The idea of the 2025/26 season being a new era for Ruben Amorim at Manchester United is clear, and he has hammered home that message with a damning admission for last season.
15th in the league, weekly battering domestically, and the season finishing with a whimper in the Europa League final.
If Ruben Amorim was asked to script the worst-possible start to his Man Utd reign, it would look quite similar to what actually transpired.
Now that he’s in a better place, he is starting to lift the lid on what he went through last season, in a turbulent season full of chaos.
Diogo Dalot, Head Coach Ruben Amorim of Manchester United in action during a first team training session
Photo by Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images
Ruben Amorim’s 2024/25 admission
Amorim said after the last game of 2024/25 that the choice is to move forward and band together, or complain to each other and stay stuck in the past.
He’s doing a fine job of striking a balance so far, by reminding everyone of the difficulties of last season and learning from it, while engineering clear improvement this season.
During an interview with the club’s official media, Amorim lifted the lid on the transformed dynamics of the dressing room in just one summer.
He said: “I feel in the group now, that if someone comes into the group now, I will not have to fight all the fights. I felt that last year. Now I feel that I have a group, a leadership group inside the room that will help me with that kind of situation.”
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Amorim’s calls for more leadership in the dressing room were clear last season as well, but his comments are damning.
It hints at an uneasy time for everyone at the club, and his decision to axe five players from his thinking even before pre-season began shows that he took learnings from that chastening spell.
Amorim is cracking the intangibles at Man Utd
Since Sir Alex Ferguson retired, every manager hired by Man Utd has ticked some boxes, but nobody has been quite able to crack the intangibles.
Those intangibles are team bonding, spirit, togetherness, and professionalism – things one can’t quantify but are crucial in a team’s success.
The change in the dressing room dynamic has already been stressed in numerous interviews from the players, which is a battle every manager before him failed to win.
It is increasingly looking like he will succeed at Man Utd, and if he doesn’t, it won’t be due to the players throwing another manager under the bus.
The cultural reset was the biggest challenge at Old Trafford, and that’s one Amorim seems to have achieved in less than one full pre-season.