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The arrival of Amorim makes United a little more difficult to read for Arteta

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We’ve still got well over 24 hours until United come to town and, as a follow on from something I mentioned yesterday, I thought I’d have a little look at how their fans are feeling ahead of the the game tomorrow. There seems to be a bit of a ‘game has come a little too early for Amorim’ vibe amongst their forums, which is interesting. Many are seeing it as a ‘free hit’ and I kind of get that; they are currently ninth in the table, have picked up five wins out of 13 with four draws and four defeats. They’ll also be without Martinez and Mainoo, which I’m assuming will be a blow, so I’m guessing they are thinking that an away day down to London when they aren’t up towards the top of the table fighting feels like a tough one. The fact they have dropped so many points already means that expectations have clearly been managed. We had the same thing when Arteta took over from Emery; in that first half a season it was basically “just get the season over and done with” and whilst that was a few more games in to the season when it happened to us, most of us wanted to just see improvements in the football.

United are 13th if you go on just away form and have three draws and one win to show from their six games played. They’ve scored six goals in that time and that’s the fourth worst in the league away from home, but they’ve also only conceded five, which is joint best with Liverpool. So they have the second best clean sheet percentage and clearly it’s scoring goals that has been their problem this season, rather than defensively. To back that up they’ve also got the third lowest number of shots on target that they’ve faced; so it has been an organised United team, they’ve just been really bad at finishing teams off.

They also don’t look like they get in to wide positions for crossing, because they’ve got the third lowest number of crosses they’ve made in the whole league behind Ipswich and Wolves; this looks like a United team that wants to build through the middle.

The problem with all of these stats, of course, is that Amorim’s arrival can skew what they actually might do moving forward. Amorim is a guy who has created a Sporting team who want to win the ball back higher up the pitch – that doesn’t look like United to me based on the numbers I’ve seen. He also wants to use wingers who are direct runners, which Rashford could do, but he used Fernandez in the wide left position. He’s a guy who wants to drift more centrally, so not what you’d expect Amorim to want. Apparently Fernandez came off on 65 minutes and had an ice pack on his ankle. Amorim confirmed yesterday that Fernandez is fit so he will most likely play in that role again.

So where they will look to get their width is probably from those wing backs and they’ve had Amad who has apparently been playing really well as a right-wing back. He’s rapid if I recall rightly, but is he going to play as high and wide against us? I’m not so sure, because he’s going to be up against Martinelli and that might – hopefully – pin him back a bit.

I watched one video from a United fan which was suggesting that switching quickly from side to side is something that they did against Everton, so that might be something they look for from us. That might be through big switches so we need to be mindful of that. But I do think they’ll continue to try to play centrally, which means Rashford coming central a little more, Zirkzee might drop in to collect the ball, then Rashford as I’ve already mentioned too. I might touch on it tomorrow in the match preview when looking at us, but the more I read up on it, the more I am wondering if it will be those wide areas that we need to be on point for if we’re going to put United to the sword. If they go with Wing backs that are going to try to push high up the pitch (Amad is seen as a winger) then there could be space if we’re isolated against United’s three centre halves.

Arteta will need to be approaching this game carefully, because United have the advantage of knowing how we play, but we don’t really have too much data on how they will play under Amorim. There’s a few glimpses and I guess at least Arteta has the benefit of three matches to pour over as opposed to zero.

You’d think they’d be quite buoyed after a 4-0 drubbing of an admittedly poor Everton side, but there’s a few who have said that it wasn’t as convincing as the score line sounds. And the pundits are falling in to line to back us too, as you’d expect. Merse has said we will batter them, which I’m not sure about, because we haven’t had a game like that for a fair few years; I think the last time we won that convincingly was in 2015 when we were 3-0 up within 20 minutes (Alexis and Ozil on the scoresheet that day). These games are always tighter than they should be, every time we play United and no matter how crap they’ve been, it’s always felt close. Sports Mole has a 2-0 Arsenal win and although I haven’t seen it yet, I suspect ‘Jones Knows’ on Sky Sports will back us as well. We have to deliver on that expectation from the pundits though and as I’ve already stated, this game is a weird one. We were by far the better team against them last season and yet it took a stoppage time winner from Rice and then Gabriel Jesus to bring a more agreeable score line to the performance, so ideally we don’t want to see that tomorrow.

I just want this win so bad. With Liverpool swatting aside everyone it feels like there is a load more pressure on us; they have their buffer, they are getting the rub of the green (in terms of playing teams at the right time and fewer key injuries to star men like we’ve had with Saka for a couple of games and Odegaard for two months), they have a big points gap that is miles bigger than what we had in 2022. If you’re a Liverpool fan right now you’re looking at that and feeling pretty confident I reckon. For us, however, there are no margins; there are no more chances to have a game like we had at St James’ Park. Win, win and win again. That is the only output that doesn’t result in this being a Liverpool canter to the title.

Right, I might leave it there for today, because we’ll need to get a team news update from Arteta at some stage and we’ll hopefully hear more on who we have that are fit. Then tomorrow we’ll be able to put a little more context and colour on the match preview.

Catch you all in the morrow.

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Gooner born in 1982 from Harlow, Essex, now living in Uxbridge. I say what I see - frequently wrong, but hey, it's just an opinion piece, right? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.