The Premier League campaign for Manchester United this season is all set to go into the history books for all sorts of wrong reasons but the optics are worse than the performances, especially recently.
Under Ruben Amorim, Manchester United have had the propensity to always find something to get themselves up for a big game.
There aren’t many games bigger than a Manchester derby at Old Trafford so the focus will be squarely on the players, especially after the win in the reverse fixture.
Gary Neville was asked for his thoughts on the upcoming derby and he got stuck on one word, saying it about multiple in 30 seconds.
It summed up the current state of Amorim’s team.
Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images
Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images
Gary Neville on the Manchester derby
The Manchester derby remains competitive on the field despite United’s struggles elsewhere so Amorim will go into this game with plenty of confidence.
Having said that, if United carry over their finishing abilities, or the lack of it, then it is almost guaranteed that the perilous Old Trafford record this season continues.
Neville was speaking on the Gary Neville podcast on Sky and gave his thoughts on the marquee game and he kept coming back to one word – “Interesting”.
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While that certainly doesn’t seem much, it sums up how unpredictable the current Man Utd squad is, where it’s impossible to know which version will turn up on a given match day.
Neville said: “The Manchester Derby, yeah, looking forward to it. It will be interesting, yeah, it will be interesting.
“Watching the game [against Forest], I didn’t think United were bad, we know what Forest have been, determined all season, throwing their bodies in front of it.
“At this moment, [United] are just not clinical in front of goal, they haven’t got killers up front so I think it’ll be interesting on Sunday.”
Ruben Amorim’s team has to stop being “interesting”
No elite team should ever be called “interesting” because you know what you’re going to get when an elite team steps on the pitch.
Sir Alex Ferguson’s teams were winning machines who did have the odd bad day at the office but nobody would call their games “interesting”.
At their best, they were devastatingly predictable, with teams already losing mentally before they faced United physically.
That is the predictability that Ruben Amorim would like to instill in his team eventually and is working towards, with these big games a good marker of progress.
Man Utd fans will be extremely happy if, one day, the team stops being “interesting” and start becoming boring favourites for games again.