From his first Manchester United training session it was clear to see Ruben Amorim has something. But one Liverpool fan says he can’t be judged for a while.

Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com.

That’s Amorim
Erm, I’m a bit giddy and don’t really understand why other United fans wouldn’t be. If we’ve learnt anything from the last few guys its to enjoy it as much as possible in the beginning because sooner or later, it will all turn to shit. Excitement and objectivity aren’t mutually exclusive.

I wrote in the other week to poke fun at a certain Liverpool fan for claiming dispassion and patience with regards their new manager’s impressive start whilst obviously falling head of heels for him, explaining all the things Slot was doing better than Klopp.

Well, Paul, I suppose I owe you a bit of an apology because here I am like a lovesick schoolgirl bewitched by a mysterious foreigner whose done nothing but show up to training and flash his pearly whites. Given our respective previous relationships I would argue my giddiness is somewhat more justified however Slot has actually done something worthy of praise so fair enough, and sorry.

With that in mind however I’m now going to fawn over Amorim a little. There have been three short videos produced by the club so far showing our new manager. A stadium tour, an interview, and a video of the first proper training session. Whilst the first two successfully make me all gooey inside it’s the training video that actually has something worthy of discussion.

There was some talk of whether Amorim would take a pragmatic approach during his early time at United and try to integrate a three at the back style over time given the squads supposed unsuitability for that system, but we got an answer immediately. Three at the back, two high wingbacks, two playmakers behind the striker, same as he did at Sporting, no messing about.

Obviously this was very basic stuff and whilst ‘man does bare minimum of job requirements’ shouldn’t produce as much excitement as it has, this does demonstrate just how utterly lacking in identity and direction United had become under Ten Hag. Giving the team a framework of consistent positioning and basic passing structures will look revolutionary in comparison.

Establishing that identity is important, having something to fall back on when everything goes wrong is important. Its simple stuff that could make a big difference, like when the team loses possession everyone turns around and runs in a straight line back to their defensive position. Very basic, but for a team that has so consistently collapsed under the barest of pressures over the last few years it could be vital.

Pessimism has its place and I’m in no way saying Amorim is going to be successful at United. There is no evidence to suggest that yet and our club has a habit of breaking managers and players but that doesn’t mean excitement at the possibility of success is unreasonable. Just being able to see the destination, already having a clear idea how this team could look in a year or two if Amorim is talented enough to coach it, should be cause for some giddiness.
Dave, Manchester

Right not to be giddy
Good to see that Utd fans have some perspective on their expectations regarding Amorim. I hope that also extends to what results he should be getting. I may be entirely wrong, but I see Utd’s first XI/squad as around the 7/8th best in the league, and so the expectation for an average manager would be results that place you in those positions in the league.

Now, you might argue that you want a good, or ideally, great manager, and he should subsequently over-perform with the team. Let’s say that improves the points return by 7-10 points above the average. That might put you in the 4th-6th position area (or higher or lower, this is guess work people), but still only those positions and that’s a great manager having a serious impact upon your results.

This means you are going to often drop points against those teams in the top 6 positions. You will also sometimes lose against teams in the bottom half. Just like Liverpool, Arsenal And City do, just with more regularity because they are a worse team. Fans, Media (even our hallowed F365) and pundits treat Utd as if they are still the dominant team of the Ferguson era. They are not. And if I was a Manchester Utd fan I would be getting super pissed at this continued attitude. It is actively damaging the clubs attempt to drag itself forward. Every time they put in a dismal performance where they are outplayed everyone tears them to shreds.

Do they do that with Brighton? If Brighton lose to Spurs do the players get dragged over the coals for not putting in the work and being shit. No. People have reasonable expectations. They will lose occasionally to big teams. They will win occasionally to big teams, when they do they are applauded for the success. This is a positive cycle that promotes players to feel supported and confident.

What you get with Utd is an unrealistic expectation, which when inevitably not actualised means the players, having only played to their expected level, are slaughtered, and in some cases, publicly humiliated. This creates a dismal feeling within the squad, ratchets up the pressure because any perceived under-performance gets lambasted, and the combination makes the whole environment unpleasant. Amorim will bring fresh respite, but if he is held up to unreasonable expectations, the cycles will begin again.

Judging Amorim inside the first 12-18 months is always pointless. There are many examples of great managers needing at least a couple of seasons to integrate their ideas, develop the playing squad, and provide enough data to offset any unfortunate/fortunate periods that muddy the water of actual performance. Moreover, it is simply logical to surmise that a manager would need time to evaluate the squad and instil the required patterns/processes he wants his players to replicate habitually.

People will no doubt point to Slot as an example of a manager showing progress and performance very quickly, but this was only possible due to an incumbent successful squad, full pre-season, an evolution rather than revolution of playing style and perhaps players who have high intelligence and flexibility to make the transition process easier. But despite this apparent success, we should absolutely not draw any conclusions for some time. Slot, and I say this as a Liverpool fan, is absolutely going to go through a performance slump at some stage. It might be before xmas, after or next season, but slump they will. This will not make him suddenly a bad manager, despite recency bias making some fans and most media insist to the contrary. It is just the absolute certainty that teams go through periods of good form and bad form.

Though in my opinion Utd have a (for them) mediocre playing squad, that does not mean it will take the oft mentioned 2/3/4 seasons to improve. There are many examples of teams vastly improving from far worse base lines in a couple of transfer windows. And this is instead the area that people should rightly criticise the previous performance and subsequently expect vast improvements in the future.

Utd have a distinct advantage on almost every other team. They accrue enough revenue to budget a significant net spend every season. This, in theory, allows them to have a high wage bill, an absolute necessity for title challengers, but moreover allows them to actively purchase players to improve the playing squad. If you can constantly spend significant money to improve your team, they should exist as perennial challengers who should regularly reach the pinnacle and stay there through the ability to replace ageing stars with new, young ones. With such a significant advantage it is actually extremely impressive (for the wrong reasons) that they have continuously produced such mediocre teams.

And beware, this advantage isn’t baked in. Utd were dominant for so long that they amassed a legion of fans (on top of already being a large, storied club), as success tends to do, but the longer the fallow period the more that legion gets eroded, particularly if there exists a twin who represents absolute success and competence. If Utd continue to exist outside the top 4 then at some point their turnover will evolve to reflect that.
Ed Ern

MORE ON AMORIM’S START FROM F365
👉 Big Weekend: Man City v Tottenham, Ruben Amorim, Liverpool, Cole Palmer, Napoli, Coventry
👉 It’s been a tough season so far for the Main Character Managers; can Amorim turn the tide?
👉 Maresca, Arteta near bottom but can Amorim match Slot at 5) in ranking of Premier League manager starts?

What do Spurs want?
Most fans, I imagine, don’t really know much about other clubs support base aside from a handful of loudmouths on the internet, which is why someone like Dixon Hunt (not his real name, surely….too many genitalia jokes there) writes in basing an opinion on a fan base off of one letter.

Spurs fans, in general, at the stadium – which I am fortunate enough to go to regularly, have one permeating opinion; that the club, which includes the manager, are more than just okay. I know that, in my job, I’m required to think differently as per which client I’m dealing with – seems quite logical, but we have a coach who steadfastly refuses to change (and for anyone saying he has – he really hasn’t, it’s the same thing week in week out) despite who we’re playing. This means that when teams who aren’t either very poor, Everton, West Ham, and for 45 minutes, Aston Villa, we capitulate under the most minimal of pressure.

We have a group of players who are okay but no more than that. A leadership group consisting of two players who aren’t good enough, and one who is a legend but very, very clearly, on the slide. Our injuries have increased since Ange took over – no surprise there, the players are having to bust a gut for 90 minutes non-stop, and almost certainly during training. The number of muscular injuries – and recurrences of injuries isn’t coincidence either.

We pay huge sums of money to go to games where the stadium – or business park to be more accurate – is a building site – again – due to a number of hotels being built, and a chairman who is trousering vast sums of money but routinely fails at his job (the one which involves anything on the pitch), lurching from one manager to the next, often firing coaches in and around this time.

The football can be fun but again, I doubt Dixon Hunt watches every Spurs match in their entirety so how would he know how often it can infuriating watching Vicario pass to an opposing player 20 yards from goal, or Udogie get done time and again, or Romero stood around watching – in fact what is watching because it sure as shit ain’t the opposition. He doesn’t watch Brennan Johnson cough up possession repeatedly, and cheaply. Those are the three I can be arsed to mention.

I’m really not at all fussed what Liverpool fans want, you know why? Because who, except Liverpool fans, gives a toss!?

Baffling.
Dan

How do these journo hacks get jobs let alone keep them? Do they all meet up at some pub in Fleet Street and discuss whose life they intend to destroy next? You actually have to feel sorry for ETH as he is probably a good coach but didn’t suck up to the UK media in the way they wanted.

We all know the formula by now – initial adulation and unrealistic expectation followed by public humiliation and destruction. Even Mourinho, the darling of the UK media, eventually suffered the same fate. Had Klopp stayed long enough I am sure he would have found himself in the cross hairs. Even Guardiola is now facing closer scrutiny, one of the greatest managers to grace the game.

So now the narrative seems to have turned to Ange Postecoglou who, seems affable, modest with a dry sense of humor. A breath of fresh air really. Although there are only 3 domestic trophies on offer each season and Spurs are unlikely to win any of them, the “Media Mafia” have decided to trot out that old cliche of “Spursiness.” Come on journos, this is about as real as religion or luck or fate. Besides, I can think of many more extreme examples of “Spursiness” (i.e. Gerrard’s or Terry’ slips) but they don’t fit the narrative, do they?

The reality is “Spursiness” is more down to management not going the extra mile to secure that extra bit of quality that is needed when the time comes (e.g. MUFC buying Van Persie) tha n some cosmic force.

Sure, Spurs are inconsistent but at times are playing amazing football. Why can’t we just enjoy that entertainment and what seems like a decent bloke instead of trying to destroy the man?
Adidasmufc (Amorin is the new Mourinho? After 2 training sessions? Seriously?)

Rash call
The same tired old tropes in todays Mediawatch. Essentially anyone criticising Rashford is part of/a fan of the ‘right wing’ press cabal harbouring a grudge over his (PA team driven) school dinners thing or for being ‘black and rich’. Sigh.

Sorry to point this out lads but the reason a large section of United fans dislike Rashford is for playing like a **** for the past 2 years, all the while moping around like a spoilt teenager and picking up £350k a week for a less than one in three career goal return as a ‘striker’.

So yeah no one gives two hoots about a trip to New York. Just give a little thought to the day job eh?
Richard, Manchester

What’s your favourite? Tell me what’s your favourite
There are so many boring podcasts (thank god for this site) discussing whether Liverpool are favourites to win the title. Just wanted to clarify there is a difference between being likely to win and favourites. In the betting odds liverpool are leading at 40% likeihood. So favourites but chances are they won’t win it. Both can exist.
David (some awful YouTube content nowadays, whose your least favourite?) Morris

One down
As a Sheffield Wednesday fan, I welcome the idea of Frank Lampard to Coventry. It will be one less team to worry about when we ultimately enter another relegation dogfight!
Luke (Dublin)

Fabric football team
So I was bored at work and couldn’t get the words mikel merino wool out of my head, so here’s a full fabrics football team that noone asked for:

David Rayon

Fleece James
Nylon Nosworthy
Igor Biscanvas
Matty Cashmere

Mikel Merino wool
Muslin Izzett
Cesc Fabricas

Daniel Polyesterridge
Lionel Hessi(an)
Gary Linenker

subs;
Tony Cotton
Silkvain Distin
Matthew Leatherington
Acrylicolas Jackson

Sorry…
AD, NUFC

Ruben Amorim will face Ipswich in his first game as a manager in England, much like Arne Slot. The Liverpool coach had a better start than most.

19) Julen Lopetegui – West Ham 1-2 Aston Villa
It did not feel like a particularly damning defeat, being separated from Champions League qualifiers by a single goal after an ambitious summer overhaul of both playing and coaching staff.

But with some truly miserable months now in the rear-view, in retrospect it was a harbinger of things to come under a manager who has not done nearly enough to change the culture, philosophy or direction of the club since replacing David Moyes.

Down to the inevitability of Jhon Duran’s winning goal from the bench, the Hammers having spent an unhealthy amount of time to that point fruitlessly chasing the Colombian, it was a poor start to what increasingly seems like a doomed reign.

18) Enzo Maresca – Chelsea 0-2 Manchester City
There was a similar sense at Stamford Bridge the following day when Chelsea hosted champions Manchester City in a game dripping with narrative.

There were almost too many plot points: the clash of bald master and glabrous apprentice; the Cole Palmer and Romeo Lavia return arcs; the latest Chelsea manager debuting in the dugout against the coach with the longest continuous current Premier League run.

Maresca even chucked in another thread before the game by omitting Raheem Sterling from his squad suddenly, randomly and entirely. Chelsea fared well enough before falling to a convincing defeat. Mateo Kovacic scoring against his former club only soured the mood further but it is safe to suggest this game did not offer an accurate view of precisely where Chelsea actually stood.

17) Thomas Frank – Brentford 0-1 Bristol City
Dean Smith paid for a run of three consecutive Championship draws with his job and Frank immediately stemmed the tide, albeit in a sub-optimal fashion. Brentford supporters could not possibly have foreseen their subsequent transformation when Frank started out with a loss to an 89th-minute goal having played for more than half an hour with ten men thanks to silly old Chris Mepham.

16) Nuno Espirito Santo – Nottingham Forest 2-3 Bournemouth
There was a tantalising insight into life under Nuno as Chris Wood assisted and then scored in a thrilling game against Bournemouth, but Dominic Solanke cared not for that particular script and promptly tossed it out with his first senior career hat-trick.

Nuno lamented a “huge mistake” after the game as Willy Boly was sent off in the first half for a second yellow card despite fairly clearly winning the ball. With that and a possible penalty for handball not being given, the club teased their imminent move into social media conspiracies by posting that they had been ‘let down badly by awful decisions again’.

David Coote was not on VAR, no.

15) Mikel Arteta – Bournemouth 1-1 Arsenal
“I am not happy we have not won the game but happy overall. In terms of attitude, desire and commitment it was better than I expected,” said Arteta after his first match as a head coach in any capacity, when he could not give away shares of trust in his process.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang equalised after Dan Gosling’s opener to give Arteta a point against Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth. That sentence makes no sense in big 2024. Thierry Henry was not impressed.

READ: Ruben Amorim already above Mikel Arteta in Premier League manager rankings

14) Marco Silva – Fulham 1-1 Middlesbrough
On humble beginnings this Fulham revolution has been built. The Cottagers had been relegated but managed to improve on their managerial situation, with Scott Parker leaving by mutual consent en route to Bournemouth as Silva took up his first post since leaving Everton about 18 months before.

It was an undoubted coup, just not one made immediately obvious by a draw with Neil Warnock’s Middlesbrough. Harry Wilson scored a delightful goal from outside the area because obviously.

13) Andoni Iraola – Bournemouth 1-1 West Ham
After a summer of bleating about how harshly Gary O’Neil had been treated by nasty Bournemouth, the time had come for the Cherries to show their working out. A draw with West Ham was respectable enough without coming close to confounding the critics.

Solanke equalised after Jarrod Bowen’s opener, meaning that West Ham have conceded decisive goals scored by summer transfer targets in the first game of consecutive Premier League seasons. That feels particularly on brand.

12) Ange Postecoglou – Brentford 2-2 Tottenham
Since his summer 2023 appointment, Postecoglou has made a point of it being his responsibility to “entertain” the supporters after the general misery engineered by Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte. An encouraging but infuriating clash with Brentford in which they opened the scoring and came from behind in their first match since selling Harry Kane to Bayern Munich was a fine taster of things to come.

11) Gary O’Neil – Manchester United 1-0 Wolves
There have not been many more heartening defeats. Wolves had 23 shots at Old Trafford but fell to a late Raphael Varane header before being inexplicably denied a stoppage-time penalty following an Andre Onana brainfade.

It had been a specifically depressing summer for Wolves, who had shed Ruben Neves, Joao Moutinho, Adama Traore, Conor Coady, Nathan Collins, Raul Jimenez and Matheus Nunes without much in the way of actual investment to help replace them, leading to Julen Lopetegui’s exit on the eve of the new season. O’Neil had four days to prepare a performance which dispelled most of those fears.

10) Pep Guardiola – Manchester City 2-1 Sunderland
A victory, but for once that wasn’t really all that mattered. After months of forewarning that Our League would not simply bend to his will and Guardiola would be found out against the sort of proper competition neither La Liga nor the Bundesliga could provide, this was a thoroughly underwhelming start.

The hosts needed an 87th-minute Paddy McNair own goal after an early Sergio Aguero penalty to prevail against a Sunderland side which would be relegated come what May, with the unceremonious axing of Joe Hart from the starting line-up a major point of early contention.

9) Russell Martin – Sheffield Wednesday 1-2 Southampton
As above, just on a slightly smaller scale. Martin arrived with grand expectations and a burgeoning reputation after establishing his playing style at MK Dons and Swansea.

Despite the nature of the game – a side promoted as League One play-off winners hosting a team relegated from the Premier League – it was a deceptively difficult start, reflected by the need for a Che Adams winner with three minutes remaining.

8) Eddie Howe – Newcastle 3-3 Brentford
A high-scoring draw in which Newcastle led but needed two equalisers to salvage a point despite having more than twice as many shots, leaving them bottom of the Premier League in late November, confirmed for many the suspicion that this would be a rehash of his exciting but defensively-flawed Bournemouth reign.

Joelinton scored in a neat indicator of his prosperous future under Howe, who was actually confined to a hotel room with the ‘rona and so happily handed over the reins to a bashful and reluctant Jason Tindall. If Newcastle’s manager would prefer we can instead assess his first game in the dugout: a 2-0 loss to Arsenal the following week.

7) Steve Cooper – Leicester 1-1 Tottenham
An underwhelming replacement for Enzo Maresca upon Leicester’s immediate return to the Premier League as Championship winners, Cooper nevertheless secured an invigorating result in his first game.

That seemed unlikely when Pedro Porro opened the scoring after half an hour, but there is a reason Jamie Vardy feels uniquely suited to winding up Spurs.

6) Kieran McKenna – Ipswich 1-0 Wycombe
In his first game as a manager, McKenna put his Tottenham and Manchester United coaching learnings to the test against fellow League One promotion hopefuls Wycombe. James Norwood scored the only goal to kickstart what has been a stunning journey since.

5) Arne Slot – Ipswich 0-2 Liverpool
Ipswich provided a first taste of English football for Slot, who would have known that while anything but a win against their promoted hosts would have been a disaster, no standard of victory could possibly have dispelled those festering post-Klopp concerns. Ruben Amorim will soon be tasked with managing that same balance.

As it was, Slot pretty much nailed it with that ruthless but ultimately vindicated half-time sacrifice of Jarell Quansah, after which Diogo Jota and Mo Salah scored to mark a humble start to the brave new era.

4) Unai Emery – Aston Villa 3-1 Manchester United
“It was a special day. But we have only made the first step,” said Emery when in reality it was the first of numerous remarkable strides forward taken under the Spaniard. Leon Bailey and Lucas Digne scored in a stunning opening 10 minutes, with Jacob Ramsey almost immediately cancelling out his own own goal.

3) Oliver Glasner – Crystal Palace 3-0 Burnley
The uncertainty of their second post-Hodgson years soon gave way to an unfamiliar sense of exhilaration as a Palace side which rarely scored at all netted thrice in the second half in front of a disbelieving Selhurst Park.

Jean-Philippe Mateta opened his personal Glasner account and there was ample room for a first Premier League clean sheet in four months. The streets shan’t forget February to May 2024, when Crystal Palace were the greatest team in Europe.

2) Fabian Hurzeler – Everton 0-3 Brighton
The youngest manager in Premier League history made an early mockery of sneering suggestions that Brighton were being too clever for their own good when picking their successor to Roberto De Zerbi.

Brighton invested £200m to make Hurzeler’s transition as smooth as possible and it showed: five different players scored or assisted in a thorough dismantling of a decent Premier League side.

1) Sean Dyche – Everton 1-0 Arsenal
Things were different when it was Dyche making his most recent managerial bow. Everton were off the bottom on goal difference alone and winless in ten games. Arsenal were clear at the top by five points with a game in hand and unbeaten in 13.

Utter. Woke. Nonsense. Everton had 26% possession at home and scored with their only goal: a James Tarkowski header from a Dwight McNeil corner. Dyche, that.

READ NEXT: Ruben Amorim already above Mikel Arteta in Premier League manager rankings

Manchester United fans are real giddy, aren’t they? They are very excited indeed about Ruben Amorim. And you know what? So are we. There is perhaps no other manager around we’ve been more keen to see have a go at sorting out any of the sillier big clubs knocking around the Barclays currently. So we get it, we really do.

But United have been here before so very many times in their post-Fergie doldrums. So many managers, so much ‘this time we’ve nailed it’ confidence that turned out time and time again to be absolute delusion. So where does Amorim rank on the New Man United Manager Giddiness Index?

We won’t go too deeply into the enormously complex science behind the NMUMGI, but suffice to say it requires eight supercomputers, 27 clipboard-wielding, white-coated boffins and enough AI power to light Paris for 18 months to crunch all the numbers and produce this list. So you know these rankings are rock solid and in absolutely no way just plucked entirely from our arse.

10) David Moyes, July 2013
Weren’t sure, were they? And quite right too. The most obvious – yet not only – example of Sir Alex Ferguson’s villain arc in the story of United’s decline after his exit. His ordaining of Moyes as The Chosen One left United fans little choice but to fall in line despite their entirely justified misgivings about entrusting such a huge job to a man who had done Quite Well at Everton rather than bringing in another elite supercoach.

In truth, it may well be that nobody could have followed Fergie. Such was his vice-like stranglehold of the Barclays that he could, and did, win it with a mediocre team.

He didn’t quite salt the earth before leaving the hotseat, but nor did he leave his inevitably mortal replacement a great deal to work with. Go and look at that last squad with which Fergie won the title and tell me any other manager has them as anything more than top-four contenders. He was a ridiculous manager, and part of just how ridiculous is clear in just how impossible a job he left for anyone else. He built a couple of all-time great teams, but didn’t leave anything like that for the successor he damned with his own approval.

Moyes did not last even one season.

READ: David Moyes managed Manchester United once and it is time we all just moved on

9) Michael Carrick, November 2021
One of the most cerebral of key Fergie lieutenants and by this time an established touchline figure at Old Trafford, but there wasn’t any great groundswell to hand him the reins on a long-term basis, which does at least point to lessons having been learned.

8) Ralf Rangnick, December 2021
Perhaps the height of United’s post-Fergie delusions rests with the shoulder-shrugging ambivalence that greeted the arrival of one of the most influential coaching figures of his generation. Although, to be fair, that response mainly came from the squad itself. The fans by this point were too damaged to care much either way and just wanted the season to end.

7) Jose Mourinho, May 2016
Can one be tentatively giddy? Feels like the arrival of Mourinho back in 2016 prompted that emotion. United fans had by this stage been burned by a couple of years of Van Gaal’s sterile domination of games. The football had been, at times, utterly turgid.

But this was the point at which doubts over Mourinho had just started to surface. While it would be during his Old Trafford reign that he would complete his full descent into caricature, becoming more meme than man, the process was already underway after the manner in which his second spell at Chelsea had imploded.

Having won the 2014/15 Premier League title after returning to Chelsea, he had gone full Third-Season Mourinho in 2015/16, and was sacked four months after signing a new contract with the champions having inexplicably lost nine of their first 16 games of what would turn out to be the most batsh*t Premier League season since records began.

It all meant any giddiness at the appointment of a man who was at that time still unquestionably regarded as an elite and thus United-suitable manager had to be tempered by the gnawing knowledge that he might very well be losing connection with the plot.

READ: Mourinho was right at Man Utd (but also a d*ck)

6) Ryan Giggs, April 2014
That first post-Ferg season in 2013/14 really did establish all manner of tropes and traditions that have now been in place for more than a decade. A manager failing to produce that Fergie alchemy is replaced temporarily in the hotseat by a key figure from that era of greatness in the hope something rubbed off on them.

United gave it Giggsy ‘til end of the season, as a whole generation of United fans discovered what supporting a normal club was like. Turns out United weren’t ‘different’ when it came to backing the manager. They just happened to have employed the best one there has ever been for over a quarter of a century.

5) Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, December 2018
Unless you support a club that has been the victim of late-era Mourinho gaslighting and misery, it really is hard to explain just how soul-sapping and wearying it all is. He’s just such a mood-hoover once things start to go wrong.

Non-United fans will perhaps never understand how it felt to have someone who seemed to actively hate the club replaced by a man who would run through brick walls for it.

Solskjaer was, in every way, a less problematic version of Giggs. A Fergie-era legend who knew what United was all about. Sure, he was wildly unqualified as a manager to be in charge, but by now United had tried two very different but very decorated elite managers and it hadn’t worked at all. Time for someone who Knew The Club and, perhaps even more importantly, didn’t appear to hate everything about it.

The giddiness levels grew to uncontrollable levels during what really should only ever have been an interim spell as manager. That was the mistake United made with Solskjaer that they avoided with your Giggses, your Carricks and now with the Van Nistelrooys of this world. You don’t make the entirely unqualified club legend who has given the place a much-needed short-term lift the permanent manager. That’s a stupid thing to do.

But when you’re on the Mourinho rebound, stupid decisions are perhaps inevitable and certainly at the very least understandable.

4) Ruud van Nistelrooy, October 2024
Based on the way Old Trafford has been absolutely jumping in recent games we have to conclude that either Van Nistelrooy is even more beloved than Solskjaer was or – perhaps even crazier still – Ten Hag had in his own more passive way sucked more life out of the club than even the Dark Lord himself Jose Mourinho.

The more balanced explanation is perhaps the knowledge that this was only ever short-term and was leading into a proper new manager about whom they are very, very giddy indeed.

READ: Five PL moves for Ruud van Nistelrooy post-Man Utd include replacing Ange Postecoglou at Spurs

3) Erik Ten Hag, May 2022
The memories of that enormously fun 2018/19 Ajax side were still fresh enough for Ten Hag’s arrival at Old Trafford to represent something significant. In fairness to the fans, how were they supposed to know at this point that Ten Hag had already decided it would be impossible to recreate the brilliantly entertaining football that Ajax team had played now he only had the resources of Manchester United at his disposal?

At the time, it really did seem like a fine appointment and giddiness was understandable. United were by now long past the point of being all-conquering dominators. They now needed to punch above their (still considerable) weight to compete with Man City and Liverpool, so who better than a coach who had so wonderfully demonstrated such an ability on that giant-bothering Champions League run that only came unstuck against the clearly unstoppable force of Lucas Moura?

Turns out the answer to that might have been ‘literally anyone’ but at the time it really did seem like a good idea, as failed managerial appointments so often do. Not every disaster is a David Moyes, basically.

2) Louis van Gaal, July 2014
It went miserably wrong due to misery-inducing football, but the initial reaction was pretty giddy. This was a manager far more in line with how United fans very understandably saw themselves after the absurd era of success they’d just lived through.

Here was the globally-respected, trophy-hoarding super-manager with the requisite CV to continue Ferguson’s work. A Champions League winner at Ajax who had gone on to manage Barcelona, Netherlands and Bayern Munich was much more the right sort of thing than a former Port Vale manager whose greatest accomplishment in management was finishing fourth once.

Van Gaal was the man to get United back on track and back where they belonged, surely.

They had to let him go in the end, he was rubbish.

1) Ruben Amorim, November 2024
United fans are definitely ready to get hurt again. They are so giddy. They are so correctly giddy. We get it; we’ve not been this excited ourselves about a Premier League managerial appointment for quite some time.

The sheer range of outcomes here is so tantalisingly vast. Amorim has the charisma of a young Mourinho and has done enough in a short managerial career to date to suggest he is something very special indeed. He is a United manager who absolutely could build something magnificent given the time and assistance required. It could absolutely be magnificent.

He could also fall completely flat on his face when faced with the task of introducing a very specific and high-demand style of football to a squad that appears at best half-suited to it. Such is the wave of optimism and goodwill that we fully expect Amorim to at least initially continue the improved form of the Van Nistelrooy interregnum, but how he and United and the fans cope with the inevitable bumps in the road that come with what remains an absolutely vast rebuild job is going to be one of the most compelling upcoming Barclays storylines.

Becoming Manchester United manager in the post-Fergie years never works. These people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might but… it might work for Amorim.

READ NEXT: Ruben Amorim already above Mikel Arteta in Premier League manager rankings

The Scrooges will say it’s too early to be talking Christmas, but it’s just snowed, we’re set for wall-to-wall football between now and the big day with no more international breaks and if the kids want anything from Santa they will be compiling their lists if they haven’t done so already.

But what do Premier League fans want for Christmas? Or before Christmas? OK, we realise the format doesn’t quite work as likely none of these wishes will come true on Christmas Day. But we were feeling festive. Blame the snow.

This is what we reckon will be near the top of the wish-lists for the fans of each Premier League club between now and Christmas.

By the way, bear in mind that just like your/my daughter can’t have a pony, Leicester can’t have six wins from six.

Arsenal: Martin Odegaard fixes everything
While we’re sure Odegaard didn’t exactly enjoy Arsenal being a bit sh*t in his absence, he must be feeling pretty good about himself right now. If Bukayo Saka didn’t do something, neither did Arsenal. And it didn’t take opposition teams at all long to work out that if you let Gabriel Martinelli or Leandro Trossard have the ball, there’s rarely any danger.

Odegaard changes everything, as illustrated by his wonderful assist for Martinelli on his return against Chelsea. He wasn’t at his best in the game as a whole but no other Arsenal player even sees that pass and there’s a very real possibility – because there’s very little evidence to the contrary – that all Arsenal need in order to be good is for their captain to be fit and firing.

Aston Villa: Two Champions League wins
Villa will still have Monaco (A) and Celtic (H) to play after Christmas, but they can have automatic qualification done and dusted this side of the festivities if they beat Juventus (H) and RB Leipzig (A), which would be lovely because of the prospect of more Champions League football but also because we suspect there would be quite the noise at Villa Park during and after a win over the Old Lady, and similarly jubilant celebrations in Red Bull Arena.

Bournemouth: No transfer interest
We’re not quite sure what the best method would be to prevent January transfer interest in Antoine Semenyo and Milos Kerkez. Serious injuries would be a shame, but just how big an issue would there need to be to keep the wolves from the door? Pulling a hammy? Maybe they could just be a bit sh*t for the next couple of months? We realise neither option is ideal.

Brentford: Tottenham win games
We understand it will feel weird to celebrate the successes of a London rival, particularly one that you’re level on points with right now, but if Tottenham don’t win then Ange Postecoglou is going to be sacked and who will Daniel Levy be looking at to replace him? Graham Potter’s the favourite but is surely just too on the nose. Thomas Frank must be near the top of the Spurs shortlist.

Brighton: Champions League dreams alive
We’ve tipped them to be in the mix because a) they’ve played more top-half teams than anyone else, b) they’ve won more points against top half teams than anyone else, and c) they are currently in the mix, level on points with Chelsea and Arsenal.

Chelsea: The Real Reece James
Enzo Maresca gave him a bit of a bollocking for being a rubbish captain. He always looked like a weirdly timid choice for the role in any case. That’s not anywhere near as concerning as his poor form on his return from injury, which led to him being dropped for the Arsenal game.

Not ideal to be playing someone with his pace, power and delivery at left-back where he can’t really use any of those best qualities effectively. Might we suggest an excellent right-back plays at right-back?

Crystal Palace: Oliver Glasner remains
Steve Parish is a very patient man, to a fault some Palace fans may argue. But we very much doubt he’s going to stand idly by should Palace remain in the relegation zone for much longer. Glasner still being in charge by Christmas will mean wins, and hopefully, the return of some of the football we so enjoyed watching last term.

Everton: Get taken over
They’ve been treading water for a long, long time and we’re all getting very bored of pretty much everything to do with Everton.

Fulham: Ticket price cuts
Fulham are charging between £150-160 for tickets in the Riverside Stand for their game against Arsenal on December 8 and will continue to charge that much because if they’re filling the seats at that price, why would they change? Because they’re feeling Christmassy, maybe? We won’t hold our breath.

Ipswich: A big home scalp
That was quite the win over Tottenham but they’re yet to win at Portman Road on their return to the Premier League and the bigger the win the better. They welcome Manchester United on Sunday in Ruben Amorim’s first game in charge.

Leicester: Clean sheets
The Foxes had scored in every Premier League game before the 3-0 defeat to Manchester United but are where they are because they’ve only kept one clean sheet.

Liverpool: New contracts signed
Liverpool being a bit f*cked if they lose any, two or all of Trent Alexander-Arnold, Mohamed Salah or Virgil Van Dijk in the summer is just about the only thing everyone else has to hold in an otherwise irritatingly wonderful world for Reds fans right now.

New contracts for them and our one remaining pleasure would be in imagining how p*ssed off Jurgen Klopp is at how easy Arne Slot is making things look. Plenty of mileage in that though, to be fair.

READ MORE: Trent, Son, Amad and 16 other Premier League players out of contract in 2025

Manchester City: A Rodri solution
Pep Guardiola’s agreed an extension, meaning he will be heading what will need to be quite an extensive rebuild at Manchester City, but his first port of call is very clearly to find a solution to the Rodri-shaped hole in the middle of his team.

We thought he may have come up with some genius solution by now – putting Bernardo Silva there or some such nonsensical wizardry – and maybe we’re about to be wowed after he’s had time to ruminate over the international break. Signing a new Rodri in January would also work.

Manchester United: Fun under Amorim
The new system will be fascinating, as will the new manager bounce and the rate of what we assume will be widespread improvement among certain members of the squad who had all but given up under Erik ten Hag. But it’s the “fun” that we’re most looking forward to.

We wonder whether the United players, upon hearing that Amorim aims to bring “fun” back to the club, suddenly realised that they had all been miserable for the last decade. It certainly seems like that from the outside, with the fans also typically enduring games from the stands.

READ: Amorim takes his place on New Man Utd Manager Giddiness Index we just invented

Newcastle: Bruno Guimaraes isn’t the Rodri solution
Call us cynical, but we reckon the best way for Bruno Guimaraes to show “respect” to Newcastle would have been not to disclose a private conversation with Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, in which “I praised his work, he praised my work”.

Guardiola previously described the Brazilian as “an exceptional holding midfielder”. Oh dear.

Nottingham Forest: Chris Wood injury free
Let’s be honest, no one expects Forest to keep this up and most assume the defeat to Newcastle was the start of a steady slide down the table to lower-mid-table mediocrity.

That may well still happen if Wood stays fit, but if he doesn’t it surely will. His goals have been worth eight points to them so far this season.

Southampton: Russell Martin intervention
Someone needs to grab him by the lapels, slap his chiseled face and ensure him that if Southampton continue to play in this manner they are going to be relegated.

Tottenham: Beat Manchester United
Big Ange “always wins things in his second year” and we suspect after years of trolling the Spurs fans would also quite like to bag a gong, particularly as that trolling would be far worse this year after their manager’s ill-advised promise.

The Carabao Cup is first up and they’ll be in the semi-finals if they beat Manchester United next month.

West Ham: Lopetegui sacked
We feel sorry for any West Ham fan that paid actual money to go and watch the 0-0 draw with Everton at the London Stadium and it’s becoming more laughable by the game that David Moyes was sacked over his style of football and replaced by a coach who seems to do very similar things, just worse.

Wolves: Help for Matheus Cunha
The Brazilian has been brilliant, but needs a hand from the other supposed playmakers, who have been misfiring behind Jorgen Strand Larsen. Hang Hee-chan’s been injured but was no great shakes before that, while you could count the notable contributions of Pablo Sarabia,  Jean-Ricner Bellegarde and Goncalo Guedes on one hand.

Man Utd fans are not giddy about Ruben Amorim at all; that’s just a theme from a media that wants him to fail.

Send your views on Ruben Amorim and more to theeditor@football365.com

Giddy about Ruben Amorim? Not us…
Sorry, have I missed something? Which United fans have you been speaking to that are “giddy” about Amorim’s arrival? Myself, and every fellow fan I know in Manchester has their figurative arms folded and eye-brow cocked in a “I’ll believe it when I see it” manner.

Everything, and I mean everything, that’s been said about Amorim was said about Ten Hag. We’ve heard it all before and after a decade of false dawns, the feeling I get is one of being jaded. We hope he’ll do well, we’ll get behind him but there’s absolutely no giddiness.

This is Manchester United Football Club we’re talking about here, where promising careers go to die. We’ve seen this show before.
Lewis, Busby Way

MORE ON RUBEN AMORIM FROM F365:
👉 Amorim takes his place on New Man Utd Manager Giddiness Index we just invented
👉 Ruben Amorim already above Mikel Arteta in Premier League manager rankings
👉 Ranking eight Man Utd stars facing Ruben Amorim ‘axe’ on chance of cash-in this January

Why are F365 so invested?
Dave Tickner, in his piece around ranking managers, said ‘we’re very invested in Ruben Amorim proving to be very good indeed’.

While I’m all for a break from the old routine, I find it very curious for a site that has generally been pretty consistent in its snide attacks on United managers. It’s quite possible that the last one you guys didn’t immediately start kicking was actually the most destructive one we had – Jose!

Anyway, I agree. I’m particularly excited to see how he can turn Rashford into the striker England needs. That should boil some serious p**s, among United fans as much as those of other persuasions.
Badwolf

…It’s almost hilarious to see F365 so obviously hyping up Amorim (they’re “giddy”, in their own words) only to be secretly (eventually, openly) hoping for another spectacular failure at Man Utd as they did with ETH.

Sky Sports, as I’m sure with other football media outlets, are engaging in the same building up of the new manager, only to actively encourage their fall at a later date. United fans will then be smeared as having done what the media actually did.

Meanwhile, most United fans are simply hopeful the new man will do what those before him haven’t – all while knowing it’s impossible of Ineos aren’t actually fixing the systemic root causes at the club.
Lavjot Mudhar

The actual best Premier League managers ever
I read your article on the Top Ten Premier League managers, and was amused by the line, ‘Basically impossible to name the top 10 Premier League managers of all time, isn’t it?’.

I agree, it is. Which, is why I asked ChatGPT. It gave me a perfectly good list, objectively measured, and it makes fascinating reading:

Pep Guardiola (Manchester City): 2.36 PPG
Sir Alex Ferguson (Manchester United): 2.16 PPG
Jürgen Klopp (Liverpool): 2.11 PPG.
Roberto Mancini (Manchester City): 2.05 PPG.
Antonio Conte (Chelsea, Tottenham): 2.03 PPG
There’s no need to thank me.

Note – I tried to further refine this by including an adjustment for inflation-linked net spend (to demonstrate Klopp is a better manager than Pep) but it couldn’t calculate it. AI has a long way to go.
Rob

Spurs have won trophies, actually
‘Spurs are not a trophy winning side over the last 60 years or so.’

Is the writer aware of the concept of recency bias? I’ve been going to WHL since 1959, I’ve seen 1 title, 6 FA Cups, 4 League Cups, 1 Cup Winners Cup, 2 UEFA Cups.

Outside of 5 or 6 obvious other names, (including a state propaganda vehicle, and a London club with some very dubious financing, whose only serious trophy returns have been in the recent financial boom) is there any club in England that’s done better than that? We’ve had some really great players to watch, and in the main played decent football.

We’ve survived chairmen like Scholar, Sugar and Levy, all who seemed to this fan to prioritise ££ over trophies. Yet we seem to hang in there.

I appreciate a large number of your more regular correspondents think football was invented in 1992, and the only valid opinion is the latest hot take on X, but some of us have a wider perspective.
Jim French (Spurs since ‘59) Herts

Could Kane be the new Benzema?
Hi, City fan here. Just adding my two cents to all the Kane toxicity. Why are we (mostly Liverpool and Arsenal fans) losing our sh*t for the Striker situation of the 2026 WC before almost 2 whole UCL campaigns. Kane has a decent chance of propelling Bayern to at least one title. Karim Benzema did that in 2022 despite being more or less the same age as Kane. Shine like Karim in the UCL and he is guaranteed to lead the line under Tuchel.
Victor MCFC (Also why aren’t we looking at Roberto Mancini for being the next City manager?)