'A talent-reducing factory': The huge challenge awaiting Ruben Amorim at Manchester United

Portuguese coach tasked with reinvigorating struggling Premier League giants after dismal start to the season

Sporting Lisbon's Portuguese coach Ruben Amorim applauds supporters on Friday night after it was confirmed he will take over Man United. AFP

Manchester United fans will welcome their new boss Ruben Amorim and hope he’ll have more success than the previous one. And the one before him. And the one before that. And so on.

Managing – or rather coaching since Amorim’s title is now ‘head coach’ marking a departure from the term ‘manager’ – United is one of the toughest jobs in football at one of the biggest clubs in football. The pressures are unique, the expectations high, the dressing room an incredibly complex one which is difficult to manage. Or coach.

Fans are baffled and bewildered, their addiction rewarded with occasional bewitching moments amid confusion about the direction the club is taking.

For years in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era, fans have cheered almost every player departure out of the door and constantly demanded that deadwood is shifted, but little changes. United went from a norm where finishing third was a failure to where it’s now considered at the top of their realistic aims.

Erik ten Hag lost his job because the INEOS-led decision makers at the club think there’s a better man to do it. They also think that a top-four finish should be the new coach’s target this season.

There’s a transfer window in January, but United is a loss-making football club already pushing spending to the limits. When those new players arrive, every one is heralded as a probable improvement on the ones they’ve replaced and a brighter future is imagined, yet United haven’t sustained a single league title challenge since the last win in 2013.

From Angel Di Maria to Jadon Sancho, hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent – most say squandered – on big name footballing stars, but United is a talent-reducing, reputation-denting factory where the highs are occasional and the managers survive for two and a bit years.

All those managers have been supported – by the club and fans – but they reach a point where it’s realised that a Premier League title challenge is a bridge too far. And so the next man arrives, fresh with his own ideas and smiles throughout the honeymoon period that follows.

“How many days will it take for us to see the significant changes that you’ve planned?” one journalist asked a previous manager Louis van Gaal in 2014.

“100 days,” he replied confidently. That Dutchman oversaw a huge turnover of players, though he was frustrated that he couldn’t bring in the very best players, much like Erik ten Hag was when he wanted striker Harry Kane in 2023. With their appeal trimmed by a lack of success and wealthier rivals, United, while still desirable, don’t have the pull they enjoyed for decades.

Erik ten Hag's United reign - in pictures

Amorim has a huge task. He’ll get support and patience and the bar can’t be any lower than it is right now with United struggling to win, score and 14th in the league, but he must make significant improvements.

Strikers are a huge problem for United. Rivals can alternate their forwards, United have eight goals in nine league games. Chelsea, Sunday’s visitors to Old Trafford, have 19. Oh for the goals of legendary striker Ruud van Nistelrooy who now finds himself in charge of the team for the next three games. His team did score five in his first game, a League Cup match against a weakened Leicester City side on Wednesday.

Injuries battered United last season and this. They’ve been a factor in the team regressing to the levels of the 1980s, when success came in domestic cups but not the league.

The 2024 team plays well in patches, such as in the first half at West Ham last week in what was Ten Hag’s final game, but struggles to follow game plans and structures for 90 minutes.

Old Trafford does see very talented young players including Kobbie Mainoo, Alejandro Garnacho and Rasmus Hojlund who should get better with experience, but the team is far from a vintage one. They’ve been capable of big performances and even bigger moments such as the surprise win against Manchester City in the 2024 FA Cup final, but there is no quick fix for this dressing room.

United’s new INEOS-led decision makers have set a target of the Premier League title by 2028, the year England’s biggest club celebrates 150 years. Things change in football – sometimes quickly – but United look miles behind the leading sides right now in terms of squad quality.

Amorim’s freshness, confidence and ideas will be appreciated. His Sporting side play aggressive attacking football in a competitive league, albeit one outside the big five in Europe. There is no tougher league than the Premier League.

His Sporting team is – and it’s still ‘is’ since he’ll stay in charge until he joins United on November 11 – adaptable and he’ll meet new players who are tactically flexible, although, paradoxically, several members of the squad have bristled at the tactical ideas of just about every United boss they’ve worked under.

It’s unclear which formation he will bring to United – Amorim’s Sporting side played a fluid 3-4-3 shape with rotations on the flanks against top sides. Out of possession, Sporting dropped into a 5-4-1 shape and condensed the spaces to good effect.

Amorim will leave beautiful Lisbon, and with the nights and cold closing in, he’s not arriving in Manchester in the best month, but it’s the time of year when United bosses lose their jobs.

He’ll be hoping he’s not in the same position in two years, though he won’t have to deal with some of the issues Ten Hag faced like an unsettling strategic review as the club’s future ownership was sorted out throughout 2023. That led to Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s team being put in charge of running the football club and fans are supportive of them. The new boss and his coaches should find a more solid football structure, but he’ll need to show incredible leadership skills managing up and down if United are to change.

Maybe it’ll change, it has to change one day and Amorim comes with an unblemished CV – as Ten Hag did when he moved to Old Trafford from Ajax in 2022.

At 39 he’s young, bright, charismatic and turned Sporting from failures to the best team in Portugal. It’s not just trophies where he can be judged a success. He joined a club who’d just sold their best player, Bruno Fernandes, to Manchester United in 2020, but still brought players through who were sold for vast profits: Manuel Ugarte was sold to PSG (and later Man United) for €60 million, Pedro Porro to Tottenham for €40m, Yousef Chermiti to Everton for €12.5m and Tiago Tomas to Wolfsburg in 2023. The year before Matheus Nunes moved to Wolves for €47m, Joao Palhinha to Fulham for €24.9m, Nuno Mendes to PSG for €38m plus a loan fee. This year, Abdul Fatawa moved to Leicester for €17m, Mateus Fernandes to Southampton for €15m, Paulinho to Toluca for €8m.

Even more impressive were the 21 players he promoted from Sporting’s youth team into the first XI. The value of Sporting’s squad was €175m when he took over in March 2020. It’s €444m today, more than Porto’s €352m and Benfica’s €336m, traditionally Portugal’s two biggest clubs with the best track record of selling players. Amorim brought prize money from European runs where they eliminated Arsenal in 2023 and narrowly lost to Juventus.

If the same thing had been happening at United, the club wouldn’t have needed to lay off 250 staff as they have done so far in 2024, but United, even despite their potential capacity to generate revenue, have underachieved for years and belts need to be tightened.

Of more value to the Sporting fans were the trophies and the exciting football. United fans want the same, the players and executives too. They’ll give Amorim support like he’s never experienced in his life, but delivering that success is the difficult bit, as so many have found before him.