Ruben Amorim has called on his Manchester United players to go fully George Costanza and start doing the opposite of what their instincts tell them after going a goal ahead.
After looking the more dangerous side for nearly and hour United took the lead away to Fulham after Leny Yoro’s header bounced in off Rodrigo Muniz – only to retreat into defensive mode and end up conceding an equaliser to substitute Emile Smith Rowe.
Amorim felt his players were ‘not smart enough’ in their approach to the game, but was left with no complaints as to their work rate.
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He said: “I think we can do better but we are putting in the effort. That is the most important thing for me. In some moments we did well, especially at the beginning of the game, and I felt that after the goal we were thinking about just the result.
“This team wants to win games [but] we need to focus on the performance and what we need to do, because if we think about the result we forget to do the normal things.
“We were working until the goal, we score, and we should do the opposite – have more possession, push the opponent more – and I think we were not smart enough in that moment.
“In this moment we need to think about the performance. Of course I’m not crazy, I know what is feeling of being a player in a team that has to win every match, and I don’t feel a lack of urgency in this moment.
“What I felt is we missed a penalty, we missed some chances, and then we score, and I have the feeling the team went ‘now we have to defend this goal’. That is not a lack of urgency – it’s maybe urgency in the opposite side.”
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Amorim added: “We just want to win games and they are humans. They know the context, they read everything, and they know we’re at a club where they need to be better.
“But for me, during the week it’s completely different and they work really hard. Today they worked really hard, sometimes not in the [best] way, but they worked, and I can work with that. I’m really confident we are going to get many wins.”
Amorim also felt captain Bruno Fernandes looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders after putting a first-half penalty over the bar with the game still goalless.
The United boss said: “He’s not used to missing penalties. He knows the importance of the moment in this context and that it can have a huge impact on the team.
“I felt that during the game he was not so happy and not so involved, because he has so much responsibility, and I think he felt the missed penalty was huge for us.”