Ruben Amorim likes to say that “we have a lot of problems in our club” when asked about the challenge he faces at Manchester United. Sometimes it’s as if he thinks — with news conferences usually lasting around 30 minutes at most — that the issues are too many to list.
The Portuguese coach rarely goes into specifics about why he’s found the job so difficult, but occasionally he’s hinted at something which is particularly troublesome. Ultimately, it’s a problem which frames everything else at Old Trafford.
Amorim is leading a long-term project — but at a club which demands short-term success. It’s a hard balancing act.
“We know we need time,” Amorim said last week. “But there is no time in this club.”
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Amorim is under pressure again after the 1-1 draw with West Ham United on Thursday. United travel to Wolverhampton Wanderers on Monday, and the fans making the trip to Molineux will do so with a degree of trepidation.
Wolves haven’t won a league game all season. They’ve only drawn two. The fear, however, will be that Rob Edwards — appointed Wolves boss last month — is due a result and that United are so inconsistent that an Everton team which played for more than 70 minutes with 10 men were able to beat them at Old Trafford two weeks ago.
United lost 2-0 at Molineux last December despite Wolves, as now, languishing in the Premier League’s relegation zone. There’s plenty of worry among fans that it could happen again.
Another defeat, against the team at rock bottom of the Premier League, and the scrutiny on Amorim will ramp up even further. There are already supporters calling for him to be replaced.
Amorim knows that, in the situation he’s in, he can’t ask for patience, even though there’s a strong case that he needs it. He perhaps feels that “time” is a dirty word when your Premier League record is 13 wins from 41 games.
Still, there’s no escaping the fact that Amorim’s team is a work in progress. The forward line was revamped to the tune of £200 million over the summer — with Matheus Cunha, Bryan Mbeumo and Benjamin Sesko all arriving for big money — but the rest of the squad has largely been untouched since he arrived.
He relies on a core of young players such as 22-year-old Sesko, Senne Lammens (23), Amad Diallo (23), Patrick Dorgu (21) and Leny Yoro (20). When Yoro had to be taken out of the firing line after a poor performance against Crystal Palace, Amorim had to pick 19-year-old Ayden Heaven.
They’re all players United are betting on getting better. At the moment, though, they’re not the finished article. In the last couple of weeks, Amorim has used the word “struggling” to describe Sesko and Dorgu.
Argentina’s FIFA World Cup-winning goalkeeper Emiliano MartÃnez (33) could have been signed instead of Lammens. England striker Ollie Watkins (29) was an alternative to Sesko. Both MartÃnez and Watkins would have made United better now, but it would have gone against the club-designated recruitment policy of bringing in younger players. Instead of Martinez and Watkins, the decision was made to sign players with one eye on the future. Still, despite their relative lack of experience, the likes of Sesko, Dorgu and Lammens are expected to be part of a team which wins right away.
“I think it’s clear it’s going to take time,” said Amorim on Nov. 29. “Especially now in the Premier League when every other club is really prepared for everything. They are improving a lot. Then, we need to win now, if not, something is going to change and we know that. We just need to be better.
“It’s not good to be Manchester United and not winning. There is no time here, so that’s the feeling I have and why I’m frustrated all the time.”
In the aftermath of the draw with West Ham, Amorim appeared as frustrated as he has ever been as he conducted a spiky postmatch news conference. At the same time in the tunnel, right back Diogo Dalot was mapping out exactly why things feel like they’re on such a knife’s edge. He has been at the club long enough — eight years next summer — to know that even if United need time, you can’t be the one to ask for it.
“I think we’ve shown this season that we can be a very good team, and we can beat anybody,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s not football qualities. It has to be from inside. It has to be from the anger and the drive that you have every day to win football games and to live your life like that.
“I’m not going to get into the ‘We need time’ thing. I think we have to win straight away because that’s what the club demands, but it’s a process.”
The next stage of United’s process is to strengthen the areas of the squad which are not up to standard. Amorim’s system requires at least one high-energy midfielder as well as capable, specialist wing-backs — of which he has neither.
It was a conscious decision taken by the club in the summer to spend the bulk of the budget on improving the attacking options rather than spread the funds around. It has given the squad an uneven look, but CEO Omar Berrada and director of football Jason Wilcox have gone for phased improvement rather than a “shock and awe” transfer strategy. The plan, sources have told ESPN, is to sign a midfielder like Nottingham Forest’s Elliot Anderson ahead of next season, possibly two.
That, though, will be of little comfort to Amorim as he prepares to make do with what he has at Wolves on Monday. The United manager, under pressure again, is facing a must-win game with a win-later squad.