Of all the players who weren’t playing at their best under Ruben Amorim, Matheus Cunha definitely wasn’t one, but Michael Carrick has just used him to expose a brutal flaw of his predecessor.
It can be argued that Matheus Cunha has been one of the players who has suffered from Michael Carrick becoming manager.
His natural position has been taken by Bruno Fernandes, while Patrick Dorgu is keeping him away from the left wing.
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Cunha
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However, he is not letting that get him down, making game-changing contributions in both games off the bench, with the Arsenal goal, in particular, exposing Ruben Amorim’s biggest flaw.
Manchester United head coach Michael Carrick reacts at the end of the Premier League match between Arsenal and Manchester United at the Emirates Stadium in 2026 in London, England.
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Matheus Cunha’s goal creates a “first” for Man Utd in the league
Carrick has settled upon the perfect combination in attack against the bigger teams, with Bryan Mbeumo running his socks off before being replaced by Cunha.
Cunha has thrived playing against tired defences, and his ability to retain the ball and win fouls helps the team see out games late on.
He has added the final product to those skills, assisting Dorgu’s goal against City before going one better and scoring a wondergoal himself vs Arsenal.
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Remarkably, Cunha’s goal vs Arsenal was the first time this season that a substitute has scored in the league for Man Utd.
For a team that seemed to concede late goals all the time under Ruben Amorim, a substitute never scoring a goal seems to sum up United’s biggest problem under Carrick’s predecessor.
The number of times United dropped points from winning positions in the league is too many to count, and add to that the subs never making a difference, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
In-game management was Ruben Amorim’s biggest flaw
Man Utd fans can probably list out many flaws of Amorim during his 14 months at Old Trafford, but the Cunha stat is simply insane.
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This is a club that was built on late goals, drama, and a never-say-die attitude, with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s late heroics in *THAT* Champions League final being one of the finest moments in the club’s history.
Poor in-game management by Amorim, where he almost always seemed to take a safety-first approach, backfired more often than not by putting players under pressure.
Carrick, on the other hand, has empowered his players to go for the win all the time, and Cunha’s goal validated this stance.
It’s why Amorim struggled to keep players who weren’t playing happy, because those players knew they would never get the chance to make a difference when they came on, since the instructions to them would be to play safe to scrape a win/draw.
Carrick exposed that flaw in just two games, against the two best teams in the league, no less, with Cunha’s thunderstrike an apt punctuation to hammer home that point.
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