Ruben Amorim is hard to dislike; personable, open and honest. He is bright, knows his stuff and can see the flaws in his team as clearly as we can. It seems the business of coaching Manchester United has drained him of his vital life forces. His energy levels are shot, his enthusiasm exhausted.
His post-match oratory in the immediacy of the Grimsby Town debacle felt almost cathartic, a moment of release; that’s it, I’m done, I hold up my hands, I’m beaten.
The sensitive questioning of ITV’s Gabriel Clarke met with an anguished lament over the state of it all, the reaching of a new low when all the bad stuff was supposed to be behind them. Clarke poked politely over the details, the performance, the goalkeeper, not watching the penalty shootout, talking points which fed the frenzy as the night unfolded.
Amorim brushed it all aside. This was not some technical failing, this was not about tactics or formations. The issues troubling Amorim go deeper than data points and systems.
In his overwrought state he was alluding to a kind of anomie, a total breakdown of norms eating away at the fabric of the club, a profound malaise that appears too big for him to tackle alone.
If this were a cry for help, will it go unanswered? Where are the other voices, the significant others responsible for bringing Amorim to the club. What do they think is going on here?
Ultimate responsibility rests with Omar Berrada, the chief executive hired to re-energise and renew big brand United. Alongside his newly-appointed director of football, Jason Wilcox, Berrada went all in to appoint Amorim, a coach supposedly identified by a technical department sold as best-in-class, acting on next level intel and processes.
Almost 10 months after taking charge, Amorim appears utterly broken by the experience. Saturday’s home game against Burnley has already acquired a significance none imagined on that sunny opening day a fortnight ago when United walked out against Arsenal.
There was much cooing then about the upgrade in performance. Yet the signs were there, another goalless afternoon, another defeat to a set-piece howler. United couldn’t even draw a contest they should have won.
At Fulham they were bright for 10 minutes then shrank back into those familiarly passive rhythms, unable to hold on to the lead and lucky not to surrender all three points in the end. And then Grimsby, two down in half an hour, fortunate not to be three down after the break.
The penalties might have been the work of a dramatist seeking a suitably theatrical ending, a shootout barrelling towards an inevitable end, thousands of happy feet trampling the body of the prone Goliath as Blundell Park erupted.
One fan declared it the best day of her life, and this in the year she was married. Such was the scale of the result, national news organisations sent regional reporters to Cleethorpes to file dizzying reports on the morning after the night before.
Amid all this, Amorim flounders, nervously rearranging the pieces on his tactics board as United burn.
“We come to the game with a fourth division team and we perform like that,” he said.
“I’m seven [nine] months here talking about the environment, it’s more than that. I’m shocked. We make a lot of changes, we try to fight a lot of things.
“We need to show up. If we don’t show up you can feel something has to change and you are not going to change 22 players again.”
If that does not point to managerial change, what does? Amorim has tried everything in his power to affect change, yet the same issues recur.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe is not going to sack himself or his retinue of highly-paid Ineos attendees. It is all on poor Amorim.
“I don’t know what to say to our fans anymore,” he added.
“It’s hard to face everything. It’s not about formations. The system is not important.
“We can play with three, four, five defenders. That doesn’t matter. What matters is we need to be different.
“That is the job of the coach, and you can see that nothing changes.
“The penalty shootout was not important. If I’m there trying to see if we win the game, it doesn’t matter. The beginning of the game, during the game, that’s what matters. If we win this game it would be so unfair.”
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Amorim had given up at that point. He rightly assessed that a victory over fourth-tier Grimsby was worth zip if it required penalties to deliver it.
And so to the visit of Burnley, after which it appears there is a decision to make. Perhaps he has already made it.
“We move to the next game and then we have time to decide things,” he said, the night air in Grimsby thick with resignation.