There are few football managers in the world that would want to be in Ruben Amorim’s position. Parachuted into a club that Ralph Ragnick once described as requiring open heart surgery, Amorim finds himself in the position of battlefield medic rather than cardiac surgeon. Since joining it’s become apparent that he will have limited ability to bring in January recruits. That being dependant on the club’s ability to move players out first.
United Caught Between a Rock and A Hard Place
Let’s face it, United wouldn’t have been willing to write this season off given a choice but things under Eric Ten Hag were a mess and getting messier. Its widely acknowledged that Amorim himself would have preferred to wait until the summer of 2025 before accepting the United job, but United were forced to tip his hand. Its understandable really, if Guardiola did choose to leave City at the end of this year, United could have wound up in a fight for his signature. Not to mention any other clubs that would be looking to recruit him this summer. That fight would be one they may not likely win, either not being able to offer top level European football. Especially with the risk factor of Manchester City poaching Sporting’s sporting director Hugo Viana, possibly with one eye on recruiting Amorim in the long term.
Left with the idea of not getting their man and writing off the 2024-2025 season completely United chose to twist. Rather than stick with the embattled Ten Hag United chose to make their move and bring in Amorim. Given the position United found themselves under Ten Hag any board of sound mind would have made that move.
Non-Sensical Decision Making
Ineos’s arrival into Manchester United, while initially greeted with optimism have found themselves unable to keep bad PR from their doorstep. A series on unpopular decisions that seem to affect the day to day staff running the club and the club’s charitable commitments have proven unpopular. These choices have shown Ineos’s determination to run United as business first and as a Football Club a distant second. If they turn the club around and get united winning, the pain of this will ease in the minds of fans. If it doesn’t they will look like cruel masters propping up the failing Glazer regime.
The choice of Amorim itself makes plenty of sense, he’s young, successful with ideas on how the game should be played and a philosophy to accompany it all. That philosophy around a 3-4-3 formation will underpin the future of the club. However, it comes with significant problems, without a pre-season to bed these ideas in with his squad Amorim is automatically on the back foot. Aside from Ugarte who played under Amorim before moving to PSG, and Harry Maguire for England the United squad is short on players with experience playing three at the back. Worse those that have such experience playing for England did so with a 5-man midfield rather than Amorim’s preferred 4.
That lack of playing experience does lead to one singular question, does Amorim’s preferred formation require too much commitment to change at the club? United are committed to now to not only changing the the style of play of their first team, if they’re committing to Amorim long term, the philosophy of the club now needs to shift. Not just for the first team, but through the reserves and academy levels too.
That is a vast commitment of resources and energy, and one hell of a gamble.
Then we come to briefly employed sporting director Dan Ashworth, whose appointment and subsequent sacking is another item on the list of Ineos’s teething troubles. Ashworth would have preferred Premier League or at least domestic experience to replace Ten Hag. Though his committing of the club to Ten Hag in the summer prior to his dismissal cost him dear. As someone with a bit more experience than Sir Jim Radcliffe and Dave Brailsford he would have recognised the size of the change United are making.
Suitors
It’s clear that Amorim had potential suitors over the summer, Liverpool in particular were known to had interest but ultimately chose to go in a different direction. They had just committed over £100 million in expenditure on a retooled midfield based around Jurgen Klopp’s 4-3-3, money which would have been potentially wasted converting those players to a different system, which would have seen them need to potentially add further recruits to their defence and midfield. His links to West Ham were more of a Mis-Judgement on Amorim’s part, understanding at just the right point that bigger fish awaited him.
Inexperience Mixed with Ruthlessness
A look at Ineos’s experience running Nice in the French Ligue 1 would tell you they’re quite happy to pull the trigger on managers. Since purchasing Nice in July 2019 they’ve gone through 7 managers and failed to bother the top 4. They have similarly small inroads into the Europa League and Europa Conference league on the occasions when they’ve qualified.
That’s not to say that Ineos haven’t spent the money during their time at Nice, their transfer expenditure drastically outweighs their incomings. The feeling among some Nice fans posting on Reddit is that they’ve struggled to get the Admin side of the club quite right for success. Other Nice fans say that they’ve been a disappointment. Either way there are few ringing endorsements for them at the club.
Since taking a minority stake in United Ineos have taken steps to distance themselves from Nice withdrawing much of the financial backing and putting the club up for sale. Either way their experience in Ligue 1 should not leave United fans thrilled at the prospect of their involvement.
Potential Hiding to Nowhere
Ultimately whether Ruben Amorim will be a success at United is something only time will tell. However, one thing is for certain. If United choose to ride out the season with him then it absolutely HAS to work for them. As previously mentioned it will take great effort to pivot the whole club to the 3-4-3 at all levels and more so great expense.
Moving on from Amorim even in 5 or 10 years, could require a complete Re-Pivot if his eventual replacement doesn’t chime with the 3-4-3 the club has just hitched its wagon to. Sure the differences these days are subtle and teams will more often not have a different shape in possession than out of it. At the elite level subtle issues can become vast chasms in a short space in time. Every hesitation or self second guess is a problem that becomes magnified. In a small but real sense United are gambling that the future of football in the next 10-15 years is the 3-4-3.
Even scouting is more of a problem, believe it or not scouting these days is more than just by eye. Cold hard numbers help make dispassionate decisions on a daily basis in football clubs. The issue is many fold. The number of clubs playing 3-4-3, while increasing is still a lot smaller than your standard back 4. This means there’s a lot less reliable scouting data on players in these formations which makes player targeting and scouting tricker than it needs to be.
Then there’s the Money issue. Manchester United have a lot of players on a lot of Money, players like that are hard to shift, because buying clubs often don’t have the budget to pay those wages. This is made worse when the players in question are under performing or are out of favour. Amorim immediately chose to single out Marcus Rashford, who for better or worse has been a stalwart at the club for a long time. While rumours about the player’s attitude are now beginning to circle, this doesn’t help generate interest or value in the player. It’s reasonable to suggest that there isn’t actually a club out there for Rashford at the moment. Amorim may be forced through necessity to work with the player anyway.
Without a Director of Football and no plan to put one in place, Ineos are further gambling. Make no mistake Dan Ashworth was a talent worth getting, regardless of what happened, so carrying on without a replacement Ineos are once more gambling. What player transactions do occur this January are the responsibility of Sir Jim Radcliffe, CEO Omar Berrada and Technical Director Jason Wilcox.
What does Amorim have to do?
In short, Win and Win consistently. Week in – Week out. The problem is there are a set of circumstances in play that will make it very difficult for him to achieve that. While it’s likely that United will stick with Amorim, because they’d be mad not to too. Ineos have demonstrated a trigger happiness in the past that will put everyone around the club on Edge. If it goes wrong, and badly wrong it could look worse than under Ten Hag for a while.
