The contrasts between Liverpool and Man Utd are stark; there are reasons why Liverpool rejected Ruben Amorim.
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Kudos to the Reds
We’re nearly halfway through the season and all of our worst fears have come true. Just look at that fu*king league table. In the words of some talking heads, “well, how did I get here?”
As much as it pains me to see them romping it at the halfway point, nobody can deny they deserve it. They have a great defence, decent attack (arguably courtesy of one man) and a new manager who has hit the ground running. In my heart of hearts, I also think it’s nice to see one of the old guard do well.
It kind of feels like that time Leicester shocked everyone and won the race of the three-legged donkeys (no offence Jamie Vardy, put your generic alcopop bottle down). They have momentum, Chelsea are too much in their infancy, City and Arsenal seem to have s**t the bed more than Stewey G. There’s also now a very slim chance that United can catch them, but we can only hope.
So what does the rest of season hold for us? Short-term, we’re all hoping the wheels come off and they revert to their mean. Naturally, we all pray that Utd can avoid relegation to get into the top half of the table. Man City are likely to be charged more than Elon Musk’s Prius, and unfortunately it seems the men in red will bring the league title back up north.
That being the case, fair play to Nottingham Forest (best English team to play in Europe in the 80s) as they win the league again.
Garey Vance, MUFC
E-mail entitled ‘The United Problem’ that inevitably ends up about Liverpool
I can’t remember who wrote in and said it but someone asked the question how Salah or Saka fit in at United under Amorim?
Simple. They wouldn’t. When Liverpool were looking at Amorim one of the reported reasons we didn’t ultimately hire him was that he had a particular system and needed specific players to incorporate it. At Liverpool he would have been asked to do what Slot is doing and make the best of what is available as there would be little to no money.
*Side note – Slot is incredibly fluid with his tactics, something I didn’t see in his games in the Dutch league in which he played largely the same way all the time as a slightly more direct Pep clone.
Both Salah and Saka are at their best on the wing cutting in, a role which doesn’t really exist in Amorim approach as he prefers the wingbacks to provide the width and the ‘wingers’ are actually two free roaming number 10s. So they wouldn’t do as well under Amorim as they do for their current manager who structures the team to try and get the best out of them. Saka stays high and wide and in free space and the ’10’ at Liverpool often roams wide to attract the defender and create one on one situations for Salah.
The problem with Amorim at United is the same problem with Pep at City currently – they have one rigid system that requires specific players and right now…they don’t have those players. Amorim has inherited a bunch of players recruited to play a system where everyone chases the ball in the top third without any real structure or tactics to it, many of them aren’t good at pressing either solitary or coordinated. Fernandes, Eriksen, Garnacho, Rashford are all pretty individual and pressing isn’t their top attributes.
Luckily Hojlund, Amad and Mainoo are all young enough to be moulded and seem willing to do so. Give Amorim a summer transfer window with a good budget (it won’t be cheap) and I’m sure you’ll see a change in fortunes. The issue will be that when you have one way to play you better hope you don’t get a key injury because it can come crashing down.
Finally, I’ve heard multiple times this season how City and Arsenal have struggled because of injuries. While they have had injuries so have Liverpool, played most of the season with an unfit injured left back (both of them) second-choice goalkeeper, missing our first-choice centre back and McAllister in and out through suspension and injury as well. My point is everyone has had injury problems. City’s issue is bigger than missing players. Arsenal’s squad is pretty thin on talent so their complaint of missing Odegaard is pretty valid in my opinion.
If/when Liverpool win the league I just want to remind people it wasn’t a season in which everyone capitulated because of injury and Liverpool glided to an easy title win , people love devaluing Liverpool’s successes and really can’t just let them enjoy anything. Our injuries have been just as bad as anyone else’s, we have just coped better so far.
Lee
MORE MAN UTD COVERAGE ON F365…
👉 Man Utd to ‘sack senior man’ with Amorim ‘unimpressed’ with two stars as INEOS ‘exodus intensifies’
👉 ‘Crazy plan’ revealed as Man Utd transfer is ‘approved’ after ‘meeting’ is held over striker signing
👉 Five unexpected Man Utd gut punches for Ruben Amorim in the longest month of his life
Football clubs reflect their owners
The Saturday mailbox discussing how badly United are run and how Liverpool leverages data, misses a little context. That a lot of teams reflect their owners.
United’s demise started with Ferguson leaving a cr*p team and insisting Moyes be his successor. And for those United fans who say, but the team recently won a league, they must have been good; just look at the current City side.
But like many CEOs who, upon retirement, write books extolling their leadership qualities in an ode to themselves, Ferguson went on road trips explaining ‘management’ to CxOs. (I just love the idea of a CEO giving his IT team the hairdryer treatment and flicking his chinos off the CTO’s head.) But it’s always in hindsight – attributing some win directly to something specific they had done – consciously or not. But most United fans simply expected United to carry on – this relieves pressure on Woodward et al., whose primary focus was on maximising profit for his owners and not necessarily winning – because he, too, probably believed it would all come good soon.
But the whole management of the club has been a sh*tshow, bathing in the Fergie’s aura without really drilling down into what was needed. Each new manager demanding a different type of player because they ‘fitted’ their style. With no overall analytics or proper decision making apparatus in place.
The Liverpool/FSG story around data missed one key item – which was that it was Spurs who first forayed into this area, only to jettison it quite early, with Liverpool picking up the pieces.
A lot of this is a reflection of the ownership. In the case of FSG and the two B’s, their owners used data heavily in their outside interests and couldn’t see a reason not to bring it into the game.
It’s funny how the Spurs and United, both currently awful at bringing on new players, have decided that data can’t play a role. Sure, it’s not the be-all and end-all, but if there are 25 candidate players, you can quickly whittle down to the 3 or 4 who would best fit your system and be viable long-term. Spurs fans can say they have done it well within their financial boundaries, even while paying for a spectacular stadium. But it’s not bringing results in the field.
Liverpool avoided Amorim as they factored in the cost of replacing players to fit his style, they avoided Ugarte as they didn’t want a player who relied on mad tackling all over the field and little positional discipline. United? Desperate to fill a gap, grabbed what they could. What was available at any cost.
When you constantly read ‘gossip’ pieces mentioning Player A or Player B could be going to Liverpool, a brief look at the player and you know it’s absolute cobblers and no way they would be seriously looking – a 27 year old forward valued at £70.5 (Thuram) or a midfielder valued £150m with one year left on his contract. Seriously. But you could see United go for either of those. Lots of money, little sense.
Perhaps the funniest part was the idea that Ratcliffe would quickly turn things around. After all he has street cred with cycling. But it misses how Ratcliffe made his money. It was from taking over distressed or at least unwanted assets, stripping them down, to increase earnings, cutting taxes by moving to lower tax regimes, and closing factories in the UK. On that basis, Ratcliffe will move United to Europe and it’s head office to Luxembourg. He’s already started on reducing staff, charity contributions, away trip subsidies and supporting ‘legends.’
Paul McDevitt
Ratcliffe: What a guy
So the story with Ratcliffe becoming a minority owner was that the Glazers were going to take a step back from poking their noses into sporting matters and hand those reigns over to the man knighted by this country for some reason.
Has anyone else marked how having set out a vision of changing United’s fortunes on the pitch Sir Jim has then been on a crusade to ruthlessly clear out what he sees as deadwood, just like the fans wanted. And word of his exploits have travelled throughout the kingdom. Except his beknighted hands have slain the staff Christmas social, reinforced ticket prices, banished the legendary Sir Alex, culled half of the non-footballing staff. And now he refuses to pay £40k a year to a highly valued charity for former players.
He has been so fastidious in carrying out these quests, none of which really falls under the remit of his declared duties to transform the footballing side of the club.
At least all of his unpopular decisions a man of his noble calling was ‘forced’ to make were for the greater good. I’m sure those lowly souls that have been trampled underfoot will understand that the riches he has brought back into the coffers will have been used to make United Great Again on the pitch.
So his reverse Robin Hood act will surely have been lauded as he spent the majority of the above recouped coin to buy the services of his main deputy, Dan Ashworth, only to kick him out the door before he’d unpacked his coffee mug.
Just in case there was any doubt that the man in charge of footballing matter was whimsically laying waste to everyone not directly involved in footballing matters for the noblist of causes, he also extended the contract of a doomed man for putting on a decent FA Cup final party, none of which the staff were made welcome at and then used their money to pay off said extended contract when the decision proved disastrous. What a guy!
Nick
Man Utd fans have lost the art of suffering
That is now three defeats in a row for Man United. My birthday is on 5 January and I fear my birthday “gift” from United will be our 5th loss on the bounce.
I feel that a mistake will not always be mistake. Hiring OGS might have been a mistake after his fantastic audition as caretaker, but would hiring RVN after his impressive caretaker stint also have been a mistake just because hiring a former player that did great as a caretaker was a mistake before?
The players seemed to respond to RVN, respected him. Could he not have got it till the end of the season? Assuming the plan was to bring Amorim in that would have made sense as it also gives Amorim a pre season. Sporting and United would be in much happier places now.
The chance for this is gone now so we can only look forward. Fellow United fans, please give Amorim time.
I am of the unpopular view that Moyes would have made a success of the job if given more time. I also feel that If Mourinho was backed with the players signed for OGS and backed like ETH was, United would have won the league.
United’s downfall is the lack of patience. Fans who forgot how to suffer. If Fergie was managing in today’s world he would never have got the chance to do what he did at Man Utd.
Charly Moumo (Cape Town)
MORE MAN UTD COVERAGE ON F365…
👉 Man Utd to ‘sack senior man’ with Amorim ‘unimpressed’ with two stars as INEOS ‘exodus intensifies’
👉 ‘Crazy plan’ revealed as Man Utd transfer is ‘approved’ after ‘meeting’ is held over striker signing
👉 Five unexpected Man Utd gut punches for Ruben Amorim in the longest month of his life
Does anyone else get Villa-Boas vibes from Amorim?
There are some obvious similarities – both were/are young for elite managers, both Portuguese, both recruited to the Prem on the back of success in Portugal, both articulate, handsome and media friendly, both perhaps a bit empty with their media output?
It’s early days, and Amorim obviously needs time to bed in and stamp his personality and tactics on the team, but whilst he is an upgrade, from a media savvy perspective, from Ten Hag, I am far from convinced that he is going to be the cure for the sickness that is at OT.
Liverpool reportedly turned from him because of his tactical intransigence, and it’s difficult not to think that his insistence on trying to make the round peg of the current squad fit into his square hole of a back three is going to take a long time and more than a few squad tweaks to work. If indeed he can make it work in the Premiership.
Villas Boas was quickly found out, and was found wanting within a season. And famously talked all kinds of bollocks in the process. The situation wasn’t the same – he was taking over a Chelsea team in pretty good good health, so expectations were far higher – but I can’t help thinking that Amorim is on a similar path here. He comes across like a man with a free hit.
Maybe he is just super calm (and that’s not a bad thing as such) but I wonder if he’ll be gone by this time next year, another unwanted notch on the United bedpost, with his reputation basically intact (and £10m richer). And I think if that does happen, he won’t lose a great deal of sleep in the meantime because he will understand that to be the manager at United is akin to being Sisyphus, forever trying to push a boulder up a hill without ever reaching the top.
I think his media output going forward will be very telling. Ten Hag couldn’t cope with being in the spotlight, and the poor fella was hung out to dry by the laughable PR support he had. If my suggestion that Amorim and Villas Boas are similar is correct, then look out for Amorim speaking decisively, emphatically, and lacking any kind of substance or actual sense when he does as the pressure cranks up.
United are so far away from the top 4/6/whatever that it is hard to work out what realistic progress will actually look like – would top half come season end be enough? And if so, what would suffice heading into Christmas 25, because challenging for a top 4 spot looks like too much of a reach?
How patient can the fans be, after the wasted years of Ten Hag, Rangnick and Solskjaer?
Mat (yeah I know, could be wishful thinking)
Are Man Utd in a relegation battle?
I don’t know if I was having a ‘Lost In Translation’ moment but it seemed to me like Amorin was implying that MUFC should forget qualifying for Europe and that “survival” means we have a serious relegation battle on our hands.
Our next two games are against Newcastle and Liverpool which no one expects any points from. If results go against us we could be 16th by the end of year.
There isn’t one player playing well enough to get into any of the top 6 sides and I doubt Saka, Salah, Palmer or anyone else could make a difference, let alone any mystery new signings, not the we will even have a budget in January. Strip out a couple of “assets” such as Rashford and Garnacho and the squad is beginning to have that “dead man walking” smell about it.
We had a better team in ’73 when we last went down and I’ve seen better teams since then also go down. When Amorin said that it would get worse before it got better, maybe this is what he meant.
Adidasmufc (I honestly would accept relegation if it guaranteed that the Glazers sold up)
Use your noggin, Alex
Alex, the fixture makers pandering to Arteta?
If only you’d looked just a game further you’ll see Arsenal play on Jan 1st and then again on Jan 4th, just 2 full days rest between tough away games at Brentford and Brighton, our title rivals Liverpool play on dec 29th then not again until Jan 5th – 6 full days rest!
It’s almost as though every team starts and ends the season on the same days so when one team appears to get a long rest between games they will inevitably have a shorter rest somewhere else.
Rich, AFC
