Arsenal legend Martin Keown has blasted Manchester United head coach Ruben Amorim after he “unprofessionally punished” his underperforming players.
Amorim has experienced immense difficulties since replacing former head coach Erik ten Hag at Man Utd. He has lost eight of his 20 matches in charge across all competitions.
Man Utd are arguably worse under Amorim than they were during Ten Hag’s reign as he’s attempting to implement his preferred 3-4-3 system, which is not suited to his squad.
United are 14th in the Premier League form table, so last Friday’s FA Cup fourth-round tie against Leicester City provided a welcome distraction.
However, Man Utd had to rely on an offside winner in stoppage time to get past Leicester as Joshua Zirkzee and Harry Maguire netted in the comeback victory.
Amorim was clearly not impressed with his side’s performance against Leicester as a portion of their squad had a full training session on the Old Trafford turf after the final whistle.
A post on United’s social media said: “Some of the United squad completed a full training session at Old Trafford following the full-time whistle on Friday.”
Keown was not impressed with this “very unorthodox” decision, suggesting it was done to “embarrass the players”.
“Does it come across as a punishment though for the players?” Keown asked on talkSPORT.
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“I mean he can do what he wants. It does feel a little bit unprofessional, [like]: ‘Because we haven’t got time in the week to do it, so we are doing a session afterwards’.”
He continued: “It’s very unorthodox. It’s not the norm, there’s recovery, there’s stretching, okay? They’ve got nine days before they play their next game.
“But is it about embarrassing the players a little bit? Look, they were awful for large periods of that game.
“So for me, it has to be [that] he’s so annoyed, there’s no time to wait, and no time to lose, because he could be out of a job as well, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.”
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Keown added: “But what’s more professional is to make sure you find a better way to get the message across to your players in the time available, not necessarily immediately after a game.
“You’ve got some players who played a full 90 minutes taking part in that training session. I don’t think that’s ideal.
“So he’s got to do better in the time that he has got available. He’s got nine days between now and the next match, he could have waited but he didn’t want to.
“That’s how annoyed he was right? But they’re not picking it up, and they’re not enjoying this system, they don’t look suited to it at all, and thank God for Harry Maguire, to be honest!”
