Down The Wings

Manchester United Fan Blog

The difficulty of the Manchester United job dawns on Ruben Amorim – Weekly Takeaway

Manchester United’s 3-0 defeat against Bournemouth at Old Trafford would have taught Ruben Amorim some real lessons abut his squad and the job at hand.

If he didn’t know already, today showed Ruben Amorim just how difficult it is going to be to sort out what may look like an impossible task, of being Manchester United head coach. Yet another embarrassing home defeat, with a new manager at the helm, this time to high-flying Bournemouth, who came out victorious by three goals to nil, for the second season running. Amorim did warn fans that ‘the storm will come’, but I don’t think any United fans expected it to be quite this bad, and quite so soon. Not a criticism of the manager in the slightest, but it certainly shows that the ways of the players have not changed at all.

A result that happened far too often under Erik Ten Hag, and with performances that were far worse than what United showed today, but it obviously has not been eradicated under new management. The encouraging thing, if there is any encouragement to take out of a result like that, is that the loss is on the players, rather than the manager. It is not a situation where the manager is out of his depth, or that the system simply does not work, as it has been pretty clear over his nine games in charge that this is not the case.

Too many individual errors in recent weeks have led to poor results in a very busy spell, not even leaving the manager much time to work on these mistakes in training. Another set-piece goal conceded, poor decision-making to jump into a challenge inside the box from Noussair Mazraoui, and then a catalogue of errors all over the pitch for the third. This, combined with having 23 shots on goal, with an expected goals totalling 2.26, but coming out having not really troubled Kepa Arrizabalaga in net.

Despite him having a yellow card, the decision to substitute Ugarte was a strange one, making United completely overrun in midfield, where they conceded two goals in eight minutes, and by that point, the game was already over. Amorim’s substitutions up to this point have had largely positive impacts on games, but today was definitely the opposite. Any control that United did have in the game was lost almost immediately, and the game was past the point of no return.

United have Wolves coming up, who are coming off the back of a 3-0 away win under their new manager, before facing Newcastle and Liverpool, so today was looked at as a must-win game, but perhaps a mid-table finish is more realistic than many fans think.

United current situation was perfectly summed up after the game, as midway through Amorim’s press conference, the ceiling started leaking. Leaking ceiling, leaking goals and leaking lineups.

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