When Manchester United’s backroom staff gather to pore over the carcass of defeat to Nottingham Forest, they will between them produce a lengthy list of imperfections to address.
Missed opportunities will bring shudders. An inability to defend set-pieces – or, indeed, a complete inability to defend generally – will curl the toes of even the most placid of coaches. But a group that probably runs to a dozen-or-so footballing mega-nerds might well miss is the very thing that Manchester United are, in fact, themselves missing.
It is the non-tangible that Nottingham Forest have in excess, the ingredient that hides in plain sight but has no metric, associated algorithm or expected likelihood.
Nuno: 'I know how Manchester United would react'
Nottingham Forest's Serbian defender #31 Nikola Milenkovic (C) celebrates after scoring his team first goal during the English Premier League football match between Manchester United and Nottingham Forest at Old Trafford in Manchester, north west England, on December 7, 2024.
Forest celebrate Nikola Milenkovic's header(Image credit: OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images)
Spirit. Togetherness. Unity. Label it however what you will: Nuno Espirito Santo’s side could flood the Trent’s banks with it. Yes, they have talented footballers, sparkly playmakers and bruising defenders. But each of them, every player, coach, analyst and medic, act completely as one.
It is obvious in every single Forest do. The evidence is everywhere. Three times on Saturday, the visiting supporters jigged gleefully in the corner of a creaking Old Trafford, the type of unbridled joy that football should bring. And each time Nuno was joined in his technical area by a merry circle of coaching staff. They congratulated each other heartily and cracked on.
Nottingham Forest manager Nuno Espirito Santo during the Premier League match between Manchester United FC and Nottingham Forest FC at Old Trafford on December 7, 2024 in Manchester, England.
Nuno Espirito Santo looks on at Old Trafford(Image credit: Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
After every possession surrendered, every foul conceded, Forest players scramble to get back in position as if children caught with hands in biscuit tins, desperate to look innocent when a parent returns to the room mid-snatch.
After they have acknowledged fans at the end of the game – Chris Wood, whose 25th Premier League goal for Forest took him past Bryan Roy’s club record, stood typically bashfully near the back of the gaggle – they all made their way back to the dugouts to slap the backs of support staff. The importance of any one individual, it seems, does not supersede the others. Their approach provided a warm glow amongst the storm and is without doubt a huge factor in Forest gaining historic wins at first Anfield and now, for the first time in 30 years, Manchester United this season.
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“I’m very proud of being part of this group of players and the squad,” a beaming Nuno told reporters afterwards. “We are trying to do something together and build something nice.”
Even after his side took a two-goal lead just after the break, Nuno “knew United would react, so then it is about unity and hard work. If you ask me what the key was, the togetherness and the hard work of the players was it.”
United, Ruben Amorim, take note. Their picture could not differ more starkly. They reek of a group of individuals playing solely for their own purpose, interested entirely in personal performance. They groaned and they moaned, they bickered, and they barked. Any error is unfailingly met by effusive finger-pointing. The squad’s inability to accept individual responsibility is at a level usually reserved for politicians. Pulling in one direction? Not by a long shot.
And so, Amorim can tinker as much as he likes with the starting line-up (and he really ought to stop doing that, at least at the back). He can work on shape, on structure and on tactics from sundown to sunrise, and then do it all again the next day. But he needs to fix something far more fundamental first.
Perhaps United should pluck a leaf from the England cricket team’s book. Before the 2010/11 Ashes tour, Andy Flower took his players and staff to the Bavarian jungle for a weeklong team-building exercise. They came back exhausted, emotionally drained and, in Jimmy Anderson’s case, with broken bones. But they found something out there in the darkness. The vulnerability brought them together, and they never chucked a backward glance.
“I had this and worse in Sporting in the beginning,” said Amorim in his press conference afterwards. His smile already seems more forced than a fortnight ago. “In Manchester you have a lot of attention, but for me it is the same feeling. This happens with a lot of clubs, and we have to continue improving the team because this will turn around. We need time and we need to continue to work in the same way every day.”
Amorim knows it going to take something extreme to turn United’s hole-riddled hull around. Unity is the first thing he needs to find.