Man Utd CEO Omar Berrada says ‘worst bit is behind us': ‘I firmly believe in Ruben Amorim'

New York Times

5 hours ago

Manchester United CEO Omar Berrada has given his unequivocal backing to head coach Ruben Amorim and promised that the 'worst' of the turmoil that has dogged the club is behind them.
United finished 15th in the Premier League last season, their lowest top-flight position since being relegated in 1974, failed to progress beyond the quarter-finals of either domestic cup and lost in the Europa League final to Tottenham.
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Amorim, who replaced Erik ten Hag as head coach in November, called the campaign a 'disaster' and said he would leave if the club felt he was not the right man for the job.
Berrada admitted that he had been surprised by how badly United had struggled in the Premier League but insisted Amorim would benefit from a settled summer as he seeks to reverse the team's fortunes.
In an interview with the United We Stand fanzine, published on Tuesday, Berrada said: 'I firmly believe in Ruben as a coach and what he's trying to do. We've taken all the short-term pain this season, but as of this summer, the worst bit is going to be behind us.
'I couldn't have said (last summer) that we were going to finish 15th. That was never the goal. I think we probably underestimated the time it would have required the team to adjust to the system.
'We knew that by bringing in Ruben mid-season that it was going to be even more difficult for the team to perform. We saw it as an investment for the following seasons, because we were going to give time to Ruben to get to know the squad, the club, the Premier League.
'We will have settled the management team; we will have settled the coaching team with the technical team around them. And on the football side, there's a clear idea of what we want to do, what players we want to get, how we want to see the team playing, how we're going to integrate academy players, how we're going to go and invest in future talent.'
Berrada, 47, insisted United would be 'active' in the rest of the transfer window, having already signed Matheus Cunha for £62.5million ($83.7m) from Wolves, and that the club could realise their ambition of winning the Premier League title in three years.
'It won't be easy,' he added. 'Nothing is going to get solved with one summer window, but we are on the right path. We've put the worst part of this transformation phase behind us and now we're going to start building and I'm very confident that we'll get back to the top.'
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Berrada also said he had apologised to United staff for the club's decision to u-turn on its promise that there would only be one round of redundancies.
United sacked around 250 employees last year but embarked on a second wave of cuts in May which is likely to lead to another 200 staff losing their jobs.
Asked about the initial promise he had made to staff, Berrada said: 'It's true and I stood up when I announced the second round and I apologised for having said that in September. We didn't foresee at the time that the finances of the club were in such a bad state.'