‘I’m not going to change. When I want to change my philosophy, I will change. If not, you have to change the man.’
Ruben Amorim[1] is not for turning.
It doesn’t matter that he’s taken 31 points from his 31 Premier League[2] games in charge, or that the 3-0 defeat by Manchester City[3] on Sunday means he’s lost twice the number of league matches than he’s won.
It doesn’t matter that he’s made the worst start of any United manager since the Second World War[4]. Amorim isn’t going to change.
The issue for the United boss is that everyone knows he’s not going to change either. Everyone knows United will set up in a back-five with two wing-backs, two central midfielders in front, two No 10s in front of them with a lone striker up top.
Every opposition manager knows it. They know how he’ll get United to play and they know he won’t switch it up to something different if he needs to change the game. You don’t need to be Pep Guardiola[5] to figure it out.
Manchester United boss Ruben Amorim looks on in despair during his side’s humiliating 3-0 loss to Manchester City
United legend Paul Scholes is among the pundits to have criticised Amorim’s inflexible system
‘There are so many clever coaches these days in England and all around the world and they work it out quite easily,’ slammed United legend Paul Scholes on The Good, The Bad & The Football podcast. ‘They know exactly the way Manchester United[6] are going to play every single week.’
Fulham boss Marco Silva said as much after their 1-1 draw with United earlier in the season. ‘We know how they defend,’ said Silva. ‘We know they play two in the middle. We tried to overload with our three plus Alex Iwobi. It was as simple as that.’
Beating United these days is as simple as that. But why? What is making Amorim’s United such an easy touch.
Malfunctioning midfield
The biggest and most obvious issue at the heart of United’s struggles, one opponents exploit time and time again.
A system with just two players in central midfield will often leave you outnumbered, especially in a league where most teams adopt a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 formation which offers three players in the middle of the park.
That’s fine if you’re Antonio Conte on your way to winning the title with a back-three in 2016-17 and you have N’Golo Kante able to do the work of two midfielders.
It’s not fine when you’re asking Bruno Fernandes, a play-making No 10, to do the hard yards alongside a player as uncomfortable in possession and uncontrollable in aggression as Manuel Ugarte or a man as weary in the legs as Casemiro.
Fernandes puts in more defensive work than many give him credit for, making more recoveries than all midfielders bar Elliot Anderson since Amorim’s first game in charge, but his awareness of dangerous situations remains an issue.
It was Fernandes who left Phil Foden free to head in City’s opener at the Eithad Stadium, and Fernandes again who let Emile Smith Rowe run free for Fulham’s equaliser at Craven Cottage.
Amorim is left with players who either don’t quite understand what’s needed or don’t have the capabilities to do it and they get outnumbered, overrun and are left so open it hardly takes Andrea Pirlo to play through them.
Guardiola exploited it to great effect on Sunday with his clever use of Jeremy Doku, who moved into an unexpected central position to exploit the space either side of United’s midfield two.
In the build-up to the opening goal, Rodri (on the ball) is able to bypass Ugarte with a simple five-yard pass to Doku, who can then turn and run at United’s back line before crossing for Phil Foden to score
For City’s second, Doku ends up playing a superb through-ball for Erling Haaland to finish but the space left open in midfield is vast
Later on, as City push for a fourth, Bruno Fernandes fails to track Tijjani Reijnders, who makes a simple run through the heart of United’s midfield and defence before Haaland finds him with a pass
Just look at United’s average positions from the City game (below). Fernandes (8) and Ugarte (25) are on top of each other, leaving so much space in the channels either side that City played through at will.
Neither Amad Diallo nor Bryan Mbeumo, playing in the advanced roles, tracked back enough to help even up the numbers in midfield. However maligned Mason Mount has been during his United career, his absence through injury is a huge blow for Amorim.
Mount more than anyone in this squad knows what’s required to thrive in this system, having done so at Chelsea under Thomas Tuchel. He has the ability to progress the ball forward yet also the awareness to drop in to do the defensive work… just not when he’s being played at left wing-back, like in the defeat at Grimsby.
It’s clear why United wanted to sign Brighton’s midfield machine Carlos Baleba in the summer – but to have come away from the transfer window with more than £200m spent but no reinforcements where it mattered most was staggering.
To jump or not to jump?
That is the question and one to which United’s players under Amorim do not have a unanimous answer.
Fernandes discussed ‘jumping’ – when a player quickly ‘jumps’ out of his position to press an opponent – in his post-match interview at the Etihad, proving only that United’s players don’t fully understand what they are doing.
‘I was trying to press Rodri because the aim of the midfielders is for one to jump on Rodri, one of the defenders on Foden,’ explained Fernandes. ‘In the first moment, I can cover both but Leny (Yoro) comes up so I go more on Rodri. And Leny was going backwards because of a miscommunication so we end up giving too much space on the pitch.’
Amorim has some players who don’t want to jump, others who do, but rarely any who know the right time to do it. Ugarte dived in rashly on occasion at the Etihad but there were few areas where it showed United to be more unbalanced than at the back – another reason why they are so easy to play through.
As Fernandes suggested, Yoro is an aggressive centre back who likes to push up on to opponents to close them down from the right side of the three. The issue, however, is that United’s wide centre back on the other side, Luke Shaw, doesn’t. Shaw is an accomplished left back but a makeshift centre back and Amorim’s system exposes it.
When Yoro steps out, unless Shaw does the same, it opens up easy spaces for teams like City to pick apart.
In this example below, Yoro steps up but Shaw is nowhere to be seen, leaving a huge space for a simple ball to split United in two once again.
An attack that can’t score
Same system, same results, same misery but behind it there has been a sense that United’s attack has a new string to its bow.
Having Fernandes, his best passer, playing deeper has its problems – as we’ve just seen – but getting him on the ball earlier is, at least, enabling United to get the ball upfield much quicker. Fast diagonal balls to Bryan Mbeumo have become a new addition to United’s armoury.
No side has attempted more ‘fast breaks’, as Opta call them, than United this season, where a team turn defence into attack quickly after winning the ball back in their own half. In other words, counter-attacks.
This quick, direct style has seen United attempt more shots than any other side this season. They have had more touches in the opposition box, too. Even excluding the two penalties United have taken, they have still racked up a higher Expected Goals (xG) than all but City and Chelsea. The quality of those chances suggests they should have scored nearly seven goals.
There have been some good signs. Mbeumo and Noussair Mazraoui have linked up well down United’s right-hand side. United started well against City but wasted a host of early opportunities.
The problem is, they still can’t take them – even after spending £200m on Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha and Benjamin Sesko. So far, they have scored just one goal that’s not been a penalty or an own goal.
Only Aston Villa, who have yet to score a single goal all season, and Leeds have a worse conversion rate so far this season than United’s 5.7 per cent. One in every 18 shots go in. The most ruthless in front of goal – Tottenham, City and Arsenal – scored about one in five.
Eternal optimists, those who still believe Amorim can turn it around, will say those underlying numbers will come good eventually.
Yet when you consider the vast number of shots United have had, it’s no wonder their expected goals (xG) tally has kept ticking up – half chance here, long-range effort there. Keep taking pot shots and the xG will keep crawling upwards.
When you consider United’s xG per shot, it’s very much mid-table. United aren’t carving out golden chances, they’re racking up plenty of average ones. As the chart below demonstrates…
Wing-back woes
One of the main reasons for their lack of quality chance creation boils down to just how little Amorim can rely on the key area of his system – his wing-backs.
Guardiola’s plan to shut down United’s new penchant for counter-attacks, something City struggled to defend against last season, was to press United even higher when they attempted to play out from the back. He instructed his wingers, Doku and Bernardo Silva, to push on to United’s wide centre backs.
While this helped cut off United’s build-up at source and force them into mistakes, the trade-off was that it left their wing-backs Mazraoui and Patrick Dorgu in acres of space to receive the ball (below).
But if there was any risk Guardiola would be willing to take, taking a chance on United’s wing-backs doing nothing with the ball should be a good one.
Dorgu had 12 touches in the City box, the most of any player on the pitch. And yet he did so little with it. He tried to take on his man five times and succeeded just once. Of his 62 touches, he played only four balls into the box. He gets into great positions but his delivery is poor.
For a system that gets all its attacking width from its wing-backs, United’s offer so little – and it’s been one of the key reasons why Amorim’s side are so easy to play against.
Since he took charge, his four main wing-backs of Mazraoui, Dorgu, Shaw and Diogo Dalot have scored zero league goals between them. Dalot has provided three assists and the others have… zero.
By comparison, Daniel Munoz, thriving in Crystal Palace’s vibrant wing-back system, has scored four goals and notched five assists on his own in that same period.
When Antonio Conte took Chelsea to the title with a back-five in 2016-17, wing-backs Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso scored nine goals between them and set up five. Thomas Tuchel had Reece James, Alonso and Ben Chilwell providing both en route to winning the Champions League.
Amorim’s do nothing and his system will continue to fail until they do.
Keeper crisis persists
Getting rid of Andre Onana wasn’t enough to solve United’s goalkeeping issues after all.
Altay Bayindir’s nervousness on the ball when trying to build from the back exposed another reason why United’s system under Amorim continues to stall.
Bayindir relied on playing a short ball to Yoro but Doku’s clever press often cut it off. Matthijs de Ligt moved into midfield and when Bayindir did manage to find him, the centre back was able to progress the ball upfield. However, as Haaland kept blocking off the passing lane, Bayindir lacked the confidence in his ability to play the ball past him regularly. He was also almost caught in possession by Haaland in his own six-yard box.
On the one occasion he did find Ugarte in front of him, the midfielder gave it away and United nearly conceded another.
It meant Bayindir often just pumped it long. Of his 31 passes, he completed just 16 of them. You can’t imagine it will be long until new man Senne Lammens has a go instead.
So, how can Ruben fix it?
Switching to a system that his players are naturally suited to would be a start.
Looking at how Unai Emery enjoyed success with Aston Villa last season, for example. You can still get your width from your full backs, but from a back-four. You can still have narrow forwards like Morgan Rogers or Matheus Cunha to support the striker in central areas because the full backs bomb on. You can still have a ball-playing midfielder in a two like Youri Tielemans or Fernandes to start early attacks because you have another body in midfield as a No 10 ahead of him.
Only Amorim’s not going to do that. He’s already said United would have to sack him for that to happen. But until he has the players who suit it, he can still tweak his philosophy without giving up his beloved formation.
It’s never just about the formation, but how the players adapt within it – or, as is often the case under Amorim, don’t.
Get Fernandes higher up the pitch. Have some faith in Kobbie Mainoo. Get your wing-backs to put earlier crosses into the box to your new 6ft 4in striker.
A back-three can work. Just not like this.
References
- ^ Ruben Amorim (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Premier League (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Manchester City (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Second World War (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Pep Guardiola (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ Manchester United (www.dailymail.co.uk)