2-0 down at half-time. An abject performance devoid of creativity, control or courage. Staring down the barrel of a 13th defeat in the league as a rambunctious Goodison Park roars.
Some managers would have taken have taken the opportunity at the interval to lambast their players; channel their inner-Sir Alex Ferguson and unleash a hair dryer of a team talk to rally a second-half improvement. Others would have launched into a detailed analysis of what had gone wrong in the first half and what adjustments needed to be made to ensure the same mistakes were not repeated.
Nearly all would have taken the full fifteen minutes allocated to talk to their team. But not Ruben Amorim.
Short and Sharp
The Athletic reveals the Portuguese coach – who swapped Lisbon for Manchester in November to replace Erik ten Hag – has “tried many methods” to get through to his new squad since arriving at Old Trafford. But in the “tight confines of Goodison Park”, Amorim’s choice was to be “short and sharp.”
United’s head coach left the dressing room after only a few minutes with his players emerging early for the second half.
The report reveals Amorim “made his points in a few minutes”, imploring his players to “remember what they had drilled at Carrington and to carry out those instructions in the second half.”
United rallied to level proceedings with two quickfire goals from Bruno Fernandes and Manuel Ugarte, though the comeback did not happen immediately after Amorim’s half-time diktat.
The Reds were pushing for a winner in the final few minutes of the match, however, and were the better team in the second half, even if being superior to David Moyes’ Everton side is not a sign of progress.
In his post-match interview, Amorim implied the performance after his terse team talk would have been sufficient to have claimed all three points if it had been replicated in the first half, as had been drilled all week in training.
“In training, we continue to do the same. That’s why in the second half we didn’t change anything, we have to do the same thing but in a good way,” he explained. “We need to play the whole game.”
A Lack of Belief
Four days later, United would welcome Ipswich Town to Old Trafford. Amorim, speaking ahead of the evening fixture, acknowledged the disconnect between his players’ performances in training and their execution in match.
“Even the players we have we can improve a lot, I see that in trainings, we need to take that to the game,” he told Rio Ferdinand on TNT Sports. “The only way I know to help them is to give them solutions to play on the pitch. But then they have to believe it. And to believe it is that when we are losing or in a difficult situation, and you feel that you cannot even build up one play, they have to stick with that and to believe in that.
“And that is the hardest part, because when we suffer a goal or have a bad moment, you feel the connection is not there, we lose ourselves. You feel we get lost a little bit. Sometimes it is more than football, more than tactics, it is in the players’ minds.”
A chaotic game ensued, characterised by misunderstandings, mistakes, but also mettle. United went in at half time with the game poised at 2-2, but a man down after Patrick Dorgu’s dismissal for a reckless tackle on Omari Hutchinson.
A bullet header from Harry Maguire opened the second half and handed the Reds a lead which they defended with their lives for the remainder of the game. The 3-2 win gave Amorim a slither of relief amidst a backdrop of increasing pressure at Old Trafford.
It was a spirited performance, even if there’s a growing sense this group of players operate better in a tactical set-up reserved for teams in the bottom half. When forced to try and control games or dominate their opponents, as you would expect from a top side, they quickly flounder and “get lost a little bit”, as their coach described.
Amorim will need to ensure his players begin moving in the right direction, starting with tomorrow night’s crucial Europa League knockout game against Real Sociedad.
Having already departed the Carabao Cup and FA Cup (which provided a route back into the Europa League), and with the team stranded in 14th in the Premier League, success on the continent remains the last opportunity for success this season.
Winning the Europa League gives first-seed qualification into the Champions League next year – an almost invaluable prospect for United, given the situation on and off the field. It would strengthen the club’s pull in the transfer market this summer as they seek to buttress Amorim’s squad for next season. And it would offer fans an olive branch back to a time when the Red Devils were a European heavyweight, rather than a domestic lightweight.
If United were to lose tomorrow night and exit the Europa League next week in the reverse fixture, there would be no hope of any success this season; there would be virtually no hope of success this summer; and Amorim would be running out of any semblance of hope for the next campaign before a ball has even been kicked.
The Portuguese coach will need to “get through to his players” this week; because the alternative is a bleak one to say the least.
Featured image Jan Kruger via Getty Images
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Darragh Fox
Darragh is a writer for The Peoples Person who spent three years as a history graduate slowly realising football was by far the most interesting thing to write about.
