The Ruben Amorim era at Manchester United is over after the Portuguese coach seemingly lost an internal power struggle.
On Monday morning, Manchester United dropped the axe. Ruben Amorim’s turbulent spell as the club’s head coach – yes, to be read with emphasis – came to an abrupt and typically abrasive end.
To some, the news will have come as a shock. After all, Sunday’s somewhat commendable 1-1 draw away to bitter rivals Leeds – secured despite a host of first-teamers being absent – leaves them sixth in the Premier League. Progress has been made since last term’s dismal 15th-place finish.
To many others, however, dismissing Amorim will seem entirely justified when considering his overall record at the club and the fact they are still quite far off looking like a consistently good and functional team.
For instance, since Amorim’s first day at United on 11 November 2024, their 58 points from 47 Premier League matches is the fourth fewest among ever-present top-flight teams in that time. Of the three teams below them, two of them (Wolves and West Ham) are in the relegation zone and very likely to drop into the Championship.
Granted, their particularly underwhelming form last term while prioritising a run to the UEFA Europa League final obviously plays a part, but that’s not enough to completely excuse a club of Manchester United’s size being so disappointing over such a period.
Amorim leaves having won just 31.9% of his league games in charge; that’s easily the poorest win rate of any United manager in the Premier League era.
And yet, they are better than they were last season, the players brought in have improved a squad that wasn’t very impressive, and they’ve lost just twice in the Premier League since the end of September. There’s reasonable evidence United’s decision hasn’t been specifically informed by results, then, despite the club’s statement insisting as much on Monday.
Rather, the club appeared to become the site of a power struggle, with recent comments made by Amorim hinting at disagreements with his bosses, and it would seem at least some of this stems from his infamous 3-4-3 system.
It was in a press conference on Christmas Eve when Amorim commented that “if we have to play a perfect 3-4-3, we need to spend a lot of money and we need time.”
He then added, “I’m starting to understand that is not going to happen, so maybe I have to adapt.”
Amorim wouldn’t elaborate on or clarify those comments when pressed on Friday, but when asked if he was indirectly referring to discussions with director of football Jason Wilcox, the Portuguese coach dodged the question before telling the reporter “you are very smart”.
After the Leeds game, Amorim then proceeded to insist – three times – that he came to the club to be “manager”, not just a “coach”, another hint of displeasure and possibly referencing potential interference from above. Though, for what it’s worth, United’s November 2024 announcement of his arrival described him as “head coach”, a noteworthy deviation from a role the club had always previously designated as “manager”.
Further poking the bear, Amorim said: “If people cannot handle the Gary Nevilles [opinions of pundits], the criticisms, everything, [then] we need to change the club … every department, the scouting department, the sporting director, needs to do their job, I will do mine for 18 months then we move on.”
There had been signs of the adaptation Amorim alluded to on 24 December, though. Eight days prior to those comments, United’s shape often resembled that of a back four in the 4-4 draw with Bournemouth. The same could be said of the 1-0 win over Newcastle.
Of course, discussion around formations can be a little reductive and simplistic. A team may appear to line up in a certain arbitrary formation, whether that’s 3-4-3, 4-2-3-1, 5-3-2 or any other variation, but they won’t look that way the whole time; different phases call for differing shapes, both in and out of possession.
With Opta’s Shape Analysis data, we can look beyond those arbitrary starting formations and get a better idea of what teams actually look like on the pitch. Below, we present United’s in-possession and out-of-possession shapes for the Premier League this season until (and including) the 4-1 win over Wolves.
Then we have the same for their league games since that victory at Molineux.
It’s a small sample size, granted, but as you can see, United’s shape has featured a back four for a considerably greater proportion of their match time in the past few weeks.
Whether this was a response to internal pressure or the coach reacting to United’s sweeping personnel issues, we can only speculate. But there was an air of frustration, reluctance even, when Amorim spoke of his apparent need to adapt after coming to the realisation that the time and/or money he expected weren’t likely to be forthcoming.
So, when Amorim’s team mostly appeared to revert to his 3-4-3 system for the draws with Wolves and Leeds and the latter was followed by defiant talk of being the “manager” not the “coach”, it wasn’t unreasonable to interpret this as Amorim marking his territory.
But whether you believe Amorim’s system is effective or not, there’s a strong argument none of this muddled thinking around formations/shapes et cetera was ever necessary in the first place – at least not to the degree in which it’s been discussed since he replaced Erik ten Hag.
Shortly after becoming minority owner of Manchester United, Sir Jim Ratcliffe said in February 2024 that the club would determine the team’s style of play and the “coach will have to play that style”.
Whether they ever came to an understanding of what that style was is unclear because it was never communicated publicly. However, it’s unlikely they determined a setup and philosophy similar to Amorim’s was specifically the way to go because it was so far removed from what United had historically been associated with.
So, did United fail to come up with a desired “style of play”, or did they just abandon it?
None of this is to say dismissing Amorim is the wrong decision; so much of what we’ve seen from him over the past 14 months goes against United’s ethos, from the system to the questionable treatment of certain academy graduates. And as already mentioned, results haven’t been great.
But the bigger concern here is that hiring him in the first place now looks a woeful decision because the team have wasted well over a year adapting to – and gradually improving in – a very specific system, which also required some specialist signings who may now not fit into the next coach’s setup.
So, while Amorim clearly isn’t blameless or without fault, it all comes back to United appointing a coach who looked an incredibly risky hire – more so than normal given his rigid beliefs – from the very start. The same people now get to choose his replacement.
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Ruben Amorim Sacked: Man Utd’s Problems Run Deeper Than a 3-4-3 System Opta Analyst.
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