You have to have a long memory to remember the last time Manchester United lost a home league game after leading at half-time. It was May 1984 and Ipswich Town; briefly, that record looked like being the latest to tumble in Monday night’s chaotic game against Bournemouth. Although United were able to get a 4-4 draw from the evening, it was still an underwhelming result, especially on the back of poor Old Trafford results against Everton and West Ham recently.
In recent away games at Nottingham Forest and Tottenham Hotspur, United had the opportunity to go second in the league and indeed were in live play. Four points dropped in those matches allowed teams who had been poor at home to rebuild some confidence, and added to the seven dropped in recent home games, that makes up an eleven point swing which would – unthinkably – have United top of the Premier League table.
Is this the best the Premier League has ever been? Are standards higher than ever? Is this the worst Manchester United team of all time, or is it better than all neutrals are saying? None of these things can all simultaneously be true because they contradict each other. The league is a dichotomy; the most powerful in the world but the weakest it has ever been in terms of quality, even though as a spectacle it has improved from the darkest days of the last 2 or 3 years where large portions of it have been unwatchable with teams sitting on the edge of their own box
The result against Bournemouth came hot on the heels of a strange press conference from manager Ruben Amorim prior to the match; the man who has recently successfully completed a year in charge of the club took the time to aim shots at youngsters Toby Collyer and Harry Amass, as well as Kobbie Mainoo and Chido Obi. Amorim has a history of speaking poorly, which has inspired a lack of confidence from the support – though that could not be translated as a lack of support, which has been evident inside the grounds both home and away.
Alongside the results and performances – two pretty big things for a manager, as Amorim himself has been forced to frequently confront – one could make the argument that the manager is making life more difficult for himself than needs to be, and his reluctance and even refusal to adapt or change is likely to end up in the club facing another difficult decision.
Mis-shapes
United have been playing in a shape that includes a three man defence and a two man midfield. Frequently, the wing-backs have been defensive players, which at times has left the team looking like it has a five man defence, which can look even more pragmatic with the lack of a natural striker.
The move to Amorim’s preferred system has left the squad wide open for criticism, as it seemed completely ill-suited, and every single department looked like an emergency which needed to be resolved. Up front, there was no fluency, but a huge amount of money was invested to correct this and that has resulted in a significant improvement within the system.
The goalkeeper was the next area, with the team heading into this season with their two from the last campaign, to significant cost in the first few weeks. This was finally addressed, but since then, the focus has been on the midfield and most notably that the insistence on playing just two leads to a significant issue.
Bruno Fernandes and Casemiro have been the preferred pair, with Manuel Ugarte usually a stand in for the Brazilian on the hour mark due to the physical demands on a player who was never asked to play in such a way when quietly marshalling a magnificent Real Madrid midfield.
Fernandes is out of position, too, playing much deeper, and although his contribution remains significantly strong, the eye test shows that his tendency to take risks – whilst still crucial to the team’s attacking output – is contradictory to their need to retain possession in a meaningful way in midfield. Casemiro was always more renowned as a retriever in a three, as is Ugarte, though the Uruguayan’s range is even more limited, with his on-the-ball abilities much poorer and as a consequence often catastrophic and game-changing in a negative way.
Amorim has resisted the temptation to give Kobbie Mainoo a proper chance this season, insisting – among other things he’s said about the England midfielder – that he did so last campaign.
The wing-backs have been slated for their lack of defensive nous and positioning intelligence, and the centre backs, which were widely considered to be the strong point of the season moving into November (aside from the signings up front) have regressed in form to the point where William Hill were implored to hire a couple of supporters/social influencers to discuss the topic – Is Leny Yoro’s future in doubt?
The takeaway quote from the clip in question was that United ‘crush young players rather than elevate them’ which does a gross injustice to the work that is done at the club and completely ignores the issue at hand.
Football media has been one of the greatest arenas to explore the Dunning-Kruger effect in full flow, where people with large followings garnered through controversial, divisive and angry opinions are given controversial topics to discuss, thus amplifying a rhetoric or narrative which has been engineered only to serve the purpose of eyes on the product. Legitimacy and integrity are not necessary.
The club do not crush young players. The club remains the greatest place to develop talent, with the richest history to call upon. However, this is an era where memes are topics in press conferences, so significantly have these trends become a part of the cultural zeitgeist, and however pointless they are when it comes to the end point of kicking a ball on a pitch, Ruben Amorim is faced with this sort of inane nonsense every week, and his answers and commentary form part of what is the whole public face of the manager.
The formation and the specific demands of it and the ill-fitting nature of the squad Amorim inherited, are huge contributing factors to this. Against Bournemouth, there was a slight tweak to play with four at the back and United played some of their better attacking football for a while – but were still poor defensively, and as a consequence, Leny Yoro’s critics were out in force, and, ridiculously, Senne Lammens was questioned, too.
The formation, as it is, emphasises few strengths and most weaknesses of the squad. In his press conference before the Aston Villa game, Amorim defended his criticism of the younger players and gave context, explaining, “I didn’t say anything wrong, I spoke about how the luck of playing for Man Utd. Sometimes you play for Man Utd and see different realities and you understand football can be so different and you are really lucky to be at Man Utd. That was my point, but let’s move on.”
But the manager must also make adaptations too, to make the best of what he has in order to have the best chance of succeeding. His comments about the requirements of the midfield two often seem contradictory; he doesn’t appear to have a single player to fit the criteria of either midfield position but his initial comments about Mainoo were often in reference to preference of Bruno Fernandes, even though, as already stated, Fernandes is out of position.
Okay, if the wider point is that Fernandes is filling the more creative role – which still feels disingenuous – then what the manager is saying is he prefers Ugarte for the defensive role. It hasn’t worked when United are leading, and when they are chasing, Amorim has sacrificed those very principles he appears to be rigidly attached to by throwing on Mainoo in that very defensive role.
Against Bournemouth, he was very good, but that hasn’t always been the case, but few have blamed the player for that. The finger has been pointed at the manager – as well it should.
It has to be said, in the interest of balance, that the formation isn’t really the major issue. It’s starting to feel as though something can be worked within it, but the manager’s decisions are in fact holding him back – the starting line up, the timing of substitutions, the identity of the changes, the persistence with a defensive change. That was something Erik Ten Hag used to do. And the similarities don’t end there – it could also be said that the best performances, or best moments, under Amorim have come when United had their backs to the wall, and the manager was forced to abandon those ideals in order to pursue a result.
Against Lyon last season, he threw Mainoo on as an auxiliary forward alongside Harry Maguire. Both scored in one of the most memorable wins and atmospheres of a generation. That’s not to say that the future is in that strike line – that is obvious – but if you consider the same was said about Ten Hag, about Jose Mourinho, about Louis van Gaal, about David Moyes, and even going all the way back to Dave Sexton, the pattern is that there is a tangible response particular to the club that is engaged with that chaos theory.
Could it truly be said that it was David Moyes who inspired the memorable comeback against Olympiakos? Or Jose Mourinho’s flamboyant brilliance that manifested the turnaround against Newcastle when he was on the brink? Was the 4-3 win against Liverpool in the FA Cup a product of the Erik Ten Hag philosophy? Could we say the same for Sexton, all the way back in 1977, against Porto when United won 5-2?
It’s much more likely that the common thread in all of those moments was that these were critical moments for each manager and they went for the gamble and were rewarded. What separates the successful, and also most revered and associated with the traditional United way, was how much of the ambition and gamble is associated with the primary philosophy. That’s why Sir Alex Ferguson had so many last minute winners. It’s why Tommy Docherty and Ron Atkinson both managed teams that are more associated with the traditional United way than any other manager (although there is a growing school beginning to accept Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s United as a third team in this category).
In short, then, in those times of crisis, the managers have relied on the qualities they inherited and bowed to pressure – only to revert to type after getting out of jail, and then discovering that type would catch them out in the end. This is the cycle Ruben Amorim is stuck in.
Nobody is saying he has to permanently shift from his ideals. Nobody is suggesting he will lose face if he adapts. But this is the landscape we are in in modern times.
In 1990, Ferguson had started the season trying a 3 man defence, wanting to eventually play Bryan Robson as a sweeper there. After just one game against Coventry City he observed that the formation gave the opponents too much time on the ball and did not lend itself to the possibility of rapid counter attacks, which is something United were always renowned for. He noted that Old Trafford wouldn’t respond well to that, and within a few weeks, the idea was dropped, before the injured Robson ever got a proper run.
United’s better performances under Amorim, and better results, have come, by and large, in big games away from home. It is beyond time for him to adapt at Old Trafford, and while the AFCON is a huge inconvenience because of the absence of Amad and Bryan Mbeumo, it provides an opportunity for that adaptation to take place without the manager losing face with either shape adaptation or selection. He must take it.
Mistakes
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” Shakespeare wrote in Henry IV, Part 2,
Ferguson was a master orator; that’s why he spoke and gave lectures at Harvard, and that’s why at one point in his tenure he likened the role of United manager to that of a Prime Minister within sport. He had a point; United’s managers, going back to Matt Busby, were always held to account in a different way, and perhaps that owed to Busby’s status as a proper pioneer and visionary.
Ferguson suited the role well. Over his period in charge, though, the evolution of football media into 24 hour rolling news cycles, and United’s status as the biggest news story for perpetuity, elevated the role of United manager into something even bigger. It was an influence he carried well.
Unfortunately for Ruben Amorim there’s no manual of how to say the right thing. It’s a skill, and really, you have to have an understanding of Manchester United in order to handle the media well in this age. That’s why Solskjaer was always able to keep molehills from becoming mountains, and why you could look at David Moyes (“we’ll make it difficult for Newcastle”), Jose Mourinho, (“that is football heritage”), or Erik Ten Hag (Alyson Rudd’s persecution of his body language and dress sense after a few weeks in the job) and wonder if they were ever adequately prepared for the role, or if even that is an unfair judgement, considering the press are predisposed – as Rudd demonstrated – with hand grenades of their own making, regardless of what was happening, or needed to happen, on the pitch.
Amorim came into the job as someone who said he wasn’t used to being interviewed often, indicating that he would take a quiet approach. Unfortunately the role doesn’t call for that, and somewhat ironically, barely a week goes by without an additional feature interview on top of the regulation press conferences.
Early on in his reign he described this as the ‘worst Manchester United team in history’, the sort of well you can visit only once in a blue moon to have the desired impact. It was predictably kept alive by the press and Amorim was forced to deal with it for the rest of his first campaign in charge in various forms as his team barely improved, but his tone never really improved either – and while there was no hiding place, one had to question the productivity from a man-management point of view. How likely is it that such an attitude can be conducive to inspiring improvement? A manager needs strength behind him in order to navigate ‘storms’ he was predicting; his strength has come not in performances, or results, only a reassurance from the men above him that his job remains secure, which will be the case until, well, it isn’t – that’s football.
From that position, though, Amorim has called out players, as he has been forced to do uncomfortably with Mainoo for weeks, but as he did unwisely with the likes of Amass and Obi, who both made social media responses to defend themselves before deleting them.
There is a school of supporters on social media who detest that sort of behaviour from players but you have to take into account their position – Amass in particular must have had every reason to feel it was unfair. He has done well at Sheffield Wednesday, well enough to feel he should get a chance when he comes back. It’s worth remembering that Alvaro Fernandez – now Carreras – was deemed too lightweight after a loan at Preston and never got a chance before going on to move, and play, for Real Madrid.
Concerns were already aired after the selection of Jack Fletcher at Spurs to keep the record of academy players in the first team squad going, and in spite of Amorim insisting the record will not die under him, it must – much more importantly – be taken seriously.
If United, as is speculated, were to move on Mainoo, and he – as can be confidently predicted – does very well at the destination club, it would be rightly seen as another catastrophic error of judgement that the club can ill afford.
Amorim’s comments have invited a tired trope to be reopened – that United can’t develop their own players – which is patently untrue. He would be better served using the next few weeks to give Kobbie his overdue run, to give Shea Lacey some minutes, and to speak well of them even if they underperform, and just be a lot quieter in the meantime.
The biggest gift Amorim has inherited is the youth system, and not just in the stream of ability, but the connection it has to the club. It would be a much wiser choice to make the most of it, instead of the least, which is how it comes across at the moment.
Misfits
As a continuum to the above point, how can it be that the majority of players deemed dispensable have been youth team players? Scott McTominay left and has done wonders at Napoli but was quick to point out this week that it isn’t simply a case of United players thriving away from the club because the club is the problem – rather, he said, it was a case of the pressure that was put on the United players to perform to incredible standards every week.
Marcus Rashford is playing well at Barcelona and Alejandro Garnacho has had moments at Chelsea – just like he did at United – where his potential can be seen. Well, nobody could doubt the class of Cunha and Mbeumo who came in as senior players to replace those two, but surely the question ought to have been more along the lines of – how can we get the best out of these players of great potential and abilities, as we have before?
“You guys talk about players who speak against clubs because they feel entitlement, then you have legends say if you don’t play, leave because everyone is wrong,” Amorim said today. “No, let’s stay and fight, let’s overcome and maybe the manager is wrong. I have the feeling we need to fight against this feeling.”
But Rashford and Garnacho were forced to leave (even if both wanted to, even if it was for the best, just follow the point for the moment) as the club needed money, proving another contradiction to Amorim’s point, which had already been made very early on by this open projection that neither player could play as a striker or as one of the narrow tens in the manager’s preferred system.
Whose fault is that, though? Is it always on the players to step up? Does the manager today bear no accountability? Surely he has to adapt to the players he has rather than fall on his sword trying to make a point?
Marcus Rashford broke into the team as a striker. He had played along the front line in the youth teams and wasn’t a natural striker but he broke in there and made a name for himself. He played from the left under Jose Mourinho but when he was asked to play up front against by Erik Ten Hag, this had inconsistent levels of success – but in one season at least he delivered 30 goals, which is more than any United striker or even player will do this season.
Rashford’s breakthrough came amidst an injury crisis under Van Gaal, who had already played Paddy McNair – a midfielder – as the central player in a three man defence which won a fair few games, including at Arsenal.
To make the point a little more obviously, Gary Neville was tipped to be a centre half and David Beckham was tipped to be a central midfielder. Neville wasn’t as good defensively as Paul Parker, and Beckham was nowhere near as quick as Andrei Kanchelskis, but when an opportunity came for them to get into the first team, they took it, and Ferguson allowed his team to evolve to accommodate the abilities of his players.
Kobbie Mainoo is the obvious point to be made here but United do have an incredibly strong generation of talent about to break through. Some of their roles are easily transferable, but even then, we have seen that a central midfielder might not necessarily be just a central midfielder, so for the likes of Jim Thwaites, who is one for the future, he could already be looking at his skillset and wondering if the manager is going to inexplicably decide they’re just incompatible with that he wants to see.
If you establish that as a culture – and there is already an established narrative about whether or not McTominay was ‘misprofiled’ even though his departure came before Amorim’s arrival – then you run the real risk of destroying, in a way that is almost irrevocable, the very quality you have inherited.
Nothing can last forever, and even though United’s dedication and attachment to homegrown players has been everlasting, and that reputation will survive whatever happens with Amorim, that does not mean that the damage that could potentially be done wouldn’t break the chain which would make it very difficult to repair. It can’t exist by mere virtue of its existence; it needs a significant reminder of why it exists, and what it exists for.
There is a principle in football that is universal, not just at United, where a younger player is more amenable to adapting to the manager’s whim because he has been given a chance. Showing a rigidity as a manager to reject this, as Amorim’s actions have appeared to prove, is a constant ringing alarm bell.
No, that doesn’t mean that we are in an age where Player FC is more important than the manager, anything but… it is however a complex conundrum, with many factors. United’s historical issue of handing out big contracts before they’ve been properly earned is one, but the Kobbie Mainoo saga has been completely avoidable and bizarrely handled.
But United, and Amorim, improbably – as the Premier League has proven week in, week out – still have a golden chance to put things right, because the AFCON is here with a forced reshuffle of players and the league is so utterly dreadful that European football, and even Champions League football, seems perfectly attainable as we stand just before Christmas.
It will need a quiet adaptation from the manager, even if he concedes it only to himself, in order to make the most from the next few weeks. He can turn it into an opportunity. But if he navigates through the next six weeks and the same questions are being asked about the performances, results, certain individual players and his formation, it may start to feel unavoidable that the misfit might actually be the man in the manager’s seat.
