more than enough time to develop a distinct style of play, Ruben has made substantially more progress in two months than EtH did in two years. Of course the result is the most important thing in football, but I lost count of the number of games EtH won that came down to sheer luck or individual brilliance, there were many games we were hanging on and got lucky against all sorts of teams.
I think you underestimate Collyer's potential, from what I've seen he's a good passer and rarely gives it away. In a properly functioning 3-5-2, the central midfielders if playing well should be able to find the wingbacks, the 10's in front of them, and should be supported by the 10s and wingbacks to make it easy to find them, I think a team playing well overcomes individual limitations and compensates for them. Right now I'm thinking of legs, energy and players who are willing to learn the system and play within its dictates.
It's true managers of the past tried to deal with problem players, but remember there was no structure above them acting with thoughtful consideration or anything resembling long term strategic vision. Regardless of the more nefarious cost cutting measures, the senior management team at United are actively considering things they weren't before, and there is no way Ruben would not have told them frankly his assessment of things and the way he would plan on going about implementing his cultural ideas, they are clearly backing him in a way that simply hasn't happened before, not since the days of Fergie. If you look carefully, there are signs of a growing togetherness and collective spirit, the trick is to develop the consistency and to help the players perform under pressure, hence we struggle more at OT where the expectation is to attack and crush opponents while playing swashbuckling football, the attacking patterns of play will come last.
The players clearly haven't been doing the basics well for a number of years, and it shows. It's been a bit easier to get away with this malaise under EtH and the managers before, because we became a mostly counter attacking team with a low block waiting for moments to counter. Getting consistently higher up the pitch, playing with confidence with a new formation with some personnel clearly not naturally suited exposes psychological frailties, remember these are young men playing under the highest pressure. Many superstars have crashed and burned at this club, and it's just the cyclical nature of football that we enter the social media age just as our fortunes decline, and have continued to do so. The modern manager or coach has to be able to deal with the impact of this on the team, it is harder to develop a collective in a hyperindividualistic consumer society.
I agree that the results have been shocking, but we are playing with the ball in a way we haven't before, we are higher up the pitch, there are moments where it all comes together and you see the CBs marauding into midfield to support the two, and admittedly rarer instances when the WBs are effective, hopefully Dorgu will change that a little and help bring much needed balance to the side.
There is more pain to come, but we not going to be relegated, we are still in the cups and the worst cultural influence is away now. The players that are left are those that will be moulded further into a proper collective, but you can't simply unpick the damage from the past 10 years and all the psychological baggage that the squad and staff have to carry. These things take time, but we are on the right path forward, and for now I still believe 100% in Ruben's approach and hopefully the coming results will give him and the squad some breathing room to continue this process of change.
We’re 12 points clear of relegation, do you really think Leicester are going to gain that much ground on us?
Whats DC 3?
AM - Bruno, Garnacho/Kobbie
CM - Ugarte, Bruno/Collyer
RWB - Amad
LWB - Dalot/Dorgu
This is how we need to get over this season.
Any update on the mysteriously missing Mount? Could do with him back at AM.
CM - Ugarte, Bruno/Collyer
RWB - Amad
LWB - Dalot/Dorgu
This is how we need to get over this season.
Any update on the mysteriously missing Mount? Could do with him back at AM.
What worries me is why he doesn't recognise this? I remember weeks ago commentators saying how, at the time, we'd yet to score with Dalot and Maz as wing backs - and yet he continues with it.
Yeah this is something I thought of. There is very little justification when it obviously doesn't work and we've been calling it before kick off too
With either wallie up front I guess, not that it actually makes any difference.
We best all have our fingers and toes crossed we don't get one or two injuries, else the end of this season is going to be seriously grim.