@Woziak's post that you quoted didn't sound like it was calling for him to be sacked, but rather explaining the reasons why the hierarchy might be considering that decision
Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach | Thread locked during matches
- Thread starter sewey89
- Start date
-
Nik (@Rood) and Imran (@Annihilate Now!) discuss United's fantastic win away against Athletic Club in the semi-final of the Europa League.
They also pick out the positives of United's 4-3 loss away at Brentford, and Nik reviews a day out at Old Trafford watching Manchester United Women qualify for the Champions League.
And hopefully that is the view of the majority of the fans because this is the actual truth.
We are skint, probably won’t have European Football next year and Ruben just doesn’t inspire any confidence. There is a reason why the media is being briefed that the club may change its manager in the summer and all of a sudden we are linked with ; Xavi, Joachim Low, Allegri, Unai Emery, Ernesto Valverde, most of them are older and have years of experience.
All I’m going to say; is it ok now that every weekend or midweek game against any opposition, most United fans think we will be lucky to score a goal and maybe scrape a draw?
Is that really what we are now?
Is a squad that should have been improved this summer really that bad after wining two trophies, got to three finals, knocked out Barcelona over two legs in a European competition and finish 3rd then 8th in the last two seasons really as bad as 1.12 point per game and barely a goal per game?
I honestly think if we accept this then we are on the same path as Leeds were, the club needs to Set RA definite targets if he is to remain as coach next season?
At least another 18-20 points in the EPL and a semi final in Europa league, if not bye, bye Ruben?
He didn't though. He changed his style to something that didn't suit the team at all or even come remotely close to working in the PL.
Exactly that, if we can’t bankroll him what’s the point?
If he can’t improve performances now after 25 matches in charge, when will he?
Why would the hierarchy not seriously think about sacking him. It’s very rare that any coach under 40 gets one of European Super clubs?
He has shown huge errors of judgement but I’m still willing to get behind him providing the club gives him a fighting chance and allows at least a £200-250m spend this summer which they will not do!
The season will peter out pretty tamely if we bow out of Europa, I feel. There would be nothing left to play for, relegation is really not a worry and we can't chase any European football through league position. I don't think anyone will have anyone motivation left for anything and will wait for the summer. Can't remember another season like this.
Was thinking about this today and from where we are now (no money, no Europe etc) the only way out is via the youth team providing some sort of class of 92 again.
The alternative view is bring a coach like Xavi for the last 5/6 PL games of the season to evaluate the squad and make plans for the new season ?
A) SJR might think if we back Ruben it’s at least £200m or £60-70m net after player sales and we’re not sure it will work or
B) Pay the £20m to get rid and bring In a coach like Xavi on a 2 year deal with a budget of maybe £100m
What do we actually want though? If we want a pragmatic manager that will adapt to the players he has and the opposition we're facing then we can just go and get Dyche now and have him see out the rest of the season. Then next season, if we spend north of £100m on new players who can play to a system, do we still want someone like Dyche to manage those players or do we want a coach like Amorim to manage those players? Despite everyone saying they were happy with short term pain for long term gain, I don't think some people actually realised what that meant.
Whether it's Ruben or anyone else, we are going to need a big summer if we want to do half decently next season. The squad has been gutted and it will need reinforcements.
Forgot about that. I suppose that doesn’t paint his attempt at managing a big club in a particularly flattering light given that he had more runway to work with.
So you aren’t behind him, then. Easier to just say that.
Yeah, United are going to have to hope a bunch of the academy lads can step up...but I just can't see that happening without having a Cantona/Zlatan figure in the senior side to bond them all together. I love Bruno but he isn't that type of character.
Not just that. The main way out is through superior coaching and scouting. By taking punts on young and cheap players that the head coach is meant to develop and coach up.
You forgot the ‘and we’re not sure it will work’ from your Xavi example, but we all know you just post bullshit ad nauseam.
I agree with your last sentence about accomodation. Only exception to me atm would be Bruno, but he is versatile enough for that not to be necessary.
TBF he’s only really repeating what’s been reported in the media that Liverpool turned him down because they evaluated a £400m windfall required to make the specualist transfers to fit Ruben’s formation and there was no guarantees after such a huge investment.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/ruben-amorim-manchester-united-liverpool-34782275.amp
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/man-united-forced-pay-up-31111845.amp
https://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/2021660/Manchester-United-Ruben-Amorim-Liverpool/amp
The times ran this story before all of the above it’s being widely reported throughout the media.
Can it work any worse? And I repeat for the last time, this is not my view but it’s very much how a man like SJR thinks and acts, just look at the Dan Ashworth scenario, look at his track record with Nice, he has no patience whatsoever, if Xavi doesn’t work he will sack him as well, until he finds a coach that does work.
If you say so, seeing as your now the oracle on all things regarding elite coaches!
Last edited:
Yeah I agree with this and think the results have been so catastrophically bad that there's no way he can get these players onside for next season, he'll start next year like a lame duck with half the dressing room against him and get sacked in October and we'll have to write off yet another season, probably after spending a load on players solely for his system who then become deadwood. He's probably a really good manager but its fast approaching the time where you just let him go and accept that it had gone to shit and it was an awful decision to force him in mid season, even if he will likely do great elsewhere.
I don’t follow this post. Potter got appointed mid season by Chelsea in similar circumstances to Amorim and was sacked well before the end of the season, without getting a summer to work with his players etc. What additional runway did he have to work with?
I’m not advocating for sacking Amorim currently and I think Chelsea made the wrong decision in sacking Potter so quickly. However, if that’s a barometer, then Amorim would currently be on track for a sacking before season end.
I get that 100% but there's no escaping the fact that the manager is going to have to work with 90% of this squad again next season. Are our signings going to be so transformative that everyone is going to start playing up by 2 or 3 levels around them? I think the manager made a mistake not galvanising the players he has at his disposal and getting everyone playing with joy and for each other again and then eventually asking them to step out of their comfort zone
I always said a lot of the time under Fergie we were defensive and counter attacking and very agressive. It wasn't pretty to watch but we were always only there win games and move onto the next one. Do that, play defensive and counter for a few months or a season or even two. Grind results. Build trust. Add players who will help you develop front foot beautiful football while slowly and sensibly phasing out players who can't do it. This is just pulling the whole house down without the resources to fix it up afterwards. That is on INEOS but the manager sure isn't helping himself either.
His wiki page says he was appointed on Sep 8th, which isn't exactly mid season but would've obviously not been anything like a June appointment where he had a full summer to train and bring in new recruits.
I agree with you on the latter bit. There's no credible talk about getting rid of Amorim this soon, especially given that he seems to be Omar Berrada's guy, who went out of his way to bring him to England mid season. Ruben will receive two years before a proper assessment will be made imo.
I agree. He has shown nothing at all since he's been here that shows he will deliver next season. This weird obsession he has with this formation, that can only work with certain players he needs, is a suicide mission. As well as going down himself he will take the whole club with him. The most bizarre situation I've ever seen in football for a very long time.
just such a stupid fecking idea to bring him in midway thru the season. Shouldve been done before the year. Completely tanked any momentum he couldve built, put such a negative vibe at the club, and now we have this dead season with one of the worst manchester united squads i have ever seen. I dont know how to judge him currently with this shitshow going on. Looking at matchday squads i legit think the team would struggle in the championship.
What a bizarre post.. The club is going down due to decade of complete mismanagement and neglect.. feck all to do with current manager, who, unsurprisingly can't do much with a set of players including one fit striker who hasn't scored in 18 games, one winger (50 shots without a single goal), one midfielder in Ugarte, one youngster wing back, no creativity, no physicality, no desire, no quality. The hell has formation to do with it? We change our shape in game a lot, Garna plays as a winger, we play low block often. We now don't even have staff to execute a counter attacking simple play. Every formation needs players we don't have.
He can at least make us a bit more solid and maybe do something different. Even ETH managed to do that in the Cup final.
So did Ruben against City, Arsenal, Liverpool.. problem is other 90% of games.
Two things can be true, Its more than a decade of mismanagement, its the entire rot of the Glazer ownership which has sucked the club dry. At the same time a top or a promising young manager should be able to make the most of what he has. RVN made an OK job of maximising things, We dont have the squad for Amorim which makes us foolish to hire him and him foolish to accept. He has made us worse defensively and offensively. Its not about principles its about pragmatism, coaching and man management We are in a mess, not clear he will last much of next season unless things really improve. We cant rely on spending alone given the financial constraints.
do people remember that we barely got to that final?
how did ETH make us compact in any way? Championship teams would get 30 shots on target against us. It was more compact when Wilcox forced him to change tactics.do people remember that we barely got to that final?
Amorim will be sacked next Christmas in my opinion, I just cannot see this working out for many reasons, there is no way Ineos let this continue for more than 1 year
Unless we're in complete free fall going into Christmas, I think he will get a full 2nd year. That is of course worst case scenario. The best case one is we buy and sell immaculately this summer, get everyone fit, have the benefit of a proper pre-season and start strong. I suspect the latter scenario is the more likely one.
Again, what does he have? A broken team that is severely lacking to compete.. I truly believe most managers would struggle here this season.
And RVN won three games, two against Leicester on the brink of sacking a manager and against a greek side in EL.
Not how I remember it, but it could be like multiple witnesses to a car crash seeing different things. The players he had were not able to play transition football , if you recall Old Man Ronolad ambling about the pitch, and Casemiro getting taken out with one pass. Sticking to his “principles” would be trying to use that squad in the nest approximation of what he thought was needed to win. Which is what he did. The failing was in his coaching, not the overall settings.
Amorim seems to be having problems with both.
De Gea was costing us with his kicking, so we went and spent £47m on one of the best GK with the ball at his feet, or so we thought!
Martial was considered a crock high wages always injured sick note, remember.
Hojlund for £72m should have been an upgrade physically strong and fast
Weghorst was only a loan deal
Joshua Zirkzee for club and country is considered an upgrade and he scores more goals so that’s an upgrade just!
Rashford and Anthony both started and stared in those games( who forced them out without replacing them?)
Sancho was on hiatus and Ganaucho should be much better now than then he was 2 years ago as should kobbie Mainoo!
We definitely have a similar defence in options and possibly this defence has more pace I will agree that Sabitzer, Mctominay and Fred gave the midfield more mobility and goal threat and Casemiro for 7/8 months was Elite.
My point is you’re right but it should never have been like that, especially with after a £400m spend on new players.
I will concede, however that team had an awful lot of players that are in that 25-29 bracket at the time we payed that game and we currently have a lot of players who are under 24 in key positions.
I don’t think the players we have are as bad as most would have you think, I do however think that we have too many young players in key positions, especially in our attack?
Hope springs eternal.
I don’t see anything in his coaching to indicate he’s just been unlucky or otherwise deserved to win. For me, he’s earned every defeat. And I don’t think that’s going to change without Individual FC taking over. We are not selling or buying competently, let alone immaculately. We will add a couple of Dorgu-level players and hope to suddenly find form.
I think you’re being wildly optimistic, SJR had 7 managers in 5 years at Nice. He’s had 2 in 12 months so far at United!
Look at the number of games RVN played. If you had taken over for one game then stepped down would you speak about yourself as a 100% win rate manager? There is no point, using samplesizes so small. Amorims sample size is barely enough.
And it was tactics that aren't sustainable when you have ambitions to play like a topclub. Put men behind the ball and then go for counter is nice and all and for one off games it is a great tactic. But it can't be the only plan we have.
Mixing it up, nice one.
Yes. Because the players who should be the starters in those positions are as bad as most would have you think. And bad recruiting of course. There are environments, where players like Rashford and Garnacho will flourish. I have no doubt about it. But those environments require functional setups that are well balanced and will still work with players in them, that have a few lacks in their skillset.
I don't really know why you bring up the recruitment again and again. I mean, it is pretty clear at this point that we made a lot of bad decisions. Noone needs convincing of that. The important piece now is to make sure to not repeat those mistakes. And that means, don't overspend, don't go solely for youngsters, value athleticism but don't make it the only attribute. All those things will be essential. No matter who the manager is.
Perhaps your best case scenario will happen and I hope it does I'd rather look like an idiot on the internet than watch United play like we have been for the last 18 months bar a few odd games here and there.
But here is where I don't see it happening I just don't see him getting the players people are wildly optimistic saying 3 additions will change everything I don't see it like that, I think to make this work we need a minimum of 5 first team players and I don't think we have the money to do that and he won't get the results he needs without them
Consider the totality of factors he's faced since arriving.
- He was basically forced into arriving mid-season by way of a "take it or leave it" offer from Berrada. This alone more or less guaranteed we would underachieve this year because we knew he was specifically hired to implement a completely different system and formation without the benefit of the players needed to accomplish it.
Therefore, through no fault of his own, he was needlessly dropped into an impossible situation from the start. That is strictly on Berrada, who was left clutching at straws after keeping Ten Hag after the FA Cup, then spending precious funds to buy players like Zirkzee to pacify an extended Ten Hag stay. All of that is on Berrada and has nothing to do with Amorim's managerial prowess.
- He has had to deal with the Rashford situation. It is what it is and hasn't helped our lack of goals, which is once again a result of spending £100 on Hojlund and Zirkzee. Consider the calibre of striker we could've bought for 100m instead of those two, then extrapolate that into our lack of goals over the past two seasons. This was again, a failure of executive leadership to greenlight such calamitously useless transfers.
- He has had to deal with an absurd amount of injuries. Maybe not as bad as Spurs but not far off. How would we have fared this year with fit, in form varieties of Shaw and Mount ? What about the availability of Mainooo, Amad and Martinez for the entire year ? This again, has nothing to do with Amorim and is simply a matter of bad luck.
When you combine each of these factors, it quickly becomes pretty self-evident that not only is Amorim not the problem, he himself has been a victim of converging circumstances which more or less guaranteed a horrible year or results.
When you remove each of these factors for next year, you are left with a brand new set of possibilities, and the sky is the limit. This is why I think there's a good chance we will recover strongly next year if we buy a top striker and maybe compliment with a couple of Amorim style players such as Quenda etc.
Dunno. Just reckon most coaches, unless they are elite ones at the top of their game, are pretty expendable. So I think I would pull the plug on this particular experiment, overhasty and overly dramatic as that might sound?
Sometimes things are extremely misaligned, in practise if not in theory, even accounting for mitigating factors. In those instances it's better to admit your fault and take swift remedial measures (with a more thorough understanding of what went wrong with your assessment processes in the first place and what not to do in the future), instead of persisting and wasting precious resources. And I quite like Amorim since his Sporting CP days too (likewise for Ten Hag since his Ajax days). It's nothing personal, you move on in a respectful and professional manner, and strive to do better with the next appointment.
The fundamental issue, which won't ever go away, is that it's extremely difficult to pull off a high-level 343 base. Doubly so with an orthodox one, where the manager won't adapt like Alonso or Nagelsmann would (or possibly tweak it to make is more threatening like a Cruyffian 3133). And even harder to sustain your success and performance on a year-to-year basis. You need wingbacks who are credible offensive and playmaking threats who will be respected by the opposition and also capable of shunting up and down the pitch while making a difference practically all on their own (or you get pinned back with little offensive width to speak of), you need midfielders who are freaky athletes with irrepresible engines and technically wonderful and capable of constructing the game (shortcomings in any of those aspects can have a domino effect on the rest of the team), you need centerbacks who are expert progressive passers and ball-carriers and capable of covering wide areas (if these centerbacks are not progressive you are again pinned back), and so forth. So much of the team has to be comprised of “unicorn players” to dominate and succeed at the top end of the Premier League vis-à-vis Liga Portugal with a 343 base (and unicorns are unicorns for a reason, they are extremely rare and in great demand).
It's high-difficulty mode football, when there's no need to have a high-difficulty approach, and margin for error is minimized. It's easier to hide your flaws and adapt to non-optimal circumstances in other bases. Which is part of the reason why they are so widely used and considered the norm, by also-ran and elite teams alike (elite teams aren't elite every week and every year, and they too need to adapt and hide their flaws from time to time). There's really no need to reinvent the wheel, when the burden of proof across the modern history of football (or even in the current year with likes of Real Madrid, Liverpool, Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona (all of whom play with a 433 or 4231 base)) is against us. Most of our flaws are not going to get resolved anytime soon, so it makes little sense to persist with an unyielding 343 base that amplifies our flaws. And the project itself might not even have an incredible medium term payoff, which is the underlying expectation when you put in so much time and effort surely, because even if you get everything right with regard to recruitment and development, it's comparivitely harder to sustain your success and performance on a year-to-year basis in an orthodox 343 base (which lends itself to boom-and-bust cycles and player churn).
Given where we are it makes more sense, at least in theory, to appoint someone with these characteristics...
- Hiding the squad-construction flaws of Manchester United and putting players in positions to succeed with a hybrid positional-relational modus operandi, as opposed to highlighting and underscoring our shortcomings and also putting square pegs in round holes. Making do with the personnel at hand in 4231 or 433 bases, while the technical team attempts to improve the squad over a multi-year timeframe with 3-ish reinforcements of the appropriate standard, or at least talent level, each season (this can be scaled upwards, in terms of quantity and assured quality, as the money situation improves).
- Having the collective perform a higher level than the sum of parts, and improving individual levels via coaching as their footballing tutor (something we aren't quite seeing with this head coach). The head coach needs to concentrate on improving individuals as well the collective, and being good at in-game and man management; leaving other tasks to the technical team.
- Trying to qualify for Europe and meeting certain objectives by hook or by crook. In this day and age, not qualifying for the Champions League in particular is akin to getting relegated with regard to the financial and competitive shock and we pay a dear price for each non-qualification (which inhibits the rebuild we so desire). Flippantly burning through multiple seasons in the hopes of maybe, hopefully doing well (relatively speaking) in the future seems borderline suicidal for a club that absolutely needs to claw its way back into the Top 4 to enable the refurbishment of the squad.