Ruben Amorim’s press conferences and his interactions with the media in general have been a breath of fresh air, even though he’s probably doing too many of those!
The reason why he’s so in demand is because he’s extremely articulate and charismatic in expressing his thoughts and getting to the root of the issues.
Man Utd fans are finally having their thoughts echoed by the manager instead of being told they are wrong and naive, and everything is fine.
Ruben Amorim’s latest admission about his team is another step in this direction and while it doesn’t reflect well on previous managers, it’s something that needed saying for a long time.
Ruben Amorim’s Man Utd admission
In his two months at Old Trafford so far, Amorim has made no effort to hide behind excuses or make light of the situation at the club.
In fact, some of his proclamations, like United being in a relegation fight, have been intentional shock therapy for a club far too comfortable just turning up once in a while.
He was not part of that culture that is costing the club right now but he’s been tasked with fixing it and for that, the first step is acknowledging a problem exists.
At the risk of his comments looking like a damning indictment on previous managers, he has now accepted a fact about his team that fans have theorised about for a long time.
Amorim said that the team, as currently constructed, is adept only at playing on the counterattack, not able to break down deep blocks through spells of sustained possession and domination.
He said: “I think we as a team are not used to spending a lot of time in the last third of the opponent. We had some games here that we lost and we had that control but the threat was not there.
“We need to have time to train that and the players have to spend a lot of time doing training and during the game to be good at this.
“I saw a lot of games before and we scored a lot of goals before like Garnacho doing transitions, Rashford but then you see the difference of our goals [GD] is always negative. That is the biggest problem of our team.”
Amorim’s comments reflect badly on previous managers
For United to have cycled through five permanent managers and the next one still saying they have no identity beyond scoring goals when they have acres of space is not a good look.
At least Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer can confidently say that that is their philosophy in the first place so they succeeded in transmitting that.
However, the likes of Louis van Gaal and Erik ten Hag were brought in to address precisely the issue Amorim is still talking about in 2025, a remarkable fact.
It reflects particularly badly on Ten Hag, as he was at the club most recently and even won trophies playing a dominating style in his debut season, only to move to a head-scratching, basketball-style philosophy a year later.
Amorim has now acknowledged a problem that no other manager had accepted before him. Now begins the process of sorting it out.
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