Ruben Amorim‘s dogged insistence that his style is not for changing only serves as an enormous gift to the weaker-minded of his Manchester United players.
It’s an excuse and weak-minded players always love an excuse: it’s the system, not them.
Amorim is not the first manager in recent United history to try changing to three at the back. Louis van Gaal did the same when he took over and look how that played out. He changed after being confronted by Wayne Rooney and Michael Carrick who told him the dressing room was unhappy.
To walk through the door and impose your playing style without evaluating the staff in front of you is either very brave or very naive. It goes against everything I was taught as a player under all the great managers I worked under.
If you take over a job halfway through a season, it’s usually because the club is in turmoil, the roof is leaking, and at United it quite literally was.
Arriving at that new club as a manager, you see what players you have to work with and then adopt a style that suits them. How you train, your preparation for games, the timetables, the travel, the hotels, you have a bit of push me-pull you, back and forth before you devise a plan that takes away every possible grievance so that when it comes down to playing and any criticism begins, there are no excuses for those players.
Ruben Amorim has insisted his approach will not change at Man United despite poor results
The Man United head coach’s principle has given players an excuse for failing to deliver
The best players at Man United are struggling in the system and compounding their issues
When Liverpool signed Mark Lawrenson from Brighton in 1981, a year later, bearing in mind we were a club that had won three European Cups, we tried to change to three at the back with Alan Hansen and Phil Thompson.
We were trying it out in pre-season on the A team pitch at Melwood, first team against the reserves. After about half an hour, the reserves were 3-0 up and I kicked off moaning, saying: ‘Are we playing this way just to accommodate someone? We are a 4-4-2 team and always have been.’
We tested it further in the Charity Shield against Tottenham and, though we won 1-0, we had a discussion afterwards and went back to how we did things best, playing 4-4-2. We went on to win the league that year.
The point being that even the best of players have found it hard to make such changes work and this United squad certainly don’t have the quality of players we had.
Some are not fit to wear the Manchester United strip but Amorim’s stubbornness over imposing his system is giving them that excuse not to perform.
What compounds the issue is that he is making unnecessary compromises.
When injuries, such as those suffered last week, enforce changes, you should keep your really good players in their best positions. Compromising them just weakens your team further.
Bruno Fernandes is their most creative, special player. There are things to dislike about him when he shows too much frustration on the pitch, but he is extremely talented. If you are the opposition, you want him as far away from your goal as possible and that’s more or less where Amorim ended up playing him against Tottenham, too deep as a partner for Casemiro.
Bruno Fernandes is Man United’s most creative player but was forced deep against Tottenham
Fernandes’ lack of defensive instincts exposed Casemiro, whose athleticism has diminished
The problem is Casemiro is a steady Eddie player, nothing else, whose athleticism has diminished. He is the holding midfielder and your priority there is not to make cute and clever passes or score goals but to hold your position, protecting the defenders behind you, so they don’t have to step out and lose their shape.
Playing in this position the two of you should never be more than 20 yards from each other. However, Fernandes does not have a defensive head on his shoulders. His natural instinct is to gravitate towards the ball and get involved so that gap between him and Casemiro only grew further and further as they sank to another defeat by Tottenham last weekend.
Compromising Fernandes’ role compromised United’s creativity. Amorim made them too easy to play against and they have one too many excuses already.
Why do we now celebrate ‘winning’ fouls?
I was watching TV last week while running on the treadmill and almost ground to an untimely halt when a graphic came up showing which players had ‘won’ the most fouls.
Newcastle United’s Bruno Guimaraes was top, and his team-mate Anthony Gordon was second.
How on earth do the people that frame these statistics think that they should be viewed as a positive? It can only ever be a negative.
Is that a competition now, with some kind of award? That’s the last table I’d want to be top of.
As a player, the staff at Liverpool would say you get fouled because you take too many touches and that you don’t see the picture quick enough.
Bruno Guimaraes topped a graphic of the players to have won the most fouls this season
Anthony Gordon was ranked second, but ‘winning’ fouls is a term the game should lose
Slowly but surely, this has crept into our game, players being encouraged to go down near the box, perpetuated by poor referees whose lack of understanding of the game means they consistently fall foul of this simulation. Yes, simulation. Look that up. The definition is to ‘pretend’ or ‘deceive’. In short, cheating.
In a former life on TV, I recall challenging Micah Richards when he talked about how Jack Grealish ‘bought’ fouls for Manchester City. ‘Bought fouls’, is that not cheating?
Ask 10 of your mates what they hate most about the game today, apart from their team getting beat, and it’s simulation.
Being top of a table for ‘winning’ fouls, is that really something we should be celebrating let alone be proud of?
In this instance, ‘winning’ is a term we should lose.
Leeds are a special club but can’t be so cavalier
I thoroughly enjoyed watching a game of football on Monday night, Leeds against Sunderland.
Two sides who will be seeing themselves as potential Premier League teams and with good reason.
Elland Road has always been a difficult place to go. As a 19-year-old at Middlesbrough, I just caught the tail end of their great side of the 1970s and in more than ways than one. I got hit with a challenge from Terry Yorath at Ayresome Park, it ruled me out for three months and gave me a lesson well learned as I was never caught again that badly.
Leeds and Sunderland’s Championship clash on Monday night was a proper match
Both sides view themselves as potential Premier League teams and with good reason
Leeds has always been a passionate football club, which is what I like, and that’s what made playing there such a great experience and so special.
Seeing over 36,000 roaring on their team on Monday, it was a proper game.
The caveat being, if they get into the Premier League they will have to have a more pragmatic and less cavalier approach to survive with the big boys.
