Manchester United players have now been warned of what Ruben Amorim is now thinking in the “back of his mind” after a turbulent season at Old Trafford.
Ruben Amorim took charge of Manchester United last November and the 40-year-old former Sporting CP head coach faced a difficult start to life at Old Trafford.
The United manager was brought to the Premier League club as a replacement for Erik ten Hag, who had been sacked as Red Devils head coach last October.
Amorim’s men limped to a 15th-place finish in the table on the final day of the Premier League season after United defeated 10-man Aston Villa at Old Trafford.
United’s league standing in the 2024-25 campaign is the Red Devils’ worst finish in the Premier League since the formation of the top-flight league back in 1992.
The Red Devils only managed 11 league wins from 38 Premier League matches and United lost 18 times in the league alone amid an abysmal season for the club.
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Photo by Cesar Ortiz Gonzalez/Soccrates/Getty Images
Photo by Cesar Ortiz Gonzalez/Soccrates/Getty Images
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Ruben Amorim has the ‘expectation’ now set and a ‘trial’ claim is made about Man Utd players at Old Trafford
Manchester United failed to secure a place in Europe for the 2025-26 season after their poor league form left the Red Devils outside of the top half of the table.
The Red Devils did have the chance to return to the Champions League after United reached the 2025 Europa League final at the San Mames Stadium in May.
However, Ruben Amorim’s men fell well short on the night in Bilbao and United lost 1-0 to Premier League side Tottenham in the Europa League final.
Ex-United player Danny Higginbotham has now admitted that the “expectation” for Amorim will be for the Red Devils to climb into the top six for the 2025-26 campaign.
However, the 46-year-old ex-Red Devils defender added that United’s Europa League final loss was a “situation” where all of Amorim’s “players were on trial.”
Speaking to Football365, Danny Higginbotham said: “I think the expectation has to be top six, I think that’s fair to say.
“We know that this season was considered a write-off and all the eggs were put in the basket of the Europa League, which didn’t come to fruition, didn’t work. I thought they were really poor in the final.
“But he has a full pre-season now where he can work with the players, I think by and large, since he really took over, other than the Europa League, I think it was a situation where the players were on trial.
“And I think now in the back of his mind, he knows who he wants, who he doesn’t want, who he needs to bring in.
“So, for me, the results – I wasn’t too concerned about the results. It’s a fact-finding side of things.”
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What Ruben Amorim must now do at Old Trafford ahead of Man Utd’s 2025-26 Premier League season
United completed a post-season tour of Asia in May and Amorim will now be making a major overhaul of his United first-team squad after the summer window opened in June.
Danny Higginbotham has said that it is now “really, really important” for United to ensure they do the ‘right’ transfer business for Amorim ahead of the new season.
“For him now, he needs to know the players that he wants to keep, the players obviously he’s letting go, but even more importantly, the players that he needs to bring in,” he continued.
“So, I think the business that is going to be done this summer is really, really important because they were so, so far off last season to the point where I’ve got a lot of friends that for a number of years when Manchester United started to decline, they would just be constantly taking the mickey out of me.
“Whereas this season, I got the one thing that I didn’t want as a Manchester United fan, I got empathy.
“And when you start getting empathy as a fan, that’s not a good sign. So, I’m hoping that it’s a busy window.”
United will begin their pre-season campaign next month and the Red Devils will meet Leeds United at the Strawberry Arena in Sweden on 19th July.