Well, something to work on there then, Ruben. It would be tempting at the end of this decelerating game of semi-Football to talk about Ruben Amorim at least realising the scale of the job he faces.
Except, given Amorim almost certainly possesses a TV set and is interested in football, he already knows the scale of the job. And the scale is: really very big indeed.
It’s not the scale though. It’s the tone, the texture, the deathly spirit of this United team that really needs to be digested in the flesh, the sheer joyless incoherence, a Manchester United team that is all trapped energy and broken patterns, the football equivalent of a chipped gravy boat handed down unhappily through the generations.
It was there in the hilariously ambling patterns of Joshua Zirkzee, who just seems always to be floating around quite close to the spectacle, like a man listening to a podcast while strolling on the local rec, tactfully avoiding the dogwalkers.
It was there in a fascinating interlude on 24 minutes as United ferried the ball around sleepily, the backline completely failing to intersect with the midfield in front of it, no angles, no pockets to shift past the press. Watching this, Amorim looked calm, poker faced, right up to the moment you looked at his feet and he seemed to be trying to stand on tip toes, doing some kind of secretive hyper-clenched thigh workout, swallowing it down. He spread his arms wide as another pass shuttled across the face of the penalty area, possession without hunger or drive or purpose, football happening in a vacuum.
With this in mind, for United’s fans the most heartening aspect of this deathly 1-1 draw with Ipswich is that Amorim very clearly gets this. “We are going to suffer for a long period,” he shrugged, smiling just a little bit wearily in his post-match press conference at Portman Road. The job is huge, overwhelming, perhaps even insoluble. The first positive step is knowing all these things for certain. And Amorim’s players did him a favour in that respect here. He is, if nothing else, utterly free from any kind of illusions.
From the start there was something lovely and windswept and vaguely Jane Austen about travelling through the Suffolk countryside to meet a handsome man with brooding eyes who has been charged with reviving a grand old ailing estate.
The three-week hiatus between appointment and full match-day rein-taking had given this occasion a sense of delayed intrigue, nine days of intense tactical edging about wing-backs and centre-half partnerships.
There was a slight sense of double take about Amorim’s starting XI . OK. So, we’re going new energy, freshness, unforgiving demands on press and movement and structure. We’re going – it says here – with Casemiro, Christian Eriksen and Jonny Evans.
But it only took 82 seconds for everything to be all right, with a goal that came entirely from the Amorim rejig. Amad Diallo at right wing-back? Yep. We can do that too. Here he took the ball close to halfway and went straight into a full, ravenous, high rev sprint. The low cross with his newly empowered right foot was perfectly measured. Marcus Rashford just had to walk the ball into the net.
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Amorim’s reaction was perfect, in that there was no reaction, just a swivel back towards the bench, a flicker perhaps in the eyes. Rashford seemed out of sorts in those early moments. That is, he seemed hungry, energised and furiously mobile. He sprinted after lost passes, fouled and harried.
And for a while, as United had their best spell, there was a chance to linger on that vital quality, the Amorim touchline energy. There was an aura from the start, striding out in heavy-tog quilted coat, white trainers, skinny tailored slacks, off-the-peg Euro football royalty uniform. The package is good.
Jawline, hair, the controlled energy in his movements.
The United away support, which is always noisy, got to roll around and bounce and sing about the 12 Cantonas of Christmas. It didn’t last. Ipswich pressed back with real purpose, a process that is always easier when you find no resistance, a gap, a space to press into.
United’s midfield structure was odd, porous, leaving pathways that Ipswich began to trace, moving in neat triangles between the static parts. The equaliser was always coming, and it was fitting Omari Hutchison should score it after a sublime, high-craft first half.
Either side André Onana produced not one but two astonishing point-blank saves from Liam Delap. Delap is a wonderful spectacle in the flesh, a huge, thick barrelling figure, charging about as though he’s barely in control of his own gravity, a man always chasing a round of cheese down a Gloucestershire hillside. He really should have decided this game.
Amorim didn’t sit down through all of this. He didn’t scream and shout and point. Instead he paced, hands bunched in his pockets, in an ever shrinking arc from left to right. Somebody needs to take a cleaver to this thing. Amorim may have a kind of Left Bank soulfulness about him, soft deep brown eyes, the perfectly cropped bristles. But he is also clear-eyed and ruthless. And yes, he really is going to need all of that.
