Ruben Amorim is approaching the one-year anniversary of his first match as Manchester United manager. Here, we attempt to make sense of his 12 months at the helm.
It was exactly one year ago next Monday when Manchester United fans were getting themselves excited ahead of another new era, which was beginning at Portman Road against Ipswich Town that night.
Erik ten Hag had been dismissed at the end of October after a poor start to 2024-25, and in his place United appointed Ruben Amorim. Young, highly regarded, charismatic and eloquent, his arrival marked a notable change of direction for the club – and that’s even before you consider the switch to a back three.
Amorim was the first managerial appointment of the club’s relatively new leadership group and part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, while the success he’d enjoyed at Sporting CP – whom he guided to two league titles, including their first for 19 years – filled much of the fanbase with optimism.
For all intents and purposes, Amorim was an exciting hire. However, his first year in charge has been anything but smooth, making more recent hints of progress difficult to draw conclusions from.
While there have been some fairly memorable moments and results, Amorim’s first year has been littered with more occasions and records that United fans would probably rather forget: the Europa League final defeat to Tottenham, a worst-ever Premier League finish, their first cup elimination by a fourth-tier club in this season’s EFL Cup.
Of course, so much focus since his appointment has been on the “system” and Amorim’s decision to switch United to a back three, which was practically unheard of at the club.
And when he failed to oversee a dramatic improvement in United’s fortunes compared to Ten Hag, more and more that system and its suitability was called into question. And yet, that only seemed to make Amorim more adamant.
The formation wasn’t the issue, he insisted, and he felt he needed to stick to the principles he’d committed to because only then would the players buy into his ideas. But as points continued to elude them and their slide down the table went unchecked, the external noise grew.
There were two periods last season when United’s 12-game rolling points-per-game average in the Premier League dropped to just 0.83, the lowest it had been since Sir Alex Ferguson departed in 2013.
Then, as United made a slow start to 2025-26, there was a four-match spell when that 12-game rolling points-per-game average (stretching back into 2024-25) went as low as 0.75. To give you a better idea of how bad that was, their figure was 1.42 – so, nearly double that – when Ten Hag was fired.
It should be noted that their most alarming 12-game period comprised a section of 2024-25 when United’s domestic season was beyond saving and their focus was on the Europa League, but there’s no denying how underwhelming they were. This is Manchester United, after all.
Generally speaking, United do seem to have improved somewhat this season. They’ve certainly not been perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they look a better, more cohesive team, and results have recently been heading in the right direction.
For instance, ahead of Monday’s clash with Everton, their 12-game rolling points-per-game average stands at 1.75. The last time it was higher than that was December 2023 after a Boxing Day win over Aston Villa took them to 1.83.
But when their rolling points-per-game average hit 1.33 last month, it was only the second time they’d reached that figure since Amorim’s fifth game in charge; the point being, this remains a very recent development, so how representative is it?
Obviously only time can tell us that, but there are other hints of promise. Their expected goals output, for instance, offers some encouragement.
The graphic below shows their non-penalty xG and non-pen xG against (xGA) on a six-game rolling average and it’s clear to see they’ve made progress since an incredibly difficult spell in the second half of 2024-25.
The chart does also show United have actually been in an xG deficit (xGA is higher than xG) most recently, but we shouldn’t disregard the significance of four of their last six games being away from home. They also lost only one of those matches (W1 D2).
Despite that recent slip into an xG deficit, their figures for the season tend to reflect a greater sense of effectiveness in attack following the arrivals of Bryan Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha and Benjamin Sesko.
For example, during Amorim’s 27 league games in charge last season, United averaged just 1.24 non-pen xG per game. After 11 Premier League matches this term, they’ve averaged 1.48 non-pen xG per game.
It’s not a monumental increase, granted, but it is an improvement of 20% and their 16.32 non-pen xG this term is the sixth highest in the Premier League. Considering Cunha is yet to find form in front of goal and Sesko – who’s now out injured for around a month – doesn’t look like he’s quite settled yet, it’s a decent start. And it’s reasonable to suggest there’s more to come.
The flipside is that United are actually conceding better chances at the other end than they were before. Their 16.7 non-pen xGA this season is the second highest in the Premier League after Burnley (21.7), and on a per-game basis (1.51), that is considerably poorer than in Amorim’s 27 games last season (1.34).
However, when looking at both xG metrics, we cannot ignore that United have only played 11 games this season. One of the main reasons that’s so pertinent is they had the fifth-hardest set of fixtures over the first 11 matchdays of 2025-26, according to the Opta Power Rankings.
The Opta Power Rankings is a global ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 10,000 domestic football teams on a scale of 0-100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best. The average rating of United’s opponents to date is 92.2, which reflects the fact they’ve faced Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham already.
So, when you take that into account, their 20% non-pen xG increase on a per-game basis looks even better and their non-pen xGA figures appear a little less alarming – nevertheless, there’s clearly room for improvement with the latter.
But even if there are aspects like that where United are still showing some signs of weakness, there’s an argument that many of the positives from their start to 2025-26 are underpinned by an improved mentality.
They may still be giving up decent opportunities, but United’s penchant for late goals could be seen as evidence of them being made of sterner stuff than before.
It isn’t just that they’re scoring them. After all, they had a run at the end of last season when five of eight goals were netted in the 80th minute or later. It’s more that they’ve a habit of changing the result in the latter stages.
They’ve turned a draw into a win, or a defeat into a draw in three of their past four Premier League games; not only is that as many result-altering goals scored in the 80th minute or later as they’d managed in their previous 24 matches, but it’s only the third time in Premier League history that they’ve had such a run (also doing so in March/April 2001, and December 2016/January 2017).
It’s also worth noting that the one match out of their last four in which they didn’t score a result-altering goal after the 80th minute was the 4-2 win over Brighton, when Mbeumo netted deep into second-half stoppage time to kill the game off when the Seagulls had been pressing hard for an equaliser. So, it didn’t technically change the result, but it felt like it did at the time.
Obviously, it’s difficult to definitively prove collective mental strength, but this feels like a decent indicator at the very least.
And then, linked to this, figures pertaining to game state reflect well on United, too – especially in comparison to last season.
They’ve been in front for 496 mins, 5 secs (44.7%) in 2025-26, which is already 140 mins and 25 secs longer than they led across their 27 matches under Amorim last season (355 mins, 40 secs). In fact, they’re only 53 minutes and 32 seconds off overtaking their total for the entirety of 2024-25 (549 mins, 37 secs – 14.5%).
There is reason for optimism, then. Several reasons, actually. But as alluded to before, so much of it is still new to this United side that it remains unclear how much we should read into it.
Either way, whether the progress is momentary or lasting, United are still a long, long way off where they want to be, as that rather damning points-per-game-average chart succinctly highlights.
Ultimately, there has been just enough promise shown this season to suggest Amorim’s first year hasn’t been a completely failed experiment, but not enough to dispel the doubts that have festered over the past 12 months. United do look fitter, more cohesive and seemingly mentally tougher, yet the concerns that defined the early months of his tenure still linger.
The next stretch of the season, aided by a more forgiving run of fixtures and riding the kind of momentum Amorim hasn’t had before at United, should provide more clarity about this team’s true level. What’s already clear, however, is the window of ambiguity is closing: after a year of turbulence and gradual improvement, Amorim – who has a little over 18 months left on his contract – is now approaching the point where signs of promise must soon become something unmistakable.
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One Year of Ruben Amorim: Man Utd’s Hints of Improvement Unable to Completely Drown Out Lingering Doubts Opta Analyst.
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