IPSWICH, England — For 81 seconds, it all seemed so easy for Ruben Amorim. In his first game as Manchester United head coach, Marcus Rashford, the player who has embodied the club’s troubled recent past, had scored inside two minutes to make a dream start against Ipswich Town.
Then reality bit, and Amorim discovered just how big of a job he has taken on after Sunday’s 1-1 draw.
A game that began so brightly for the sixth man tasked with recreating Sir Alex Ferguson’s glory years at United ended with Amorim angrily ordering Joshua Zirkzee, the forward introduced as a second-half substitute, to get into the Ipswich penalty box and offer some attacking threat rather than saunter around while the game passed him by. By that stage, United had let their lead slip following a stunning 43rd-minute equaliser by Omari Hutchinson, and Kieran McKenna’s Ipswich had gone close on several occasions to taking the lead, twice being denied by crucial André Onana saves from Liam Delap.
Amorim wanted urgency, and Zirkzee was moving as though he was taking a leisurely walk on the beach. That summed up the problems that Amorim, recruited from Portuguese champions Sporting CP, must overcome at United.
He has many issues to address, but when a striker needs to be told that he should be trying to score a winning goal in stoppage time, it points to the malaise that runs deep at Old Trafford.
Amorim’s body language at the end of United’s hard-fought draw at Portman Road also told a story: A point wasn’t enough. The number of times that the 39-year-old waved his players forward and berated them for passing backwards in the closing stages underlined his determination to win. Amorim grew accustomed to that at Sporting, where he ended the club’s two-decade wait for a domestic title with two league championships in three years, but it will take time to change the mentality at United and eradicate the fear and trepidation that his predecessor, Erik ten Hag, was unable to shake off.
“I think my players were thinking too much,” Amorim said after the game. “The players were too stuck, thinking, ‘Where should I be?’ We will work, and with more time, they will be clear.”
Amorim’s personality and self-confidence will rub off on his players, and sooner rather than later, the best of them will begin to play with greater freedom and belief. And while the unconvincing performance against Ipswich denied Amorim a debut win, it may ultimately have done him a favour in keeping expectations at a realistic level because, make no mistake, he has a big challenge in front of him to turn United around.
He was welcomed with a fan’s banner at Portman Road that said, “Good Luck Ruben Amorim – Make Our Team Great Again,” yet his team selection against Ipswich highlighted the task ahead.
Having promised to stick to his principles, Amorim started with the 3-4-2-1 formation that brought success at Sporting, but he had to deploy full-back Noussair Mazraoui in the three alongside Matthijs de Ligt and Jonny Evans because of injuries to centre-backs Lisandro Martínez, Harry Maguire and Leny Yoro. And his selection of Casemiro and Christian Eriksen, both 32 years old, in central midfield was an example of his lack of options with neither Manuel Ugarte nor Kobbie Mainoo deemed fit enough to start.
It meant his team lacked legs and energy at its core — a problem that Ten Hag repeatedly failed to address — and allowed Ipswich to camp in United’s half. The forward three therefore became ineffective, aside from Rashford’s early goal.
The big positive from the game was that the players at least looked like they knew what they were expected to do in terms of positioning and responsibilities, but the old problems run deep and could never be corrected with just a handful of days on the training pitch.
“I think we have to understand and think and be pragmatic that these guys had two to three days to train to change so much,” Amorim said. “It’s hard for the players in three days to cope with everything.
“I know it’s frustrating for the fans, but we are changing so much in this moment with a lot of games. We are going to suffer for a long period and we will try to win games, but this will take time.”
Amorim tried to impact the game from the bench, making five substitutions in the second half, but aside from withdrawing the tiring legs of Casemiro, Eriksen and Evans and injecting some younger energy, the switches did little to make a difference.
Amorim shouldn’t be surprised by that. He will know that the squad he has inherited from Ten Hag is not designed to suit his system, and he has already acknowledged that his players need to be better “physically.”
He and his coaches can make them fitter, and some of the players will evolve to be able to play in Amorim’s system, but it will take time.
Forget the 81-second sugar rush. The real United, and the one that needs to change, is the one that came after.