Why Amorim won’t have wrist slapped by Ratcliffe for ‘ridiculous’ Manchester United comment

Matt Stead
Amad Diallo, Ruben Amorim and Bruno Fernandes with a cracked Manchester United badge
Is this really the worst team in the history of Manchester United? It doesn't matter

It is strange and shocking just how forthright and negative Ruben Amorim has been about the spiralling situation at Manchester United. But that’s the point.

 

Jamie Carragher called it “one of the most bizarre and ridiculous things I’ve ever heard a manager say,” as if he didn’t make his England debut under Kevin Keegan before spending a vast proportion of his career under the tutelage of Rafael Benitez, Brendan Rodgers and the Frank Rijkaard-fearing, lamentable Liverpool version of Roy Hodgson.

Richard Keys ‘thought he was trying to get the sack’, blissfully unaware that only “dark forces” can ever compel such a fate.

Jamie O’Hara thought it was “poor form,” despite being Jamie O’Hara.

Ruben Amorim knew what he was doing. It was obvious long before he specifically mentioned handing “headlines” on a plate to the assorted media, who duly still somehow managed to twist and distort the meaning of the message or take it wonderfully literally.

The ‘is this really the worst Manchester United team in history?’ pieces published in reaction are unintentionally hilarious. It is possible that a 39-year-old Portuguese man did not have the 1930/31 season, the 1974 Denis Law backheel or the late struggles under Ron Atkinson in mind when he said “we are being maybe the worst team in the history of Manchester United” in 2025. It is also crushingly likely that he did not care; his point was not really about the distant and irrelevant past but the present and future, a desperate need for accountability and responsibility in the former, in the hope that the latter can be more prosperous.

What Amorim hoped to achieve with his comments is for him to know and everyone else including but not limited to Lou Macari, Michael Dawson and Nigel Reo-Coker to guess, but it didn’t particularly feel as though he was saying this Manchester United side would have been battered by Alfred Albut’s Newton Heath in the late 19th century.

But his candour and sincerity is curious. It does seem like the sheer scale of the problems at Old Trafford might have caught him off guard. In the space of 74 days Amorim went from describing the “very fun” challenge that awaited him at Manchester United to overseeing a self-confessed but purely hyperbolic historic club nadir, declaring them to be in a relegation battle and his own position to be unsecure in between.

He has been unusually negative and critical after every game, perhaps out of expectation management, maybe to underline the unrelenting standards he feels are required across the board. And it matters not the result: after thrashing Everton 4-0 Amorim knew “we will be found out in some games and “the storm will come”, triggering a run of two wins and six defeats in eight matches; the creditable draw with Liverpool sparked only fury and fear from the manager, who justifiably sensed the next fixture against Southampton would be more of a struggle for his players.

After almost every game he has pointed out how “nervous” and “anxious” they looked, how things will take “time” and that his “idea” will not change but the squad must if they wished to be part of the journey.

It was inevitable that the focus and emphasis for his latest comments was placed on the “worst team in the history of Manchester United” quote, but far more instructive was what came immediately before and after. The “we are being” was not Amorim shifting blame onto his players but taking his fair share and underlining that their current position need not be permanent; stressing the “need to survive this moment” was a desire to identify those willing to fight, scrap, suffer and apply themselves properly, and thus more pertinently weed out those less inclined or predisposed to doing so; the readiness to “acknowledge the moment and not go around the problem” was counter to pretty much everything Manchester United have been about for the last decade, when diminishing performances on the pitch have been actively dismissed by executives because of prosperity off it.

This is part of the open-heart surgery Ralf Rangnick was prescient enough to recommend almost three years ago. It is supposed to be painful and uncomfortable, as difficult to adjust to and come to terms with as any other change in an established routine and lifestyle. But Amorim knows the cycle needs to finally be broken, even if confronting the problems so publicly feels counter-intuitive.

The punditry pearl-clutching ignores that. The idea that Amorim should not tackle the situation in this way is curious and the suggestion he cannot talk to the players in this manner is preposterous when every attempt at coddling and flattering them has backfired.

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This squad has helped get a succession of managers sacked and at some point a line needs to be drawn with the common denominator divided rather than multiplied. Labelling everyone as part of the problem should elicit anger, frustration and indignation in the dressing room, but Amorim will monitor the reactions and immediately recognise that those who are not provoked into channelling that properly and positively cannot possibly be part of the solution.

Carragher said he would be “very surprised if the powers that be above him weren’t having a very strong word with him and saying ‘You don’t speak like that as a Manchester United manager and engulf the situation we’re in.'” The bigger shock would be if Sir Jim Ratcliffe, on one of his rare breaks from cutting spending in the absolute least necessary ways imaginable, hadn’t discussed and dictated it to Amorim as a specific instruction to separate occasional wheat from considerable chaff. Manchester United need to properly tear things down and rectify any and all foundational issues before even getting planning permission to rebuild or there is ultimately no point trying.

Amorim gave the world a headline to pore over and wilfully misconstrue but too many have fallen into the trap of not bothering to read beyond it. The story really is quite compelling.

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