“It’s hard to expect anything now,” said Ruben Amorim after Manchester United’s draw against Ipswich Town. Amorim’s arrival during the international break restored the feel-good factor around the club but United’s performance at Portman Road showed he has his work cut out.
“It’s not a surprise but you have to see it in-game,” he continued. “That’s why I was a little bit anxious because you cannot understand what will happen in the game. I felt that. They are thinking too much because things are so different. It’s hard for the players in three days to cope with everything.
“But we [must not] forget about the new idea. That’s why I was brought here and we try to cope with the things they are used to doing. Next year, in the same stage, we will be here with the same problems or we start now … we risk a little bit, we suffer a little bit and next year will be better.”
“We start very well but then we should have more possession. Sometimes, we had the ball in defence and the rest of the guys were too stuck because they were thinking: ‘Where should I be?.
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“They need time to have some fluidity. I know it’s frustrating for the fans but we are changing so much in this moment with a lot of games. We are going to suffer for a long period.
“This will take time. We could lose if it was not for Onana so we have to understand that and be pragmatic that these guys had two days to train to change so much. We will have a situation where you see a structure and you will say: ‘It’s not fluid.’ But it is like [taking] steps. We have to put in the heads the structure. When they start thinking about the structure they will play so much better.”
Amorim’s comments were fascinating. He provided insight into the nuances of learning his new formation and suggested United needed to suffer now to reap the rewards later.
Nobody wants to keep harping back to Erik ten Hag’s tenure, but he was forced into a tactical compromise at the very beginning of his reign after a shocking start and results continued to be prioritised instead of implementing a style of play that would have been better in the long-term.
Amorim can’t make the same mistake and is hell bent on immediately implementing his system, even if that means there will be teething problems and games in which United “suffer.”
It’s going to take time for the players to learn what he wants inside out and patience will be required. The Manchester Evening News recently interviewed one of Amorim’s former players, David Rosa, and he spoke about how ingrained his tactics were in minds at Casa Pia.
“He knows his game model so well that he can explain it clearly and simply to any player in any position. And that meant when we were on the pitch, we knew exactly what to do,” said Rosa.
“It wasn’t as if we were robots, but we knew that whenever we received the ball what was going to happen around us. That gave us a great advantage, which was that we had some predictability about what was going to happen. It made it easier for us to make decisions.
“I often say, and I truly mean this, that if we sat down in a huddle at Casa Pia, with one player per table as if it were a test, with a blank sheet of paper, each of us would know exactly what to do.
“We would know what passing solutions or actions we would have when we received the ball, and we would even be able to talk about positions other than our own.”
Having that level of understanding takes time and Amorim can’t fix United overnight.
