Ruben Amorim has the support of Manchester United's fans – but he needs results like David Moyes

New York Times

22-02-2025

After losing six games in December, improved results in 2025 do not reflect the mood at Manchester United. They have played 10 matches in all competitions this year, winning six, drawing one, and losing three. Given the team avoided defeat at Anfield and knocked Arsenal out of the FA Cup after a penalty shootout victory at the Emirates Stadium, you might expect more positivity, but those results mask reality.
Injuries and performances are two football-relevant reasons for despondency, while United's poor financial results point to more staff cuts. Talks have taken place between Sir Jim Ratcliffe and United's fan advisory board on rising ticket prices.
United were awful in the first half of their fourth-round FA Cup win against Leicester City. Two of the 2025 victories came in the weaker Europa League, the competition where United have looked most convincing this season. In the Premier League, they have slipped to 15th and lost five of their last six home games. There is no way of spinning this.
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United's players are anxious at Old Trafford and must still play Arsenal, Manchester City, Aston Villa, Ipswich Town, Wolverhampton Wanderers and West Ham United in their remaining home league games. The latter three are below United in the league. Fans were used to six-pointer games at the top of the table, not the bottom end.
Given the sour mood, Ruben Amorim is remarkably well supported by fans, who have been singing his name to a tune taken from Bonnie Tyler's It's a Heartache. (It certainly is right now.)
Some fans are invested in Amorim delivering a brighter future and there are several reasons for that, not least admiration for his brutal honesty. For the media, he delivers headlines most weeks — and does so while smiling, not with menace. He's charismatic, shows deep emotional intelligence and speaks excellent English.
Fans see that something had to change at United and there's an acceptance he's the one holding the bomb as it goes off. Many supporters wanted him to bring significant change to style and personnel, rather than just sticking plasters. They also wanted that change while still winning enough matches. The reality is far more uncomfortable.
United have become worse under the new coach, winning fewer points and scoring fewer goals. If there's a discernible improvement in the football then it's hard to see when teams at the bottom of the table come to Old Trafford and dominate for long periods. United have weaknesses and problems all over the pitch.
But just as the coach would be praised if he was doing well, there are legitimate questions to be asked when he isn't. It was the same with his predecessor, Erik ten Hag, Amorim excelled in a smaller league where his team was expected to dominate and win matches, which they usually did.
Now he's up against tougher opponents in a tougher league and his previous achievements count for little. There is goodwill towards Amorim from fans and no desire for another expensive managerial change, but United fans are desperately hedging their bets on an idealised brighter future, even as the team sink.
We don't know if Amorim will succeed in the Premier League. He was trusted to bring a large team of coaches, but we don't know if they are the right people, either.
And for the much-vaunted 'best in class' appointments, let's judge that after two years when they've had time to do their job under their new structure. For all their attributes, Sir Dave Brailsford, Collette Roche, Jason Wilcox and Omar Berrada didn't come as a ready-made fantastic four to sort the football side out. They're learning on the Manchester United job as they are going along.
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Just as fans craved honesty from their coach, he craved time on the training pitch with his players. He's had that in recent weeks, yet the most notable change has been serious injuries to Amad and Kobbie Mainoo, two young players who are important to the first team. Why did they pick up serious injuries in training?
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Most significantly, Amorim appears willing to die on the hill of the tactical system he wants to implement — and the club have backed him to do that. He talks of his system being flexible when it appears the opposite, while the players he has were not bought for that system. But how long will that be his get-out-of-jail card?
United cannot keep losing, cannot keep getting worse. There can't be a postmortem after most league matches that says only major surgery will solve things sometime in a notional future. There are too many costs — financial (every Premier League position is worth almost £4million/$5m) and emotional (fans and players are likely to lose faith in the system).
Amorim had an idea of what he was walking into. He didn't want to take the United job mid-season but was persuaded by Berrada. Perhaps Berrada knew Amorim was on City's radar before Pep Guardiola signed a new contract in November. United once lost out on Guardiola because City got there first when the Catalan was at Bayern Munich.
United got their man this time and if Amorim is going to be a long-term answer then it will be worth the short-term pain. There are other reasons he's getting support: he's still in the relatively early stages. Recent history shows that United managers last for between two and two and a half years. Not that the plan is to change — with the subsequent vast squad turnover that follows to no discernible improvement — every two or three years.
Amorim's only 21 games in, though he's already lost nine, one more than Ralf Rangnick, the last manager who said United needed 'open-heart surgery'. It was also awful under Rangnick (not a permanent appointment) but he managed eight more games than Amorim has and lost one fewer.
There's mitigation. It's not Amorim's fault that United used to be great but are no longer, or that he took over a complex dressing room. Nor is it his fault that the team he inherited mid-season is not his. Or that the much-touted — and well respected by United players — sporting director Dan Ashworth lasted months and was another paid off in a costly departure.
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This season is becoming a squeaky bum one for the wrong reasons and there's much for Amorim's coaches to ponder as they hunker down in their temporary accommodation while the Carrington training complex is redeveloped. They're confined to small rooms at present, the opposite of the open-plan ideas room to prompt collaboration that INEOS wants to implement when construction is completed. That construction at least will be funded by INEOS, which has put money in, rather than taken it out as the Glazers did.
And United, with justification, have not written off this season yet. There's still much to play for: an improved league position, retaining the FA Cup, and winning the Europa League, with a possible route to the Champions League next season.
United resume in Europe in two weeks. Before then, a game at Everton today where former United boss David Moyes has given the club a lift that fans hoped Amorim would give United. Moyes' mission was to keep Everton in the Premier League. They're now above United.
"David Moyes is doing a better job than me, it's quite simple," Amorim said yesterday.
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It's grim, but what can United fans do? Actually, quite a lot. Get behind the team and coach, help rather than hinder what fragile confidence there is.
It's hard in the face of possible rising ticket prices, hard when your team loses as much as it wins, when there are doubts about everyone from the decision makers to the players and the presence of the Glazers still causes consternation, but it's also at times like those that supporters must do exactly that: support.