After 14 miserable months, Manchester United finally parted ways with Ruben Amorim on Monday.
It’s the sixth permanent manager(/head coach) United have had since Sir Alex Ferguson retired and none have yet to hit the three-year mark.
The arrival of Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS was supposed to signal the end of the turbulence at Old Trafford; no longer were football decisions at one of the world’s biggest clubs being left to a banker-cum-marketer, with the likes of Dan Ashworth, Omar Berrada and Jason Wilcox taking up senior positions.
Ashworth spent more time on gardening leave at Newcastle waiting to join United than he actually spent at the club, with the decision to keep Erik ten Hag on ultimately costing him his job. So early in the season, United weren’t in a position to hire another interim manager in the mould of an Ole Gunnar Solskjaer or Ralf Rangnick, so they went all-out for one of the hottest prospects in Europe in Amorim.
There was plenty to like about Amorim initially; he’d achieved success at Sporting CP with an attacking brand of football and had a proven track record of developing players. There were of course concerns about the his preferred formation and how well that would sit at Old Trafford, where a long-established style of play was one of the club's traditions.
Manchester United are a club littered with dazzling wingers throughout their history: George Best, Willie Morgan, Steve Coppell, Andrei Kanchelskis, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo. Even as the game has evolved, Marcus Rashford would go on to play more than 400 times for the club as one of United’s greatest academy graduates since the Class of ’92. The decision to bring Amorim in would move away from that history, to a side using a less conventional back three with wing-backs tasked with providing width.
Of course, there’s nothing to say Amorim couldn’t, in time, have achieved a degree of success at the club, but it required a huge overhaul of the playing staff. When Amorim arrived at Carrington, he was met by Rashford, Amad Diallo, Alejandro Garnacho, and Antony, all of whom would either find themselves played out of position or dropped.
Only Amad remains at the club, and only after being deployed as a wing-back for much of the last year.
Fans understood the move to a back three would take time to bed in, and forgave most of the poor performances last season. But over the summer, Bryan Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha and Benjamin Sesko gave Amorim a new-look front three. With nearly a year on the training ground, much more was expected heading into the new campaign.
Despite the lack of results and consistent performances, Amorim persisted with his back three, and the briefest of forays to a back four was swiftly ditched for unknown reasons. While there’s more to a team’s playing style than the formation, a back three is not utilised by any of the elite clubs in Europe. The closest side to the elite who’ve used a back three is Simone Inzaghi’s Inter, which was anything but a typical 3-5-2.
Although reports suggest that now-director of football Jason Wilcox was less sold on Amorim at the time, it has never been confirmed how intensely Amorim was quizzed on his philosophy by Berrada, who led the chase for the Portuguese, but one of two things happened: Berrada asked Amorim about his philosophy and accepted Amorim would stick with a back three, or he never asked at all. It’s hard to say which is worse.
The entire United hierarchy must have known it would have taken several transfer windows to develop the squad Amorim needed. Of course, they would have assumed results would have been far better than they were, and but for the defeat in last season’s Europa League final, they would have had more money to spend via UEFA Champions League qualification.
But even if they had backed Amorim, what happens when he leaves behind a squad full of centre-backs and devoid of wingers when the next manager comes in? Ratcliffe said upon arrival that the management team would dictate playing style and recruitment, with a head coach merely in charge of implementing it. A fine theory that provides continuity between head coaches, though it begs the question how that went so badly wrong with the very first managerial appointment.
Which brings us to the second. Oliver Glasner established himself as favourite shortly after the betting opened and is being linked with several top jobs owing to his stellar work with Crystal Palace.
United now have two choices: try another manager who uses a back three or go back to one who uses a back four.
Glasner would be an upgrade on Amorim, and has gone on record to say that he doesn’t prefer a back three, but adapts to the personnel at his disposal. Indeed, Glasner did qualify for the UEFA Champions League with Wolfsburg using a back-four, but that was back in 2020/21. The Austrian largely reverted to a back three during his three-year tenure with Frankfurt before doing the same with Crystal Palace.
The formation is undoubtedly a concern; there’s a reason it isn’t used by the elite clubs, but it’s not the only concern United should have. Glasner has achieved impressive results at Palace and is a shrewd tactician; he deserves huge praise for taking Crystal Palace to the FA Cup last season, but it did come in a campaign when they finished 12th, and there’s not a whole lot to suggest Glasner is ready for a top Premier League club, let alone a Manchester United.
Glasner’s Palace largely like to defend deep and hit sides on the counter attack and it’s how they’ve been able to take on the big sides and get results, but it’s a not a style that suggests success at Manchester United, where the expectation is to be on the front foot.
Last season in games where they had more than 55% of the ball, Palace managed just two points from games with Leicester, Everton, West Ham, Everton and Southampton.
Of their 13 wins last season, seven came in games where they had less than 40% of the ball. In those games, they earned points against Manchester United, Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool, and Chelsea twice. They also beat Manchester United, Tottenham and Aston Villa. They’d then win the FA Cup final against Pep Guardiola’s side with just 22% of the ball.
This season has been a similar tale. In the seven games when they’ve had more than 43% of the ball, they’ve only beaten Wolves; in the four games when they’ve had less than 40% of the ball, they’ve taken 10 points from a possible 12, drawing at Stamford Bridge and beating Liverpool.
The 19 teams Manchester United face in the Premier League aren’t the same 19 teams that Crystal Palace face. Perhaps Glasner could adapt and create a side more capable of controlling games, something needed at top clubs, but there hasn’t been enough evidence to suggest he can or would even want to, and without that it’s hard to see how he’d be a long-term success at United.
Manchester United surely know now that hiring Amorim was a mistake. They cannot make the same mistake with Glasner.
