Amorim sack moves closer as he goads Man Utd into action after derby mauling

Roy Keane asked the questions that Manchester United must now consider, even if the answers are difficult and unwelcome.

“So how long do you keep waiting? We keep making excuses, but at some stage you go ‘When are we going to see the signs?’”

The questions are obvious, the answers not so much. Because there really is nothing at the moment. Nothing to cling to that suggests thinking Ruben Amorim is suddenly going to crack it, that something is about to just click into place, is anything but a fantasy.

We still see nothing from this United team that makes us think this is going to work out in the end.

And we still hear nothing from Amorim that suggests he’s remotely interested in trying out some different shapes with his little magnets and/or actual footballers.

“I won’t change my philosophy. If they [United hierarchy] want it changed, you change the man.

“I am not going to change my philosophy. I will play my way until I want to change. Guys, I understand [the questions] and I accept it is not a record you should have at Man United. But there are a lot of things that you have no idea about what happen in the last months.”

At this point it’s hard to see this as anything other than Amorim trying to at least escape from a miserable few months with a hefty pay-off. He’s now actively goading United into doing what really does look increasingly like the only way out of this latest mess.

Another ruinously expensive mess into which hundreds of millions of pounds have been poured even as Sir Jim Ratcliffe goes around the rest of the business behaving like the broadest, most cartoonish billionaire villain.

Because it just isn’t working. And doesn’t look like it ever will work, not in any reliable and consistent way that will suffice when this is after all Manchester United Football Club We’re Talking About.

It appears obvious that something has to change and the manager has again made it plain the only way for that to happen is via his removal.

But it’s never that simple. The quite possibly unsolvable equation United have to puzzle out now is whether they can afford to write off another few hundred million quid and start again, along with the even more vexing flipside of that particular equation: can they afford not to?

The numbers now are just beyond stark. This is not a kneejerk reaction to a disappointing start to the season. After a painful Manchester derby defeat United have four points from four games this time around, which has maintained Amorim’s record at precisely one point per Premier League game.

The only two ever-present teams below Amorim’s United in the calendar year Premier League table are West Ham, who are in deep despair themselves with a doomed manager, and Tottenham, who are already reaping the benefits of a managerial change and for very obvious Bilbao-based reasons are not a team United really want to get into any kind of comparison with right now anyway.

Go back before the last couple of seasons and their catastrophically ill-prepared and ill-equipped promoted teams, and you have a manager delivering what is now very nearly a season’s worth of relegation form.

And the fact the promoted teams last season were so poor only exacerbates that fact, because three of the mere eight Premier League wins he’s managed at United came against those three historically, record-breakingly weak Premier League clubs. His only win this season came by the skin of his arse against another newly promoted and likely-to-be-relegated team.

Against established, settled, solid Premier League opponents he has managed four wins from 26 games. And not only does he not appear to know how to address this problem, he appears at best dimly aware that a problem exists or that locating a solution is within his purview.

The system just isn’t working. Even after a summer of huge investment, the squad just still isn’t in the shape required for Amorim’s methods.

Much of the focus has been on the back three, and with some reason, because all too often United appear to have the requisite numbers back in defence but find themselves played through and around with embarrassing ease, all while making that same task against fewer defenders look impossibly difficult at the other end.

United are pot-committed to a system where they cannot create clear chances at one end or prevent clear chances at the other. And yet the biggest mess of all, the root of those problems at either end of the pitch, lies in midfield, where Amorim is still trying to play the football he played at Sporting while having nothing like the profile of agile, mobile midfielder that made it all possible.

Manuel Ugarte still hasn’t cracked it, Kobbie Mainoo has had his confidence shredded, selling Scott McTominay continues to look in hindsight like one of the greatest transfer blunders of all time because he would be absolutely ideal in there, and worst of all Bruno Fernandes is being deployed as the ultimate square peg in a round hole in a midfield role that makes both him and the team markedly worse.

It’s not in any way the only problem for United, but the fact almost a year into the Amorim project their best player is still one who has no obvious natural place anywhere in the manager’s system is damning and maddening.

Amorim has fallen out with countless players, and fallen out hard. Those that leave almost always seem to find themselves rejuvenated elsewhere – Andre Onana the latest after a starring role on debut for Trabzonspor.

Meanwhile players come in having starred elsewhere and almost instantly become shadows of their former selves. There’s a reverse alchemy at play with United right now that is sinking the club and its players. And most of all its manager.

We’ve all been burnt before by wrongly thinking that surely things can’t get any worse than this for Post-Fergie Manchester United. But surely things can’t get any worse than this.

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