Ruben Amorim has been meeting the press ahead of Sunday’s Premier League clash with Liverpool.
The first question was about the support that the boss has received from Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Amorim was asked how he feels when he hears those sorts of comments.
Backing from the board
“He tells me all the time, sometimes with a message after games,” Amorim replied.
“But you know, I know and Jim knows that football is not like that. So the most important thing is the next game. You cannot control, even with owners, you cannot control the next day in football. So I know that, but it’s really good to hear that. Also because of the noise, but he tells me and Omar and Jason tell me that all the time.”
In a follow-up question, Amorim was asked ” In terms of your vision for this club, does it help when they say that? They’ve also said, or Omar said, that it didn’t start the way that everybody expected, including you. And nobody knows how long it’s going to take. Nobody knows what happens on Sunday. Does it help that you know that they believe in what you are trying to do?”
Amorim answered:
“First of all, I can feel it. It’s not just that thing that people talk, but I feel it in every day.
“And again, sometimes the pressure that I put on the team or on myself is so much bigger, I know that is going to take a while, but I don’t want to think like that. I said that last year.
“But of course again, it’s really good to hear that. I think it helps also our fans to understand that the leadership understand that it is going to take take a while. But at the same moment, I don’t like that because we’ll give a feeling that we have time to to work things out. So I don’t want that feeling here in our club.
“Again, the most important thing is the next game. It’s good to feel the support, but we need to prove in football and especially in big clubs that every weekend we are ready to win games.”
Sunday’s opposition
The next question was: “This will be the 100th match at Anfield between Liverpool and Manchester United. It’s a game with an awful lot of history. Your history, I think your first visit there as a player maybe could have been better, but your most recent was possibly one of your highlights here so far?”
Amorim replied:
“Yeah, I remember we played well, it was a draw. I was really upset in the end of the game, because we proved in that day that we can compete against any opponent.
“I know that is special for our club. I know that they are fighting all the time for the titles, the number of titles. I know what it means to to the fans. But again, it’s one game that we need to prove again that we are playing better. I think we are playing better. We need to do better in both boxes. So it’s one more game that we need to win.”
He was then asked why he thought the results against bigger teams had been better than against smaller ones.
“Maybe, I don’t know, but maybe the expectations,” Amorim replied.
“When you have to win and the response of winning, it’s so much harder to play like that. That’s why when you play in big clubs, you need to win every match, especially.
“When people are expecting you to win, we have some difficulties sometimes to deal with that.
“When people and you guys expect Manchester United not to win that game, maybe it’s easier for the players to perform and we need to change that. But to change that, we need to have confidence to win more games, to have more points, to feel more free to play the game. So I think that is… That is the main reason.”
Team news
On the team news for Sunday’s game, Amorim said:
“Licha is near, he’s almost returning to the trainings with the team. Mazraoui, I don’t know. The rest of the guys, the national team, they are ready, but if you saw the games, some players play in Japan, so we need to be careful to give more time.
“Diogo didn’t play the last game, he was here, Bruno played 62 minutes, we gave one more day, we tried to balance everything to have everyone ready, but they are ready, the guys are returning from national teams, they are ready to play.”
Lammens – The next Schmeichel?
The subject then turned to new goalkeeper Senne Lammens. Amorim was asked “when your goalkeeper puts in a performance like that on debut, the United fans are calling him the new Peter Schmeichel, after less than 90 minutes, does that make him impossible to drop even for a big game like this?”
“Nothing is impossible,” Amorim replied. “You have to prove during the week, but of course he did a great job. It is possible that he is going to start the game.
“The first impression in this club is really important. To maintain the level is even more important, it is really difficult. He’s not Schmeichel yet. He’s a young guy with talent. He shows a lot of composure. And the fans liked it. But again, we need to prove that is in the past. We need to prove in the next game.
The Academy
The next question was “Sir Jim was quite critical of the academy in his interview last week. He said that standards had slipped. You’ve been here nearly a year now. What’s your assessment of the health of the United Academy?”
The boss replied:
“We can always improve. I’m not the best guy because I’m here for a year and our results are not being so good. So I’m not going to be the guy that is going to say that the academy is not in good shape.
“What I know is that, especially nowadays with the fair play, with the feeling of the club, the academy is really important. We need to take care of that. We need also to give the right conditions for all the people that we have here to do a better job.
“Because sometimes it’s not just you are doing a bad job, but we need to see what kind of conditions they have to do a great job. We are paying attention to that.
“We are always in contact with Travis, with all the kids, trying to bring the right kids for the trainings try to to make that relationship with the Academy.
“So I think if you look at our club we are trying to improve, we have a lot to improve, not just in the Academy but in all aspects of our club.”
How can United catch up with Liverpool?
The final question in this section was “You talked earlier about how Liverpool and United are competing for the same number of titles and the two clubs are always going to be compared with each other. When you have a season like last season when Liverpool finish so far ahead of United, How would you address that and what becomes a realistic aim in terms of closing the gap to them?”
Amorim answered:
“That I don’t know. Sometimes things change really fast. But if you see the history of both clubs, you can feel that sometimes you have one club that is winning, winning, winning and the other club is having a bad moment.
“That happened with Liverpool when Manchester United was winning everything and that happened with Manchester United when Liverpool was winning everything. So we just have to acknowledge that to be really honest with the fans. But we can win any game.
“So if we think about just winning the next game, that is the most important thing. We can win the next game. If we are going to fight and to be at the same level of Liverpool in the future, that is the idea. I don’t know how long it is going to take.”
The embargoed section of the press conference will be published here at 10.30pm tomorrow.
Featured image Alex Livesey via Getty Images
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Red Billy
Red Billy is the managing editor of The Peoples Person, author of three books and two magazines and totally obsessed with football’s transfer market. Billy first saw United live in 1971, watching George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law, before becoming a League Match ticket book holder from 1975/76 and a writer since 1995. Billy still insists Matteo Darmian and Alex Telles could have made it at United given half a chance.
