What should be the minimum expectation for Amorim this season?

There are expectations for performance and for results.

In terms of performances, what I'm looking for in particular is improved chance conversion above all else.

In terms of results, even after this horrid start I still expect, and believe it is reasonable to expect, a top five finish. (I think top five gets us through the CL door). As a cherry on the cake, a cup lift -- ideally, the Europa League.
 
Rojofiam said:
Which are these teams that are so much better than us, other than the obvious three, that are going to be finishing so far ahead of us, that it would take a miracle for us to finish 5th?
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City, Arsenal, Pool, Chelsea (they are brilliant now with lots of talented young stars), Tottenham, Brighton and even Brentford, (they are a lot better offensive team with weaker defense), let's see. Despite the better looking attacking play don't be too optimistic yet. Under Amorim we played 3 matches against 3 very weak teams, and it's nice being unbeaten but the real tests are yet to come. Arsenal, City, Tottenham.
 
red.knight said:
Despite our dreadful start to the season, Amorim took over United after 11 games, on 15 points, 0 goal difference, in 12th place and 4 points off the top four. While I recognize it will take time and new players to fully implement his system, what should be the minimum expectation for him this season?

- A top-four finish?
- Winning the Europa League?
- Establishing a consistent and improved style of play?
- Or should there be no expectations at all?
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Finishing in the top 4 would be incredibly tough—Liverpool and Arsenal are locks, and we'd have to rely on at least 5 out of City, Chelsea, Brighton, Villa, Spurs, and Newcastle slipping up while we perform at our absolute best.

I’m not too concerned about the cups; the priority should be establishing a consistent playing style and hopefully we go for the league next year or the following.
 
It feels a bit like Arteta going in at Arsenal - his man job for this season is building the style of play and we should expect that it won’t be quick and easy. We will lose games but we should lose them playing his system without reverting to a style that doesn’t work as has been proven by his predecessors.

Anything positive we achieve is a bonus.

I’ve no minimum expectations of final league position or trophies, so long as we play in his style with the promise of it bearing fruit long term.

He can assess the players who are and are not suited and the summer window needs to be efficient.
 
red.knight said:
Despite our dreadful start to the season, Amorim took over United after 11 games, on 15 points, 0 goal difference, in 12th place and 4 points off the top four. While I recognize it will take time and new players to fully implement his system, what should be the minimum expectation for him this season?

- A top-four finish?
- Winning the Europa League?
- Establishing a consistent and improved style of play?
- Or should there be no expectations at all?
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Feels like a pointless question, at this stage. I'll take it one game at a time for now, and then we'll see.
 
ifightdragons said:
To drop players who simply aren't good enough. Start with Rashford and Bruno.

That would make him the first manager since Fergie who actually made some big decisions that would make a real difference.

Ten Hag dropped Ronaldo, which many will argue was a big decision. In all honesty I don't think Ronaldo wanted to play for this awful team, so he effectively forced a move.
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I'm pretty sure Amorim, like his last three predecessors, will regard Bruno a key player and a huge asset. Because that's what he is, and Amorim isn't blind.

I'm hard pressed to think of a less relevant comparison than Ronaldo, who performed truly horribly in his last season and got far more playing time than he merited.
 
RedFanaticTattooist said:
City, Arsenal, Pool, Chelsea (they are brilliant now with lots of talented young stars), Tottenham, Brighton and even Brentford, (they are a lot better offensive team with weaker defense), let's see. Despite the better looking attacking play don't be too optimistic yet. Under Amorim we played 3 matches against 3 very weak teams, and it's nice being unbeaten but the real tests are yet to come. Arsenal, City, Tottenham.
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So Brentford are significantly better than us in your opinion and will finish comfortably ahead of us, in your opinion. Got it.
 
Rojofiam said:
So Brentford are significantly better than us in your opinion and will finish comfortably ahead of us, in your opinion. Got it.
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He said better in attack, worse in defence. He didn't rate them significantly better overall.
 
As long as he can make us more composed, especially in midfield, I’m happy.

We can then selectively buy the right players to lift our level in the summer

This year top 6,
next year top 3-4,
year after title contenders
 
stefan92 said:
Maybe. I have no idea, what do I care about Brentford? :lol:
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Frank is a great manager. Mbeumo is good enough to play for a top 6 team. The rest are decent mid-table PL level players in their attack. They've had several high scoring games this season, but it's highly unlikely that they'll finish ahead of us in the end, or will score more goals than us over 38 games.
 
I think people are being very optimistic with a top 5 place. Maybe top 6. Ultimately, the cup competitions are more important imo. We should focus on winning EL to get into CL next season. A lot in here are going to be very disappointed in one month's time imo, because we have a very tough run of fixtures in the league from now to Liverpool on 5 January.
 
The title.

Beating Liverpool for it on the last day of the season

LFG
 
Rojofiam said:
So Brentford are significantly better than us in your opinion and will finish comfortably ahead of us, in your opinion. Got it.
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They are sigificantly better in offense (only Tottenham scored more goals than Brentford), if they can fix their defense then yes, they can easily finish ahead of us. Difficult though as they have a really tight budget so probably won't be able to replace the mediocre Pinnock for instance. But as i said erlier, we played only 3 games under Amorim against three really weak teams (and conceded 2 against the 40m squad Bodo/Glimt...) so the real test begins today against the in-form Arsenal.
 
Good squad and now a capable manager; we should aim high. But this is his first half-season and our previous years' failures, minimum expectations should be fairly low. Improve and be ready for next season
 
justsomebloke said:
I'm pretty sure Amorim, like his last three predecessors, will regard Bruno a key player and a huge asset. Because that's what he is, and Amorim isn't blind.

I'm hard pressed to think of a less relevant comparison than Ronaldo, who performed truly horribly in his last season and got far more playing time than he merited.
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I don't agree on Bruno, but that's alright.

The point was more about Ten Hag, and how our managers rarely make such big calls. And even the point that Ten Hag dropping Ronaldo wasn't such a big call it was made out to be, because Ronaldo was poor in his second season and obviously didn't want to be here. I wasn't comparing Ronaldo to Bruno. But if I was, one of them is one of the best players ever, and one of them is Bruno.
 
rooney2009 said:
Top 5 is achievable.
5th place may be ok for a champions league place
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You really think that is minimum expectation this season?

Lets be realistic, as it stands, there are few teams in the league that we would be confident in beating.

Even though they are behind us, i wouldn't be confident we would beat Villa, Bournemouth or Fulham. Not to mention Brentford, Brighton or Forest - especially away.

Hopefully we improve, but i think it may take time and we will have good and bad showings.
 
I’d love to see us have some semblance of control in matches. I’ll start worrying about league position from next season. Let him cook.
 
Developing a distinct style of play.
Increasing opportunities and improving goal-scoring.
Identifying who will be reliable for next season and who won't.

But if Amorim accomplishes this, it’s entirely reasonable to expect a fight for a top-four finish and a strong attempt to win the Europa League.
 
That we play well and are recognisably playing in his style. I’d expect results to be a bit all over the show until next season, when he’s had a couple of windows to address the shortfalls for his system within the squad.

It’d be good if caf posters could have some patience and avoid the pitchfork and torches mentality to the players or the manager when the inevitable bad results arrive.
 
5th and hopefully a cup. Should get a champions league spot. We are not finishing ahead of Arsenal, Liverpool, City, Chelsea. Lets stop that nonsense.
 
ifightdragons said:
I don't agree on Bruno, but that's alright.

The point was more about Ten Hag, and how our managers rarely make such big calls. And even the point that Ten Hag dropping Ronaldo wasn't such a big call it was made out to be, because Ronaldo was poor in his second season and obviously didn't want to be here. I wasn't comparing Ronaldo to Bruno. But if I was, one of them is one of the best players ever, and one of them is Bruno.
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More to the point, one of them was our best player that season, and the other possibly our worst.
 
I wouldnt mind if we finished 6th or 7th without a trophy this season as long as we are playing good attacking Football rather than that awful defensive stuff we tried to play tonight.
 
Rojofiam said:
Just think about how many more points our team would have if Amorim was appointed in the summer. Even if it's just a 5 point difference, which isn't an outrageous claim IMO, we'd be on 24 points and projected for a 70 points finish. I don't remember a time when that wasn't enough for at least 5th, but it's usually enough for 3rd or 4th.

Chelsea are definitely better than last season, and this good start will surely have them in the mix for top 4, but they aren't nailed-on yet.

Spurs are wildly inconsistent and have dropped points to Leicester which was a game they couldn't sustain control over for more than 45 minutes, lost to a struggling Newcastle side albeit away, lost to Brighton and Palace away, and even Ipswich at home.

Villa are winless since mid-October and are far from being an elite side.

Newcastle are totally toothless upfront against any half-decent low-block and are struggling massively. Shouldn't even have 19 points at this point, even that flatters to deceive them.

Brighton are good but we have a better squad than them. Likely a better manager too.

The top 3 are locked-in already unless City don't recover from their current form, but 4th is still achievable even for us and we should come at least close to it by the end of the season. I'm not saying we'll get definitely there, but it wouldn't be a miracle at all, if we did. We should also be favorites for the Europa League now.
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Struggling Newcastle scored 3 against Pool.

We are 11th and have only beaten one team above us, Brentford.

Zero goals scored against Villa, Pool, Arsenal and Spurs. Our attack is truly midtable at best.

Top 4 would be a miracle, it has been obvious for a long time.
 
Cathy Ferguson said:
Struggling Newcastle scored 3 against Pool.

We are 11th and have only beaten one team above us, Brentford.

Zero goals scored against Villa, Pool, Arsenal and Spurs. Our attack is truly midtable at best.

Top 4 would be a miracle, it has been obvious for a long time.
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You don't expect an upturn in performances under Amorim compared to ETH?
 
I think top 4 is out of the question.

Arsenal, Pool and City are far better than us.
Chelsea and Spurs are also better than us, but there is a lot to play for and no one knows what will happen.
Newcastle and Villa are also good teams and one, if not both, may have a good season and finish above us.

So worst case scenario is 8th, best case probably 5th.

Judging by our opponents in the cups it will be hard to believe we will go any further.
Probably our best bet would be the EL, if we are lucky with the draws we might find ourselves in the later stages.

CL football next year is very unlikely, if we manage to qualify for EL it will be a good result.
 
Cathy Ferguson said:
I do, but it is 80% on the players who are not good enough. Amorim needs new players eg CM, LWB, striker.
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Not good enough for what? 4th or 5th place? They are comfortably capable of that. And we are 4 points off 5th at the moment with many of those apparently better teams than us behind United in the table.

Being pessimistic about United and underestimating our squad whilst overestimating rivals won't make you unbiased...
 
Rojofiam said:
You don't expect an upturn in performances under Amorim compared to ETH?
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xG difference per 90 so far this season:

Chelsea: +0.73
Spurs: +0.61
Villa: +0.40
United: -0.16

Our performances could improve significantly under Amorim and still be short of the level some of the teams above us have already been producing this season. Because the current points difference underplays the gap that has existed between us and those teams in terms of actual performances.

And that's not even factoring in several other teams who have also been performing better than us so far, or the fact that other teams can also improve.

It would take miracle-work on Amorim's part to get us performing better than all those teams. And if we're not performing better than them, there's no reason to think we'll accumulate more points than them across the rest of the season.
 
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I'd be happy if we end up in Europa League or at least Conference League (so 6th or 7th) and play like we actually belong there. It's hard enough to leave squads like Newcastle, Brighton, Villa or Spurs behind you if you are coming from being among the worst teams in the league performance-wise.

That being said, I really hope Amorim won't fail because of unrealistic expectations.
 
Top half finish, this is genuinely the worst set of players we’ve had in recent past, collection of complete miss fits for premier league.
 
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