Ruben Amorim should avoid 'complete honesty' when it's an admission of Man Utd ignorance

Ruben Amorim is a man now famed for his honesty in press conferences. If anything, he’s too honest.

The Manchester United chiefs weren’t all that enamoured with his response to questions about Kobbie Mainoo’s future, for example, nor his threats last season to walk away from the club if results didn’t improve.

That integrity is a key part of his charisma, which was supposedly a key draw for Sir Jim Ratcliffe and the INEOS bosses when selecting the Portuguese boss as their replacement for Erik ten Hag.

But again, with Brentford incredibly offering up an opportunity for Amorim to earn back-to-back Premier League wins for the very first time, when asked by a reporter in the press conference what the key to consistency is for Manchester United, we would advise Amorim against “complete honesty” when it’s an admission of ignorance.

“It is normal that the fans don’t know what is going to happen in the next game. To be completely honest, I have an idea, but I don’t know how it’s going to be and I’m the manager of the team! The best way of dealing with that is every game is the last one.”

We enjoy self-deprecation as much as anyone, and understand that it’s no more than a jovial, throwaway comment from a man under pressure; someone quite frankly embarrassed that after ten months in charge of one of the biggest clubs in world football he’s yet to win two league games on the bounce.

Without similarly cheeky lines he may not still be in the job, with his press conference manner the key to this aura of stability and confidence he’s managed to fabricate for himself despite the chaos on the pitch.

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And of course, like any other football manager, he doesn’t really know what’s going to happen in any game. It’s presumably why he loves football, if he does indeed still love it.

But five games into a new season in which there’s been no great sign of progress after leading them in their worst campaign in living memory, not knowing whether his team is going to be any good or not feels awfully close to the bone of contention that he doesn’t know how to turn things around at Old Trafford.

No Manchester United fan will be turning up for this clash at Brentford tomorrow with any clue as to how their team perform on a scale from not bad to terrible, but should the manager not have more than “an idea”? Or at least put the brutal honesty on hold and claim that he does?

Because as much as anything, we’re not sure it’s an admission the famously fragile Manchester United players will be using as any great motivation to break this two-game hoodoo.

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