Paul Fennessy
“WHAT’S THE DEFINITION of insanity?” Ireland legend Roy Keane asked rhetorically in a recent episode of the Stick to Football podcast.
The answer, of course, is doing the same thing over and over again.
Yet after overseeing Man United’s 3-0 loss to bitter rivals City, Ruben Amorim was defiant.
Since taking over in November 2024, the Portuguese coach has presided over eight wins from 31 Premier League matches.
Having guided the Red Devils to their worst finish of the Premier League era last season — 15th — the club are now one point above the relegation zone in 14th.
The caveat, of course, is that United have only played four games, and two of those have been against sides expected to contend for the title — City and Arsenal.
But critics might feel that those patterns from last year’s disastrous season are repeating themselves.
Amorim disagrees, as he outlined in his post-match press conference.
“It is not a record we should have at Manchester United,” Amorim said. “I accept that, but I am not going to change.
“When I want to change my philosophy, I will change, but if not, you have to change the man.
“We will talk about that every game we lose. I have played my way, and I am going to play my way until I want to change.”
When told fans could lose faith, the 40-year-old added: “I understand. That is normal (with) the results. I accept that, but I don’t see it that way.
“I see we are doing better, but the results don’t show that.
“My message (to fans) is I will do everything. I am always thinking about what is best for the club.
“It is always the same message, and the rest is not my decision. (As long as) I am here, I will do my best.
“I really want to win games. I am suffering more than them.”
Amorim is part of a long line of coaches who appear to have been influenced by Pep Guardiola.
The Catalan coach, who himself took plenty of inspiration from Barcelona great Johan Cruyff, revolutionised football with his dogmatic approach.
Guardiola has been known to promptly substitute players who ignore his tactical instructions.
Key footballers in his teams, such as Joao Cancelo, have been swiftly banished for their disagreeable behaviour.
Guardiola has had tremendous success implementing his distinctive style since he promptly transformed football with his Champions League-winning Barcelona team.
It was therefore inevitable that a multitude of Guardiola imitators would emerge, with some enjoying more success than others, but no one ever really coming close to matching the originator’s achievements.
These days, though, it is starting to feel like Guardiola-esque approaches are going out of fashion.
Amorim is far from the only culprit.
Ange Postecoglou is another coach who employs a variation of Guardiola’s style.
The Australian boss’s tenure at Spurs, though, failed despite and perhaps partially because of their Europa League success, which came as a result of abandoning the principles that Postecoglou had insisted on in the first place, as a backs-to-the-wall performance got them over the line against Amorim’s more adventurous United.
Similarly, Russell Martin is another manager with a rigid set of principles whose philosophy hasn’t exactly paid off recently. He was dismissed by relegation-bound Southampton last season and already looks on the brink at Rangers, with the Scottish side failing to win any of their opening five league games for the first time since 1978.
Perhaps one element of Guardiola’s style that some of his disciples have overlooked is that the Catalan coach’s teams are constantly evolving.
Consider his team at Barcelona, which was full of highly technical but not exactly physically imposing players such as Lionel Messi, Xavi, and Andrés Iniesta.
By contrast, his Man City starting XI on Sunday featured an old-fashioned number nine (Erling Haaland) and a speedy and direct winger (Jeremy Doku).
Guardiola notoriously ostracised Joe Hart from the Man City starting XI because he was deemed not good enough with the ball at his feet.
Now he has just signed a goalkeeper, Gianluigi Donnarumma, who was [reportedly discarded by PSG](https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6549107/2025/08/13/psg-gianluigi-donnarumma-transfer-analysis/) because he was deemed not good enough with the ball at his feet.
Amorim, by contrast, seems more stubborn and married to one particular philosophy.
His insistence on playing three at the back, for example, was completely ill-suited to the profile of United’s squad, yet he persists with this strategy that has failed to get the best out of many of their most talented players.
Guardiola famously won the Champions League with Barcelona in 2011 by playing a 4-3-3 formation.
Had he continued with this exact style in the intervening 14 years, it’s doubtful he would have enjoyed the same level of success. Today, for instance, City started with a 4-1-4-1 approach.
Alex Ferguson, widely regarded as Man United’s greatest ever manager, was constantly changing formation and often incorporated new coaches and ideas into his set-up to ensure things never grew stale, and that philosophy, as much as anything else, was key to his longevity.
If you look at the managers who are enjoying success at the moment, Mikel Arteta and Thomas Frank have guided Arsenal and Tottenham to second and third place, respectively. Both tend to adopt approaches suited to an individual game rather than adhering to an all-encompassing philosophy.
Playing the same way every week tends to only work for teams that have the best players in the league, which is arguably the primary reason for Arne Slot’s success at Liverpool, though even the Dutchman sought to acquire a slightly more pragmatic approach compared to the dynamism of the Jurgen Klopp era.
Asked about advice for Amorim recently, Keane said: “I’m going to state the obvious. He’s got to win some football matches; to find a way to win.”
It may sound simplistic, but for someone who secured seven Premier League titles with United, the words carry weight.
The implication, of course, is that Amorim needs to worry less about style and more about coming up with a way to change United’s fortunes.
The alternative approach is the definition of insanity.