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Amorim has made United better at only one thing
SEVEN ASIDES Premier League: United 1, Brighton 3
When Ruben Amorim took over, Manchester United were only four points away from third place in the Premier League. Now they are 18 points away. Their hopes of the top six are dashed, and that’s down to him. He has made them significantly worse. After a brief new-manager bounce, he has collected only two wins, one draw and seven points in the past nine league games. That’s exactly the same record as Ipswich, who are in the bottom three.
Amorim’s system has sabotaged United’s season. When he changed to a back three, Danny Murphy said it wouldn’t work because it was too easy to play against. So it proved here as Brighton overloaded the flanks, resorting to our unfashionable friend 4-4-2, making sure United’s wing-backs each had two men on them – one blocking their way forward, the other racing in behind. Diogo Dalot escaped the trap once, then didn’t know what to do as he bore down on the box. Is anyone here old enough to remember when United had left-wingers? Dear old Denis Law – so elegantly honoured by Alex Ferguson, Paddy Crerand, Alex Stepney and Brian Kidd, and by the fans with their flowers and scarves – will be turning in his grave as soon as he reaches it.
Afterwards Amorim told reporters he was going to give them a headline. ‘We are the worst team,’ he said, ‘maybe in the history of Manchester United.’ He succeeded in his aim of becoming a sub-editor as this remark was set in large type by dozens of media outlets, mostly bereft of its ‘maybe’. Will he succeed in his real aim, which is presumably to give the players a kick up the arse? We shall see. My guess is not. The last United manager to try something like this was Ralf Rangnick, when his interregnum had gone from good to bad. Once he said United needed open-heart surgery, things promptly went from bad to worse. He scraped four points from his last six games in charge. And he was soon proved wrong: without having surgery, United finished third the following season and won the League Cup. It’s in the past year that they have been wheeled into the operating theatre – Jim Ratcliffe coming in, replacing all the top brass, laying off 250 employees, sacking Ten Hag, appointing Amorim, sacking Dan Ashworth – and look where all that has got us. Meanwhile the Academy, which Ratcliffe hasn’t tried to shake up, carries on being quietly excellent. And fielding a back four.
Is this really the worst team in the club’s history? Not even maybe. From 1914 to 1945, United never finished higher than ninth in the top tier, so they never did as well as the worst they’ve done in the Premier League (eighth, last season, under Erik ten Hag). Their early-Seventies slump, too, was worse than the hole they’re in now: they were 18th in 1972-73, and, just to show this wasn’t an aberration, they were 21st in 1973-74. Even Alex Ferguson went through a lower ebb than the present one, finishing 11th and 13th in successive seasons at the end of the 1980s. He saved his job by winning the FA Cup in the second of those seasons. Perhaps Amorim will do the same.
What we can say is that Amorim is maybe the worst manager in United’s recent history. All the other non-interim bosses won half their matches, whereas Amorim has won just over a third (38.5 per cent). Ten Hag did way better than that (54.7pc). Even David Moyes did decidedly better (52.9pc). In the league, Amorim has made United better at only one thing: grinding out a result with a low block on trips to their old rivals. He has made them much worse at coping with visits from teams that are in the top half but not the big six. Against Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth, Newcastle and Brighton, it’s now played four, lost four, scored three, conceded 11. NB: United don’t have another home game against an N or a B. But they do have to entertain Palace, West Ham and Villa as well as Arsenal and Man City. On present form they could lose any of those games, or all of them.
By saying ‘I will not change’, Amorim has already made life easier for his next Premier League opponent, Marco Silva. Amorim’s United are not just easy to play against, they’re easy to plan against. Fulham often have to settle for a point – their last four home league games have been drawn – but then Brighton draw a lot too, and United managed to present them with a win by making a series of howlers in defence. Amorim keeps saying the players are nervous – well of course they are. They’re wondering if he’s about to throw them under the bus.
If Amorim had been there more than two months, he would have been sacked this morning. Ten Hag was fired for collecting 11 points in nine league games this season, which is four more than Amorim has managed in his last nine. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was fired when United were seventh with17 points from 12 league games. Amorim has 11 from 11, so not even a win at Fulham will lift him to in Ole’s level. Ruben’s at the wheel. And United are on a road to nowhere.
Tim de Lisle is editor of United Writing and a sporstwriter for The Guardian. He’s been supporting United since Law, Crerand, Stepney and Kidd were in the team.