31/08/2025

theSun on Sunday AUG 31, 2025

SPORTS 13

Gloom and frustration

Haunting Amorim image sums up United’s deep-rooted decay after manager’s bizarre decision to hide in his dugout during the penalty shootout against Grimsby

BY MIGUEL DELANEY

than solved them. As one source at a title challenger remarked on seeing news sto ries about cutbacks in the canteen after redundancies: “These are the little deci sions that sour a culture.” The view was that these are the details that do matter, and they betray a misun derstanding of how a club works. The canteen is where a club comes together. At United, it becomes yet another factor in why they are falling apart again.

They make changes but one window is never going to be enough. And since it’s never enough, residual issues build back up before you get to the next window, until you have ... this. It’s a team always catching up with itself. And yet this is where it comes back to Amorim, and how he works. In such situations, where you have to put up with elements that are not cur rently ideal, you need someone who does

not depend on the ideal. You need to dig in and work something out. You need to adapt. This is not an argument to go back to a totally opposite style of football. The game is long past that. We’re not talking about Jose Mourinho against Pep Guardiola any more. Guardiola’s idea has conquered the sport, and everyone now plays some form of that. Thomas Frank, who United perhaps should have gone for in the summer of 2024, put it best. “I’m pretty sure what my end goal is but also very aware I have a group of players and those are the players I need to work with. “I need to work with them inside the principles and how I want to play, but depending on their qualities and abilities I will tweak it accordingly.” Even a disciple like Arne Slot, after all, tweaks his idea of that football. It’s impossible not to keep coming back to that decision Liverpool made in 2024, as much as United. They really liked Amorim and felt he could be brilliant in the right setting. They felt that setting wasn’t theirs, and they would have to spend £500 million (RM2.85 billion) to give him the squad he required. So Liverpool went with Slot. And within that decision lies a difference that explains so much about where the teams are and how elite clubs now work. United, not for the first time, did this the wrong way around. They didn’t choose an idea. They put absolutely eve rything into a specific manager’s ideol ogy. And into conditions that just aren’t right for him. Amorim claimed he had nothing to say, but his comments about the players’ attitude caused headlines. They have left people wondering whether he might even resign during the upcoming inter national break. It comes after his previous comments that tanked the value of many players, with Kobbie Mainoo the most recent case study. Some at United insist that this kind of abrasive approach is still needed, because the rot had set in too deep; that they needed someone to shake every thing up. That may have an effect in time. Amorim may well be vindicated. But it’s still such a long road from here to there. “The storm,” as he put it at the end of last season, is far from over yet. Amorim instead found himself sitting there in the rain, forming an image that looks much, much worse. – The Independent forward by simply saying: “Yes.” With a laugh, he added: “It depends on the day. But I’m confident because I saw these players play really well in tough matches. And I see it in training. That training is so much better. “I was not surprised, I was shocked in the last game, shocked. “This game was not our team, the way we are doing things. So I’m always confident in the way I manage the team.” – AFP

RUBEN AMORIM claimed he had “noth ing to say”, but, in vintage fashion for such a crisis, one picture said enough. The haunting image of the Manchester United manager looking away during the shootout, having already been playing with a tactics board, was one thing. Well, two things … and they mount up. But for all that to culminate in a defeat against a League Two side in Grimsby Town just adds a sense of farce to some thing that had already seemed alien. Even those who know him from Portugal admit they’ve never seen him like this. This is what United now do to people. They may have their own version of Steve McClaren and his “wally with a brolly” moment. Of course, you can do and say pretty much anything so long as you’re win ning. This was just another humiliation. And such images alone mean it goes beyond mere humiliation. It has become something else. So here we are, less than two weeks into a new season, and United are not just in crisis but somehow at a new nadir . This was the first time in the club’s his tory that they had been eliminated from a competition by a fourth-tier side. It should be Grimsby’s day but it’s impossi ble not to talk about another United nightmare. Yes, this is rock bottom. Again. What must the new players, who are supposed to bring that charge of excite ment, be thinking? Worse was that all three of them played here, in a strong team. Two became significant parts of the storyline, since there was so much focus on Benjamin Sesko taking his pen alty kick so late – 10th in the shootout – and Bryan Mbuemo missing the decisive penalty. Perhaps the most fascinating question in all of this is how United keep doing this to people, how it somehow stays so bad. Everything changes and yet nothing changes. As one insider said, it’s like the club is “cursed”, as if a deal with the devil had been done after two decades of impossible success. And yet, amid such inevitable appeals to the supernatural, there is a rationale. This is explainable. The club has now been surrounded by gloom and frustration for so long that it doesn’t take much for that to swarm around again. Any flicker of doubt and it’s in. Some of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s decisions have only added to problems, rather RUBEN AMORIM is adamant he will still be in charge of Manchester United after the forthcoming international break despite the mounting pressure on the beleaguered boss. Stunned by United’s humiliating League Cup second round loss at fourth tier Grimsby on Wednesday, Amorim said “something has to change” at the club and he would “think things through” during next week’s international break. Amorim’s outburst led to questions over

Man Utd’s Manager Ruben Amorim reacts during their match against Grimsby Town. – REUTERSPIC

Amorim expects to stay at United as pressure mounts

his future at Old Trafford, with United winless in their first two Premier League games this term. The Portuguese coach was already battling to change perceptions of his reign, which only started in November, after United suffered their worst league finish since 1973-74 last season. But ahead of yesterday’s visit from Burnley, Amorim explained his comments were made in the heat of the moment on a hugely frustrating night.

When asked if he would still be in the job when United visit Manchester City on Sept 14, Amorim said: “I don’t know what is going to happen. “That is my idea, but I’m not going to promise you nothing, what is going to be in the future. “But I’m the manager of Manchester United, and I think that is not going to change.” Amorim responded to a question about his confidence in his ability to take United