Ruben Amorim says he is willing to leave Manchester United for free if the club’s owners no longer believe in his methods.
The Portuguese head coach sensationally claimed his side were the “better team” after their Europa League final defeat to Tottenham Hotspur on Wednesday night.
Some fans believe United’s abject performance in Bilbao is the final straw, with a number taking to social media to call for his sacking.
We asked three of our football writers if he should lose his job, and how much blame he deserves for their wretched season as a whole.
Alejandro Garnacho has publicly criticised Amorim’s decision to drop him (Photo: Getty)
Kevin Garside, chief sports correspondent
Were Amorim’s tenure at Old Trafford a laboratory experiment requiring further funding, the answer would be no. Even Amorim admits future investment in him requires faith since the evidence to support his retention isn’t there.
Coaches cannot complain about player profiles not suiting this template or that. Most first-team players at United arrive fully-formed having learned their trade elsewhere. They tend to be proven, global talents or of high potential.
Okay, United have made some errors in recruitment. But this cannot be all on the players, on formations, not running at the right time or in the right spaces, not being fit enough. These are all measurable, technical features that can be addressed. Amorim has been in his post since November, that is six months according to my maths, long enough to get things moving.
Cast a glance at Aston Villa, who appointed Unai Emery to replace Steven Gerrard in the same calendar month three years ago with Villa in 16th, one point above the relegation places. Ironically, his inaugural win was against United at home, a first victory in almost 30 years against the Red Devils.
That first season Emery won 15 of 25 league games, bettered only by Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool and, yes, you guessed it, United, in the same period. The following season he qualified for Europe and this term the Champions League, a feat he might repeat with victory at Old Trafford on Sunday.
Like Amorim, Gerrard arrived a young coach from Rangers having won the Scottish title. He was supposed to be Villa’s fast-track to nirvana, full of big energy and new ideas. In the end the job proved too much for him, exposing his inability to lead at the higher level. Amorim is stuck to a sense of the game that has no application in a Premier League that has swallowed him whole.
Under Ineos, United are supposed to be data led. In that case, let the data lead, and Amorim go.
‘It feels like Amorim was the shiny new thing’
Sam Cunningham, chief football correspondent
I am reluctant to call for managers to be sacked, especially when they have had as little time as Amorim.
But equally, I don’t think he could complain if Sir Jim Ratcliffe sent him packing as he has many former United staff.
United have been that bad, have got that much worse under his coaching and guidance, playing his tactics, his personnel. This will be remembered as one of the worst seasons in the club’s history, and that is still on him.
I’m still not even sure it would be the right move. He has, after all, some caveats in his defence: he didn’t want the job mid-season, it’s not his squad of players, he’s not had a pre-season.
But he did take the job mid-season. They might not be his players, but it’s still a squad worth hundreds of millions of pounds. He has still seen valuable players, such as Antony and Marcus Rashford, leave and improve on his watch.
"I'm really confident in myself, and I'll continue to do my job if the board wants me"
Ruben Amorim analyses how his Man Utd team lost tonight, and his future and his thoughts on what's next.
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United held talks with Mauricio Pochettino and Thomas Frank, before last season’s FA Cup final, about replacing Erik ten Hag, two seasoned Premier League managers who have a proven track record at their respective levels.
It feels like Amorim was the shiny new thing and Ratcliffe and his minions were blinded by it.
Amorim talked down Rashford’s value before the club had sold him. He talked down the Europa League, a piece of silverware to provide joy in an otherwise joyless season, and, more importantly, a route into the Champions League final worth upwards of £100m. He has guided the club down the table.
“I will not change nothing in how I do things,” he said after the final.
If he isn’t prepared to change – even one tiny bit – after all that, maybe the United job isn’t for him.
Pete Hall, freelance football writer
This wretched season is not completely on Amorim.
Amorim deserves to be under the utmost scrutiny, having amassed a lower points-per game ratio in the English top flight than Paul Jewell during Derby County’s infamous 2007-08 campaign.
Defeat to Tottenham should not, however, ensure he becomes the latest coach to be thrown on the scrapheap, just another talented manager unable awaken United from its perennial slumber. Not yet anyway.
Amorim should never have been put in this position in the first place. With that customary arrogance only they do best, United forced a coach who was adamant he did not want to take the job mid-season to take charge in November, with the club’s dizzying spiral in full swing.
He felt he needed time with his players away from the Premier League’s unrelenting schedule to implement his ideas. By saying to Amorim it was now or never, United’s blundering, haughty hierarchy wrote off yet another season, ensuring the club took several further giant leaps back in the opposite direction.
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Why not get an interim in and then allow Amorim time to prepare for the big job properly, leaving him to exit Sporting Lisbon on his terms? Antagonising him from the off was never going to end well.
Granted, finishing 16th and losing more games in one season than at any point in the last 51 years is not how Ineos imagined things would pan out, with Amorim’s reluctance to change his ideals – he does not have the players to play his way, that much is now clear – playing a huge part in that agony.
But Amorim nonetheless deserves a pre-season, and the start of a new campaign, to prove he can adapt. He has been keen to drill home that he will not waver from his coaching philosophy. He does not need to rip up his coaching blueprint, but he must now realise, with time to finally think, he cannot go on as he is.
Then, having been given some better players to try to instigate lasting change, if things stay as they are, then the head must be on the chopping block. But not until then.
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