Ruben Amorim could be another victim of Man Utd’s dangerous assumption

In February, newly furnished with a 27.7 per cent stake in Manchester United but some £1.3bn poorer, Sir Jim Ratcliffe outlined the ethos that he hoped would end 11 years of “complete misery” and take his club to back “where it should be”. He spoke of knocking Liverpool and Manchester City off their perch, realised it would not happen quickly but said: “Our thinking is all about how we become first in class in recruitment going forward.”

The following few months cast Ratcliffe’s intent to be “best in class” in all aspects in a different light, and not merely because they sit 14th in the Premier League. Take the case of staffing at United. The Ineos regime contrived to fire 250 people, but not the man they should have done. Until now, and Erik ten Hag’s severance package will swallow up much of the supposed savings from dispensing with lower-profile employees, many long-serving and blameless. United’s recruitment involved spending a further £200m on players, some with Ten Hag’s imprint. The arrival of Ruben Amorim, the co-owner’s first managerial appointment, raises the question if Ratcliffe has found a manager who is indeed best in class, 10 out of 10 or any of the other corporate phrases that the Ineos brains trust hope defines them.

Because thus far, the Ratcliffe regime’s first eight months at Old Trafford have been a footballing failure. United have won the FA Cup, but that may have deceived them to persist with Ten Hag. They might have laid the platform for future success with the appointments of sporting director Dan Ashworth and chief executive Omar Berrada, who have the pedigree to suggest they should be excellent appointments. But since Ratcliffe’s words eight months ago, they have only won 12 of 32 games.

In February, the aim was to qualify for this season’s Champions League. Now the target is to reach next season’s. United believe they will require 70 points for a top-four finish: after only taking 11 in nine games under Ten Hag, this means Amorim has to average over two per match. Even if the Portuguese brings substantial improvement, the risk is this becomes another wasted year.

Berrada has launched “Project 150”, trying to win the title again by the club’s 150th anniversary in 2028. Yet that may seem too soon: this is already a 12th successive season without a true title challenge. There could be costly consequences for failure which, in turn, stems from poor decision-making in the summer. United do not have much PSR leeway; it is one of the unedifying elements of Ten Hag’s legacy. His pay-off and the price of extricating Amorim from Sporting will reduce it further. If United are not in next year’s Champions League, it will reduce both the value of their Adidas commercial deal and their wider income.

All of which could give Ratcliffe and co cause to rue their botched first summer. They seemed to assume their presence would be transformative, placing too much faith in their structure and environment to right the wrongs of last season, without realising Ten Hag was part of the problem, as this season has underlined. It reflects worse on Sir Dave Brailsford and Jason Wilcox, who had already taken up their posts, than Ashworth and Berrada, who were on gardening leave when, after leaving the Dutchman in limbo, they left him in charge. An earlier impasse had shown an indecisiveness.

open image in gallery

Lessons may have been learnt. United showed a sense of purpose this week, making an approach for Amorim the day after dismissing Ten Hag, which they lacked a few months ago. A policy of talking to everyone back then undermined Ten Hag, yet they ended up keeping him before superior options such as Thomas Tuchel found employment elsewhere.

If one question is whether Amorim is an upgrade on Ten Hag, and he should be, a more hypothetical one is whether he will do better than Tuchel would have done. In October’s depleted market, it seemed as though United left themselves with a lone compelling candidate.

open image in gallery

And Amorim has done an outstanding job at Sporting, though the same may be said of Ten Hag’s time at Ajax. He could seem a coup, even if naked ambition was apparent in the way he was touted for Liverpool and Barcelona before the embarrassing climbdown of an apology to Sporting after he went to meet West Ham. Amorim nevertheless could seem the coming man, a rising force, lacking the more prestigious honours Jose Mourinho and Louis van Gaal acquired before reaching Old Trafford but with his best days seemingly very much in front of him.

Yet two of United’s rivals, the two Ratcliffe wants to knock off their perch, had the same reservation about Amorim. Liverpool noted his preference for playing with a back three; it was among their reasons why Arne Slot felt a more seamless replacement for Jurgen Klopp, another who favours a back four.

At City, meanwhile, the thought was that Amorim would not have been under consideration to take over from Pep Guardiola because a club has been constructed around the Catalan’s system and style of play. United’s squad may not suit a back three; then again, it is harder to work out precisely what it does suit. All of which highlights a mess in recruitment, including the £600m spree under Ten Hag’s management. Amorim has managed Manuel Ugarte before but if the Ajax alumni Noussair Mazraoui and Matthijs de Ligt or Ten Hag’s fellow Dutchman Joshua Zirkzee are not part of his plans, the summer recruitment will seem still more misguided.

open image in gallery

Meanwhile, Ratcliffe’s spending plans take on different proportions given his suggestions that public money should be used to rebuild Old Trafford or to construct a new ground. Ambition has been apparent, on and off the field; perhaps the eventual verdict will be that United laid the groundwork for revival in 2024. But so far, the gap between ambition and reality has grown, not shrunk. Ratcliffe is not the first billionaire to find football a harder industry to crack than those in which he made his fortune.

“At Ineos, we don’t mind people making mistakes but just make sure to not make them a second time,” Ratcliffe said in February. If the last eight months have been a process of trial and error, there may have been too many errors; beyond ending Sir Alex Ferguson’s £2m-a-year sinecure, too few choices made by the new executive team have stood up to scrutiny. Now, as the revamped United hierarchy pick their own manager for the first time, it is imperative that the decision-makers Ratcliffe imported have made the right call.