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With only four points to third place, there is a golden chance to transform the season. Yet the issues Amorim wrestles with are the club he has walked into and the squad he has inherited.
The 39-year-old was enthusiastic about his “many meetings” at United and was firm regarding his “belief” in the players he drills on the pitches outside. Wearing a club tracksuit top with red front panels and blue arms, Amorim was as open under questioning as Erik ten Hag could be taciturn. But different personalities did not prevent the Dutchman, David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, José Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjær from being sucked into the black hole of the post-Sir Alex Ferguson United.
It is a vortex that cannot be comprehended until experienced. The above quintet can point to how mismanagement at executive level caused the fatal corollary of muddled player recruitment. So Amorim’s task is to work the oracle with a squad that apart from Bruno Fernandes, Kobbie Mainoo, Lisandro Martínez and Marcus Rashford (if he can rediscover consistency) is average.
Asked why he believed in a group that got Ten Hag the sack, Amorim said: “The only thing I ask: hard work and you have to believe in the new idea. And I felt that. Until they prove me wrong, I believe in the players.”
As United’s new football chief, Sir Jim Ratcliffe was billed as the required boardroom reset. But after failing to axe Ten Hag in the summer, United invested £200m on five footballers wanted by the manager – Manuel Ugarte, Leny Yoro, Matthijs de Ligt, Noussair Mazraoui and Joshua Zirkzee – before a puzzling Ratcliffe U-turn removed the Dutchman last month.
So a reasonable …
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