Manchester United were well beaten by bitter rivals Manchester City yesterday as derby day turned sour for Ruben Amorim.
Despite the odd bright spark, the Red Devils barely laid a glove on their local opposition and the game ended in a comprehensive 3-0 defeat for the Old Trafford club.
United legend Wayne Rooney, who knows a thing or two about Manchester derbies, has had his say on his BBC podcast.
Difference between the sticks
United were linked with a new goalkeeper all summer, and with both Altay Bayindir and Andre Onana looking shaky at the start of the season the club finally moved to bring in Senne Lammens on deadline day.
The 23-year-old is highly thought of across Europe but is unproven outside his native Belgium, where he played over 50 times for Royal Antwerp.
A nervous-looking Bayindir started against City and arguably should have done better with at least one of the Sky Blues’ goals. At the other end Gianluigi Donnarumma was a class act, showing United just what they missed by opting not to pursue him once his future was revealed to be away from Paris Saint-Germain this summer.
Was Lammens a “panic buy”?
A perplexed Rooney labelled Amorim’s decision to stick with Bayindir and keep his new goalkeeper on the bench a “concern”, and even suggested that Lammens was a “panic buy”.
He said: “That was a worry as well – you don’t know if that was a panic buy. I don’t know too much about the new goalkeeper. I don’t think many of us have seen much about him. I’ll obviously do some research and have a look.
“But if you’re buying a new goalkeeper and he’s not ready to come in, that’s a bit of a concern.”
Rooney went on to make the obvious comparison between the two goalkeepers on the pitch yesterday. He said: “Donnarumma comes straight in and keeps a clean sheet. That’s the big difference, and that was my point after the first game of the season when I said United should go and get Donnarumma.
“Whether financially they could or he didn’t want to come on we don’t know but we’ve signed a new goalkeeper on potential, we’ve needed up with another project, and that’s always a bit of a risk.”
Fans send “powerful” message to Amorim
Rooney also addressed the club’s direction under head coach Amorim, and admitted it isn’t easy to be optimistic.
He said: “I want to be as supportive and positive as I can be on the manager and the players. But it is very difficult to sit here and say we are seeing progression, and at least we’re seeing things that will get results in the near future. We’re seeing none of that, and it is very difficult.”
The 39-year-old pointed to the behaviour of the fans as a “powerful” indication of the state of the club right now.
“There was an image towards the end of the game where I saw the Manchester United fans leaving,” he said. “You could hear the fans singing Amorim’s name, but I think that is so powerful that the United fans were leaving the game.”
“You know the game is over and I think they were very disappointed in what they were seeing. It is hard to see how it continues. What are the patterns? What are we seeing what might improve the team moving forward?”
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Joe Ponting
Joe has spent more than half his life writing about football and all of it following United. As a child he told a doctor his name was ‘Paul Scholes’, but could never pick a pass like him no matter how much he tried.
