What a match against Athletic Club in the Basque Country! Thursday’s first Europa League semi-final must have been Ruben Amorim’s best game with Man United. This comes after a finish against Lyon at Old Trafford in the quarter-finals, which was reminiscent of the good old fergie days, where close games were decided by Manchester United in the closing minutes, or in injury time. This was the Europa League and non-Premier League opponents. The picture Ruben Amorim paints in the world’s toughest league is something entirely, completely different.
Ruben Amorim has proven he masters games against European clubs, but this still doesn’t help much when you, as a Manchester United coach, have a game that doesn’t bite the opponents in the Premier League.
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Here is a summary of the last six Premier League games:
Defeat against Brentford on Sunday
Draw against Bournemouth
Defeat against Wolverhampton
Defeat against Newcastle
Draw against Manchester City
Defeat against Nottingham Forest
A total of 2 points from the last 6 Premier League matches.
What worries us is that – to put it simply, the more Manchester United players have practiced Amorim football, the easier it will be for Premier League clubs to deny Manchester United victory. We love a lot of what Ruben Amorim does with United, but unfortunately see far too much similarity to Erik ten Hag’s last full season. A bucket in the Premier League with 8th place, but everything would work out with a new transfer window, this time with Ratcliffe and the gang in the driver’s seat.
It took a catastrophic turn.
So when Ruben Amorim’s football doesn’t win Premier League games, almost just three months before the 2025/26 season starts, it’s too easy to say that everything will work out with Amorim’s first, proper transfer window. Ratcliffe, Berrada and the United management showed with Erik ten Hag that the coach went from being appointed as the long-term solution for Man Utd in the space of three months, to panic dismissal in October.
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If Amorim continues in August and September as he has done during his first five months as Premier League manager, then we think panic sets in again among the United bosses. You can’t manage Manchester United as a coach without cracking the Premier League code.
Far too little convinces us that Ruben Amorim cracks this code before the panic next autumn reaches the boardroom.
