Jamie Carragher has picked out what he believes are the “weaknesses” in Ruben Amorim’s system after analysing his first game in charge of Manchester United.
Marcus Rashford gave Amorim the dream start, scoring inside two minutes on Sunday, but the game finished 1-1 after Omari Hutchinson’s fine long-range strike levelled things up.
Much has been made of Amorim’s switch to a 3-4-3 system and the new Red Devils boss insists his players will need time to adapt to the new setup.
But Carragher picked out what he believes will be a “big problem” going forward on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football.
Carragher said: “I hear a lot of managers including Ruben Amorim saying systems don’t matter too much. I believe that they do, no matter how many times managers tell me they don’t because, well why do you play a different system? Different systems give you different things in different areas.
“For me, the weaknesses are in these spaces here, either side of the two central midfield players. The reason why is, when you play a conventional back four, your wide man can tuck in and help.
“But because you play a back three, when they get the ball they naturally go wider and wing backs go wider and higher. It means there’s a lot more space around these two central midfield players, especially if the two attacking 10s don’t drop back. There were the same issues on the Ipswich side as well.
“The big problem is – is it a midfielder who should drop in to fill that space or should a centre-back step in with someone?
“We listened to Ruben Amorim after the game and he spoke a lot about Jonny Evans not making that jump into the space to pick up a man. Because they played the same system, it almost became a man-to-man game. Football has become that.”
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Amorim called out Joshua Zirkzee as well as Evans after the game, claiming his players are currently “confused” after his limited time working with him.
Amorim told Sky Sports: “I think that [decision-making] is a concern, you don’t need to coach them at this level.
“You have to keep the ball and know the momentum to put the ball in front. Sometimes you feel that you can’t keep the ball and you [have to] put the ball in front.
“Then you have like we are in the end of the game, we were around the box with two strikers. Josh [Zirkzee] has to understand that he has to go to the box to have the crosses.
“So we are doing some things that were not at the right moment, so that is something we have to address.
“Sometimes people talk about the 3-4-3, that is not the concern, the system is the system but the understanding of the game is what we have to improve a lot in this area.”
Amorim also insisted that Evans should have been getting tighter to Hutchinson with the Ipswich winger allowed too much space.
Amorim added: “If you see the first half, we were a little bit afraid. The No.5 [Sam Morsy] was always alone, we have to jump on him.
“Hutchinson was always in the dead space, Jonny Evans should be pressing his guy, but when we don’t have the training and it’s hard to see say all the reactions to the players.
“We had two days, they are confused a little bit. If you stay here, you don’t run, you defend but you don’t run. You feel that in the data, but we have to understand the data to understand what happened in the game, then we have to be so much better physically to cope with the high pressure, the volume of the high-speed running, we need time to work on these things.”
