PPerhaps the most impressive aspect of Ruben Amorim's time at Manchester United is the physical impact of his work, the change in optics. When Amorim appeared at Old Trafford, he looked like a handsome pirate. That jawline, that commanding smile, that elite Euro cardigan styling, that sense that here's someone who always smells like a high-spec car interior.
Seven weeks on, he has the air of a doomed royal hostage, gleefully shuttled from hallway to touchline by an invisible handler. His smile faltered and his shoulders slumped. More recently, United's head coach has developed a habit of sitting on his haunches and staring deep into the Old Trafford turf during matches. a) As if looking for contact lenses. b) The remaining fragments of his own shredded and tender soul.
Welcome to the meat grinder. Almost overnight, Amorim went from having notions of perfection, systems, control, and six-month undefeated runs to becoming an existential catalog knitwear model succumbing to the weight of scars, ghosts in the eaves, and voices. It looked like. through the wall.
Then we head to Anfield. The real problem for Manchester United ahead of Sunday's away trip to the league leaders is not that they have lost their last four games without scoring in their last three games. It's not the fact that their recent record against these opponents is 3-0, 7-0, 4-0, 5-0 losses. From the tear-jerking new additions to the faded celebrity timeservers, the prospect of nearly every part of this ghost ship starting to rattle and squeak on its hinges isn't out of the question.
Rather, it is between Amorim's rigorous tactical requirements and its ability to carry them out in a club that is simultaneously overstaffed and understaffed, rich in heritage but short on cash, ceremonially grand but chaotic and childish. There is a growing sense of some fundamental disagreement.
In this context, Liverpool and Arne Slott are the perfect point of contrast. System-obsessed vs. realist: This is an important dichotomy in modern coaching. On the one hand, the unflinching merchant of philosophy and the evangelist of justice we play.
This has become a standard and a necessary form of self-promotion for administrators. Vincent Kompany was handed one of the top jobs in world football after beating Burnley in a delightfully fragile style. Ange Postecoglou continues to hide the team's failures behind some kind of whitewashed ideological defiance. As if there is simply too much at stake here, too much art and too much love to waste time learning to defend, adapt, and discover. like. other gear.
Amorim is a version of this. Here is a manager who has been touting the exact tactical shape that his team will play when he comes to United for a few weeks now, as if he would be playing some kind of team, with a back three and an energetic midfield press. It is as if he has revealed an indisputable truth.
In contrast, the key to Slott's success to date has been his absence of ego, his ability to resist tearing it all down and rebuilding it in his own image. Instead, Slott had enough confidence to absorb Jurgen Klopp's legacy, adapt, tweak and improve. Obviously, this is much easier to do if the inheritance is a fully functioning eight-year model, rather than a scrap or a Frankenstein monster from a failed era. But this simple pragmatism has become something of a superstrength in an age of system geeks.
Amorim was always going to impose his touted template, a form and set of patterns that every opponent in the world's toughest league could prepare for, even if he clearly didn't have the players to make it work. Ta. There is no doubt that over time you will see real improvement. He's clearly a good manager. But to date, he has achieved a truly remarkable feat of making this United team worse in almost every area, a rare case of anti-bounce.
There are two aspects to this. In hindsight, Amorim went from looking like a perfectly sensible hire to a strangely awkward and ill-suited role, knowing full well United's lack of transfer ability. Right person, wrong basket case.
He has also been criticized for some poor choices, but given that he has been open about his tactical intentions from the beginning, this is no different than criticizing a squirrel for liking nuts. It feels meaningful. Instead, it was Amorim's job to spell out in eye-catching detail his employer's existing deficiencies, especially this year's deficiencies that led him to live foolishly under Ineos' leadership.
It seems doubly ridiculous now that Sir Jim Ratcliffe's first interview featured talk of him joining a committee to decide the exact style Manchester United would play from now on. This is a ridiculous suggestion, even without the implication that a 70-something chemical billionaire should be involved. In this process, of course, and even more so in the context of hiring one of the most uncompromising system coaches in Europe. Oh yes, Sir Jim. Please tell me about “front foot soccer” again.
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In the same manifesto speech, Mr Ratcliffe promised Champions League football would be a non-negotiable condition and would retain managers who failed to deliver. United then spent their entire transfer budget of £100m on the fateful final spot of Erik ten Hag. Chuck hires and then fires the “best in class” football manager. To teach elite football a culture of high performance, we decorate the politburo of grimaced men.
After all, it's no wonder the options on the pitch are sometimes disjointed. Amorim's recent midfield selections had the feel of a man sitting in a dying car, pressing every pedal and flipping every switch, desperately hoping something would go right. Amorim has had four combinations in key positions in the last five games, the last of which was the bizarre sight of Casemiro and Christian Eriksen against Newcastle, with Harry Maguire and Matthijs de Ligt behind them. , four guys were playing soccer inside a giant patch of glue.
There are no players here who are suitable for Amorim's high-intensity midfield planning. However, we will still try to play a strong midfield, because that is how we operate here. In this sense, Amorim's struggles also help explain Slot's early success.
Klopp has been slightly airbrushed out of Liverpool's season, as if what happened here was some kind of rescue operation. Indeed, Klopp left behind a strong team and a strong team culture, which Slott has improved and expanded upon, bringing new levels to the team with Ryan Grabenbirch, Luis Diaz and even Trent Alexander-Arnold, who are now ended up leaving the team, which was allowed to rest with the ball. Their defenders are exposed less mercilessly.
Beyond this, Sunday at Anfield represents a contrast between two models of American ownership. On the one hand, it is fiscally prudent and data-driven, but on the other hand, it is undeniably competent. and the highly successful parasitic actions of the Glazer family and their chosen cost-cutting partners.
Of course, an even bigger challenge for Slott would be if this early version runs into difficulties or the club needs to rebuild due to the loss of key personnel. For now, Sunday presents a useful contrast between smart, adaptive coaching and the weirdness of hiring a systems evangelist and asking them to fill the holes with pieces that don't fit. Amorim might be able to do this in time. So far, this feels like a case of a man with a plan, in a place where the plan disappears.
