Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim has come under more fire than any other coach in world football, and his days as the Red Devils coach may be numbered despite a surprisingly strong public endorsement from Jim Ratcliffe (who is now coming under some fire of his own).
The Premier League giants have fallen to new depths under Amorim, who finished near the relegation zone last season and was knocked out of the League Cup in the first match this season by lowly Grimsby Town.
As the losses pile up, Amorim’s stubbornness, awful tactics, and insistence on playing his star man and captain Bruno Fernandes out of position continue to receive rightful backlash from Manchester United supporters.
And yet, Fernandes is one of the few people coming to Amorim’s defense all the way out in the open, and he offered some surprising support to the Portuguese manager.
Ruben Amorim is not the same as the rest
Fernandes told Sky Sports, “Any manager who comes here will be one game away from a crisis… at this club, it’s always like that. If you win a game, it looks like you’re going to win the league – if you lose a game, looks like there’s a cloud over the club that won’t go away”
On some level, Fernandes is right about Ruben Amorim. Every single manager who joins Manchester United deals with the same hefty criticism of what they do, regardless of the state of the club they are inheriting.
People even made Ralf Rangnick out to be a clueless buffoon when he was right about literally everything about Manchester United. But the thing is, Rangnick never looked this bad week after week, and he had a fraction of the investment or backing from ownership that Amorim has had.
No manager has been backed more in the transfer market and even publicly by the owner than Amorim, and yet no manager has achieved even less than the former Sporting CP coach.
So while it can be appreciated that Fernandes, as a captain and a former Sporting CP star from Portugal himself, is backing his coach, Fernandes is also one of the biggest victims of Amorim’s terrible management.
But Fernandes is also one of the few Manchester United stars who has an easy way out, as he can force his way to a big money move to Saudi Arabia if things keep going south for him and Man United on the pitch this season.
Joe Soriano is the editor of The Trivela Effect and a FanSided Hall of Famer who has covered world football since 2010. He’s led top digital communities like The Real Champs (Real Madrid) and has run sites covering Tottenham, Liverpool, Juventus, and Schalke. He also helped manage NFL Spin Zone and Daily DDT, covering the NFL and pro wrestling.