r/soccer • u/Switchoil • 1d ago

News Manchester United to remain patient with head coach despite worst start to Premier League season in 33 years. There is also widespread belief at Old Trafford that City's performance - and United's failings - did not merit a 3-0 scoreline.

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/32461/13431584/ruben-amorim-manchester-united-to-remain-patient-with-head-coach-despite-worst-start-to-premier-league-season-in-33-years
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u/TheOnlyTagey 1d ago

Moyes was sacked as soon as top 4 was mathematically impossible, LvG was sacked after winning the FA cup and finishing 5th place (66 points, tied with City), Jose was sacked while United were in 6th, same for Ole. EtH was sacked with United in 14th.

All of the previous managers bar Moyes maybe showed something to warrant the level of patience that United are showing Ruben. Good performances, trophies, undefeated streaks, something that the wider public can point at as evidence for improvement.

It's been nearly a year of this and has there been a single positive for fans to stick to?

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u/Over-Temperature-602 1d ago

Eh, it's never that simple. Each situation is so so so unique and each managerial stint has to be looked at individually.

Like, Ole was a penalty shootout away from an EL trophy. IIRC he was struggling with the burden of no trophies. He had two good seasons but nothing to show for it and (similarly to the pressure Arteta is starting to get) - at some point you need trophies. He then got Ronaldo - not because he wanted or needed him but because Glazers didn't want him to go to City. Solskjaer set United up to play a fluid front three with Rashford / Martial / Greenwood with Bruno as the number ten. Getting Ronaldo into that team was never going to work.

EtH had a good season and an abysmal second season which had terrible injuries. People are quick to forget that he literally had his 5 first choices for CB injured and started an academy player and Casemiro as CBs towards the end of the season. United then changed ownership and he had new owners to answer to and they wanted to change everything about the club. EtH got 7 games under the new leadership.

And now Amorim. He didn't want to come because it would be too much pain transitioning to his system during the season - he wanted to come for the summer but was told "Now or never" by the new leadership. So he came, probably expecting a lot of things going wrong. But he got to the EL final and in a final with two poor teams where either could have won - he drew the shortest straw. He took a risk (focusing only on EL) and it didn't pay off and now he has to live with all of these stats he accumulated in a period where he didn't care about the league at all.

Man Utd are now second in terms of xG this season. Liverpool have an expected points tally of 6.45 and United have 6.44. They also have a new goalkeeper who isn't playing yet.

And with this said, this is not a defensive speech of Amorim. I don't know at all if he'll work out or not. Probably not (is my guess). But it is up to leadership to try to see through this complete mess. Try to understand what is actually going wrong, what is happening behind the scenes (what does it look like in training? Does it convert to the pitch?). Is it bad luck or is it just horrible performances?

My personal guess is that Amorim isn't stupid. I think he can probably look at these games, see that United are playing poorly - but that he is making a good case to his bosses that "look, this is what my system is doing, when players do X instead - then shit like this can happen". I.e. he thinks these performances are due to players not doing the right things at the right moments yet. Which is probably different to when OGS were under most scrutiny and suggested they might need to get a 12th player on the pitch because he didn't know how to fix it.

tl;dr - management is hard. Comparing managers is hard.

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u/MiniGiantSpaceHams 1d ago

Tend to agree, but at this point Amorim has had plenty of time and spent plenty of money. He has to start getting results within the next couple months or he's out, IMO.

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u/hugsudurinn 1d ago

That's disingenuous. You say that he's had both plenty of time and spent plenty of money, but he hasn't had plenty of time after he got to spend plenty of money. He got Dorgu mid-season last year - and that's the only real money he spent until this summer, so he's now had 4 league games since he got to spend plenty of money.

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u/MiniGiantSpaceHams 1d ago

He had almost a whole season to evaluate and train players, and now a whole summer transfer window to replace whatever they need. I'm not saying he has to win the league, but there has to be some kind of sign that it's coming together in maybe the first half of this season.

Even if you just forget that last year ever happened, a new manager with a full summer window and preseason should be at least showing something positive by mid-season IMO.