I want Ruben Amorim to work at Manchester United. I want the project, the identity, the whole “stick with it and it’ll click” thing. I don’t need him to be Sir Alex reborn, and I’m not expecting miracles in December when half the squad is injured, missing, or being held together with physio tape.
But after the 1-1 draw at Old Trafford against Wolves, I’m left with the same feeling I’ve had far too often this season: I haven’t got a clue what the plan is from one game to the next, or sometimes even from one half to the next.
This isn’t an Amorim-bashing piece. Far from it. I buy into the idea of a coach with a clear philosophy, and I accept that this squad is a mess he didn’t create. But backing a manager doesn’t mean switching your brain off. And right now, his decision-making feels needlessly complicated.
Why Did The Back Four Disappear?
The Boxing Day win over Newcastle felt like a small step towards sanity. United lined up with a back four, looked more balanced, and, crucially, looked like the players understood their jobs. It wasn’t thrilling, but it was controlled. A clean sheet. Three points. Progress.
Then Wolves came to town and the whole thing was binned.
A return to the back three and wing-backs. Straight back to that feeling of players occupying similar spaces and needing an extra touch to work out where the next pass should go.
Amorim later explained that Wolves posed a different problem. Less space. More width. A different structure to face. On paper, that’s fine. Managers should adapt. Hell, we were asking him to adapt for months when he was stubbornly unwilling to change. But Wolves weren’t turning up to dominate possession or stretch United to breaking point. They came to sit in, frustrate, and nick something if they could.
Those are exactly the games where clarity matters most. Where you want fewer moving parts, not more.
If the back four was a step towards stability, abandoning it immediately against the weakest side in the league felt like pressing the reset button for no obvious reason. Our attack is decent, we can score goals, so attack them.
A Match That Never Settled
United did score first. Joshua Zirkzee’s goal, even if it came via a hefty deflection, should have been the platform. Instead, the performance remained edgy and disjointed, as if the team didn’t quite trust the structure they were playing in.
Wolves’ equaliser just before half-time summed it up. A set-piece. A bit of chaos. A moment where no one seemed quite sure who was responsible for what. Again, that happens in football, but it keeps happening to this United side, regardless of personnel.
Old Trafford sensed it too. The atmosphere wasn’t just confused, it was frustrated. There were boos at the end of both halves. You could feel the crowd waiting for something to click, for a sustained spell of pressure, for a sign that United were building towards something.
It never really came.
Baffling Substitutions
Then came the decision that has dominated the conversation since.
Zirkzee, the goalscorer, was taken off at half-time. Not injured. Not exhausted. A tactical call.
On came 18-year-old Jack Fletcher.
There’s nothing wrong with trusting young players. Again, it’s one of the things United fans have been craving. But timing matters. Context matters. You have to do it with a bit of intelligence. Throwing a teenager into a match that’s already tense, where the system hasn’t worked for 45 minutes, and where the crowd is restless, feels less like development and more like desperation.
The message it sent was stark. Amorim didn’t trust what he’d set up, even though it had him in front. And if he didn’t trust it, why should the players?
That’s the part that’s hardest to square. This wasn’t a tweak. It was an admission that the original plan was wrong, followed by another gamble layered on top of it.
The Identity Keeps Shifting
Amorim has spoken recently about flexibility. About not being married to one system forever. About adapting to the squad he has rather than forcing square pegs into round holes.
All of that makes sense. In isolation.
But on the pitch, it feels like United are stuck between ideas. Not fully committed to the back three, not fully embracing the back four. Changing shape between matches, then changing it again within matches, often before players have had time to settle.
That’s how you end up with a team that looks permanently mid-transition.
Wolves weren’t doing anything particularly clever. They stayed compact, competed physically, and waited for mistakes. United, meanwhile, spent long spells trying to work out how to progress the ball and who was meant to be creating the overloads.
This is where the exasperation comes in. Not because Amorim has bad ideas, but because he seems to be second-guessing himself in real time.
There are genuine mitigating factors. Injuries. AFCON. A thin squad. Players who don’t naturally suit any one system. This is not a plug-and-play job.
But part of being a head coach at Manchester United is providing a sense of direction, even when results are patchy. Right now, it feels like the direction keeps changing depending on the opponent, the half, or the mood of the game.
It’s not just the dropped points that are worrying. It’s the sense that, week by week, we’re watching a manager search for answers while the team waits to be told what it’s supposed to be.
And that’s a far more unsettling place to be than mid-table frustration.