The Portuguese coach pulled no punches in his assessment of the Red Devils after the damaging home defeat to Brighton on Sunday
"I am not naive. We need to survive now. We are the worst team, maybe, in the history of Manchester United," Ruben Amorim declared after watching Brighton beat his shambolic side 3-1 at Old Trafford on Sunday. "I know you want headlines, but I am saying that because we have to acknowledge that and to change that. Here you go: your headlines."
It was Amorim's seventh defeat out of 15 games in all competitions since he replaced Erik ten Hag as head coach in November, and it leaves United withering down in 13th in the table. Last season's eighth-place finish was the club's worst-ever showing in the Premier League, but that record will almost surely be broken as they now sit 10 points adrift of current occupants Aston Villa.
United are the same number of points above 18th-placed Ipswich Town, who along with Leicester City and Southampton, are setting arguably the lowest standard for a newly promoted trio the competition has ever seen. For that reason, the Red Devils be spared the ultimate humiliation of relegation, but that will be scant comfort to a fanbase that is becoming more disillusioned by the day.
Amorim's damning assessment was not an exaggeration, but his subsequent admission that "everybody here is underperforming" was a major understatement. This United squad is rotten from top to bottom, and the players must be held accountable for dragging a once great club down into a footballing hellscape from which there appears to be no return.
Getty ImagesUnforgivable waste of resources
The last time United lost six of their opening 12 home league games was way back in 1893-94, at which stage the club was still known as Newton Heath. They only managed a pathetic total of 14 points that season, which remains a historic low, but there have been plenty of other dark periods.
United suffered relegation in both 1931-32 and 1973-74, while even the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson could only lead the team to a 13th-place finish in 1989-90. But Amorim's current crop eclipses all of those squads because there is absolutely no excuse for their abject failure given how much money there is in the game now.
The Red Devils are up there with Real Madrid, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain as one of the richest clubs on the planet, and yet they have been unable to muster a real Premier League title challenge since Ferguson's departure in 2013. Indeed, they are 24 points behind 2024-25 pace-setters Liverpool having played a game more.
The wasting of resources at Old Trafford has been nothing short of unforgivable. Amorim's starting XI against Brighton cost the club around £440 million ($537m); for extra context, the best player on the pitch, Kaoru Mitoma, set the Seagulls back just £3m.
Amorim has been refreshingly honest about United's plight, and his scathing remarks on Sunday basically translated as: 'I cannot outcoach the crippling limitations of these players.' None of the work he puts in on the training ground matters while so many big-money stars continue to let the club, the fans and themselves down week after week.
AdvertisementGetty ImagesThe Onana problem
United's deep-rooted problems start with £48m ($59m) goalkeeper Andre Onana, who has been responsible for the loss of a ridiculous number of points since his arrival from Inter in the summer of 2023. He was guilty again at the weekend, inexplicably failing to come for the Yankuba Minteh cross that found Mitoma to turn home Brighton's second, before spilling a tame Yasin Ayari delivery straight into the path of Georginio Rutter, who could hardly believe his luck when he was left with the simple task of rolling the ball into an empty net to essentially end the game as a contest.
Onana laid flat with his head in the grass after the second mistake, as if cursing himself for a rare lapse of concentration. The reality is it was anything but. United's calamitous No.1 doesn't appear to have any redeeming qualities; he can't command his box, his positioning and handling are both awful, and even his distribution (which was the main thing he was signed for) is extremely erratic.
It appears that Onana is doing his best impression of Massimo Taibi, the former Italian 'keeper who forever lives in United infamy as a result of his disastrous single-season spell at Old Trafford in 1999-2000. Ferguson only needed to see Taibi play four times before realising he'd made a terrible error of misjudgement, with his failure to keep out a pea-roller shot from Matt Le Tissier still considered to be among the Premier League's all-time biggest gaffes.
You could make a case that Onana now has around 10 entries of his own on that list, and Taibi cannot see his fortunes improving in Manchester. "I think subconsciously the United environment isn’t ideal for him and when a marriage is showing cracks, it’s pointless to continue," he told last month.
Getty Images SportDefensive doldrums
Onana's uncertainty has filtered down to the rest of the United defence, with basic blunders now commonplace regardless of who Amorim decides to start in his 3-4-3 system, which becomes a 5-2-3 out of possession. Harry Maguire has been the only defender to show any kind of consistency, but even he struggled to cope with the pace of Brighton's attackers as summer signings Leny Yoro and Matthijs de Ligt continued to flounder alongside him.
Yoro is still only 19, but Minteh had him on toast, just as Southampton's Kamaldeen Sulemana did three days earlier at Old Trafford in a game United were incredibly lucky to win. De Ligt, meanwhile, has so far not done nearly enough to silence doubts over his ability to cut it at the highest level after his mediocre spells at Juventus and Bayern Munich.
Then there's Lisandro Martinez, who was rested against Brighton, but has probably been United's worst defender of the season. Barring his battling display in the 2-2 draw at Liverpool, the former Ajax man has been a complete liability and doesn't look at all comfortable in Amorim's back three.
United's wing-backs have fared slightly better, but they're still not good enough. Ex-Bayern star Noussair Mazraoui is fading rapidly after his bright start to life at Old Trafford, with the Brighton game marking his most abject display yet, and Diogo Dalot's inability to track his marker often leaves the team exposed on the counter.
Getty Images SportUgarte-Mainoo partnership in tatters
Last season, United's lack of cohesion in midfield prevented them from gaining any momentum. Ten Hag insisted on pressing high and defending deep, which left a huge hole in the centre of the pitch, with Casemiro, Christian Eriksen, Sofyan Amrabat and Scott McTominay all caught out of position in transitional phases.
Amrabat and McTominay were moved on last summer, but Casemiro and Eriksen are still clinging on to their respective Old Trafford careers, and United are still way too easy to play through whenever they are in Amorim's line up. The Red Devils desperately need more strength in depth in midfield to get out of this mess.
Even Kobbie Mainoo, who was the one major positive for United last season, seems to be struggling physically under Amorim, and the jury is still very much out on £50m ($61m) former Paris Saint-Germain star Manuel Ugarte. There have been times when Ugarte has looked every inch like the ball-winning general United have been crying out for, most notably against Liverpool and in the thrilling third-round FA Cup win over Arsenal, but he was abysmal against Brighton and Southampton, much too slow to make tackles and frustratingly careless in possession.
Mainoo and Ugarte were substituted early in both games, and suddenly their promising partnership is in tatters. It may well be that Bruno Fernandes has to drop deep permanently, having impressed in the holding role when required. The club captain is at least guaranteed to keep running and fighting for a full 90 minutes, and boasts the technical prowess to dictate proceedings, which neither Ugarte nor Mainoo look able to do right now.