Manchester United head coach Ruben Amorim warned a storm is coming, and it’s here, with two successive losses.
It’s been a dead-even start in for Ruben Amorim at Manchester United after five games.
Two wins
One draw
Two losses
And there’s a worrying question amid these results, where it feels like it does not really matter.
Ruben Amorim, Head Coach of Manchester United, speaks with Matthijs de Ligt of Manchester United as he applauds the fans after the Premier League m...
Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images
Ruben Amorim’s balancing act
Everybody knows Ruben Amorim has the toughest of tasks. He is picking up the pieces from Erik ten Hag’s reign, which frankly was not up to expectation.
Ten Hag had a positive stretch in his first season after the World Cup 2022 from December to March. And his team did finish third.
Outside of this, it was a distinctly average performance, with United finishing in eighth place in 23/24. And this season it got even worse.
Ruben Amorim has a real challenge now, as he attempts to imprint his own style of play on the players.
Amorim has made clear this is his first focus. It’s about long-term gain, over short-term wins. And that is the right approach.
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Yet it has also created this strange scenario where the current season feels a little lost, a practice run, for Amorim and his coaching staff to teach, and to learn who is up to the task, and who is not.
This itself can be dangerous, and it’s not his fault, but it risks fans beginning to care a little less about results too, which is notable amid the ongoing ticket price furore.
And the cycle is self-fulfilling, because Manchester United’s players cannot be allowed to think that results really are secondary, and let their own intensity drop.
How Amorim fixes this is a little unclear, because nobody wants to see him take shortcuts and abandon his philosophy to chase results.
It may simply require his team, the players to show extra focus on delivering every single detail he is passing onto them, and believe the results will follow.
Must win game could add focus
A bit of help could be on the way, with United’s fixture schedule providing the team with something to really get them focused, a knockout quarter-final.
Ruben Amorim’s Manchester United visit Tottenham later this month in the Carabao Cup, a genuine must-win all-or-nothing knockout tie.
It’s an exciting fixture, one that will place Ruben Amorim just one-game away from a trip to Wembley if his side can win.
United’s players should have a real point to prove against Tottenham, after losing 3-0 at Old Trafford earlier this season.
This is the game where United’s players have to raise their intensity, and a defeat cannot be brushed off as simply ‘one more defeat’ in a league campaign where a few have already been stacked up.
It will be a real test for the squad, to see how much has been learned under Amorim to date.
And a positive result could be the spark the team needs, one that can light a fuse under the rest of the league campaign, if one fails to ignite during the preceding Manchester derby.
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