Manchester United is in a terrible spot this isn't the outcome of a recent decision but the slow rot of about a decade building up to the decline that really came to the four over the last two years something that ten hog tried to hide behind with their cup runs and we'll go over how Cup wins kind of Muddy the waters a bit when it comes to how a team is actually playing but unfortunately for Ruben amarim he's come in when United are at their worst at the most difficult point in the season scheduling wise with
a completely completely different system and little to no backing in the market and was expected by some to undo the mistakes of the last years and years of incompetence at United a backward slide in standards that now sees Manchester United incapable of even scoring goals just one first half goal in 16 matches unbelievable stuff honestly this incompetence in front of the goal coupled with some clown show mistakes at the back things a coach can't really account for has led to United's worst form since the 19737 before season when they were relegated from the top flight
now I don't see that happening the bottom three are just too bad at this point but it has forced the conversation of what do you do with the remainder of this season is there a benefit to finishing maybe slightly higher up in the table at the cost of progress when it comes to amim system and keep in mind this isn't a denial that United have been bad more just a contextualization of why they have been bad why they are in this terrible position and why am changing his philosophy wouldn't be helpful in the slightest to
their [Music] progress okay so first off going off of what I mentioned in the intro Cup wins kind of exist within their own bubble their own ecosystem separate from the true nature of how a team is playing in a given season the league play is where you can judge how they're doing look at Wigan in 2013 winning the FA Cup as they get relegated from the Premier League or Birmingham city winning the league cup over Arsenal a little slap for koseli remember that but getting relegated Baria Dortmund a foreign example not a winner but stinking
it up in the Bundesliga two seasons in a row now last season in fifth this season they're in 11th and losing to the worst teams in the league and yet they look strong this season in Europe and made the Champions League final last season so cup performance Cup wins are an achievement in themselves but you have to keep your Judgment of them strictly on how a team played within that given competition using it as a barometer of their overall performance will absolutely Lead You astray amarim system changing from a back four to a back three
the center backs need to learn when they should go forward or stay back as amarim had dians and nasio who are ball playing center backs that would make good runs forward through the Midfield at times and combined well with morit and Hilman in the Midfield and swap positions in covered for each other I look at maybe yoro as the only competent Defender that could do that at United the Midfield structure is different as well with that box of four midfielders and how the two in front of the defense are supposed to operate how the wing
backs are supposed to support the attack and row forward be part of the attack and how they're supposed to have their vacated positions covered when they do so whose responsibility is that the team's still learning there how are those inside forwards the front two midfielders or the double cams whatever you want to call them supposed to attack someone like garnacho is having a hell of a time adjusting as he wants to play wider where the wing backs are occupying space and the distance between garnacho and the striker means that the strikers are constantly isolated and
pedestrian the strikers themselves are often guilty of being far too static through the middle because if you look like someone like yokesh the striker in sporting system he's someone who will drift wide all the time to bined with the other players drifting into that inside Left Channel to run at the backline with the ball while someone in garnacho position would swap with him and run through the middle during those times it was fluid it kept Defenders guessing and the proximity of the players in the attack made it work they had numerical advantages these are all
just quick examples to show that it's not easy to switch players to not just a different formation but an entirely different system especially players who went from not having much of a system under Eric tan hog to begin with it was generic vanilla meat and potatoes football where you would set up to not lose and hope that someone like Runa fange would be able to bail you out now and then some sort of individual to rescue you which worked in the cups but didn't work in the Premier League that well and we show in in
some the biggest games that we can do it and the system was like normal and so there's been some debate about whether emim should switch up how he plays go against the entire reason as to why you United brought him in in the first place the way he plays football amarim has only played one system and he made it work at sporting elevating them to where he left them off and you've seen how their form has changed since then how they've declined a bit Manchester United saw his style of football and wanted him due to
the way he was able to mold a team how it was an exciting attractive style of football how he changed sporting from perennial Underachievers to the top team in Portugal they liked how it was an exciting attractive style of football he has a philosophy he has a system he sticks to and that's what United paid for right and United are now in a position where they are in three competitions still the Premier League the FA Cup and the Europa League with some saying that he should adapt so that United just stop losing matches but the
question is and this sounds weird why it's already given that United will not be finishing in a European place in the Premier League table they also will not be finishing in a relegation place as the bottom three teams are just too bad at the moment and in United's final 13 matches it's expected it's expected they will get 11 more points get that 40 points Mark and be safe that's crazy but that's the reality right now so really what's the difference between finishing lower mid-table around 15th or upper mid-table which feels like they're sealing this season
given how things have gone there isn't one what would be the benefit of changing how amadine plays in the present with the hopes of finishing upper mid-table but at the detriment of your learning how to play his system and so this season is essentially a write off and you can try to instill your principles and your system in the players as much as you can in order to build toward that for the next season with a few player Personnel changes along the way hopefully if anyos and them pay up finishing 15th or finishing 9th no
difference in what you get out of the Season besides perhaps the severity of abuse that United supporters will receive from their rival friends but competitively there's no difference so now you accept that and try to use this season as a classroom setting or Preparation going forward trying to get a basic understanding of the system for the players in a season where you're not getting much out of it competitively you may as well make the most of it from a learning point of view which even that has been difficult given the time frame in which amarim
joined United one of the busiest points in the entire football schedule at the end of December it was revealed that despite having been been at United for about a month and a half or so emim had been able to execute on just four actual training sessions sessions where he has been able to try and teach his players A system that sounds confusing as players are always in training right but given they were playing about two matches per week the amount of days spent traveling Etc a lot of the training sessions are just the average pre-match
sessions nothing strenuous at all your average run-ofthe-mill session where you aren't exactly learning new Concepts you're just doing drills or there are recovery sessions the day after a match then you have to give the players a day off as well you can't have them playing twice a week then training the other five days or training and traveling the other 5 days so the times in which emim has actually been able to get legitimate training sessions in will have been scarce in fact United finishing in the top eight of the Europa League and thus not having
two matches added to their schedule will have allowed Amad some time in the training pitch given he has two weeks without midweek matches but unfortunately for for him as we saw against Spurs he suddenly has an insane amount of injuries to deal with so the players who he would have wanted in those sessions would have been either unavailable or doing injury rehab work the thinness of United Squad was put on show against SPS as someone who follows the Premier League and in turn United just out of interest in how amarim will do if he will
adapt I was completely unfamiliar with the players on the bench only to find out that seven of the nine players there hadn't made a senior appearance and that includes having Linda off on the bench so there was one other dude who had a senior appearance and where United is hurting the most isn't in defense anymore on the pitch although boo mistake still happen back there but it's the attack that is really really failing for them Sky released a stat that in their previous 16 games they have just one first half goal a penalty from Bruno
fan against Brighton stats from opta have come out about garnacho failures in front of goal following that incredible Miss he had against Spurs across the Premier League of players who have 10 plus big chances this season he has the lowest conversion rate of them all scoring just two out of 14 14% conversion of big chances not any and all chances but the big chances that are more often than not seen converted by players there's nothing a coach can do about his players losing their heads in front of goal he can put them in the position
to succeed but if they don't finish it off what can he do in fact manchest United is underperforming their expected goals more than any other team in the Premier League yes they are performing even worse than the relegation bound clubs they are less clinical with their chances than Southampton United's expected goals ranks firmly mid-table 11th in the league but nobody has scored less from their XG than United has with minus 8.3 8.3 under their expected goals so the chances are there granted not as many chances as they would like as amarim would like but they
are still there and they just simply cannot convert them even a team like wolves flirting with relegation has a better number than United despite having a far worse expected goals than men United as they have a finisher like kuna United doesn't have that at the moment and they're suffering because of it the United attackers in particular look like they are playing scared scared of making a mistake that's honestly the best way you can describe them and they've been that way for the last couple of years the only one that has played with any sort of
confidence and competence this season is a mad dialo and oh uhoh he's out for the season now on top of that as I was saying earlier the strikers are having a difficult time understanding how to get more involved for example holand gets made fun of all the time but the man has missed just three big chances this season and has a total expected goals of just 2.52 across the entirety of this Premier League season so not only is he having a difficult time finding the correct positions to occupy but his teammates aren't setting him up
either that is a remarkably low expected goals as you can see with this comparison to other Strikers in the league so after all of this what can you say about United season and whether there is any kind of hope for them what the expectations should be it depends on what you're hoping for unfortunately United supporters have to take their medicine this season take their lumps this season and the hope of winning things has got to be way out of mind if you end up going on a cup run in Europa or the FA Cup that's
just a bonus great but the season is a write-off where the only good outcomes will be much more abstract the hope that the players who will be sticking around are learning more and more about amim system going forward as well as the hope that the board has realized how substandard the squad building has been and will back amarim going forward anything beyond that though is simply wishful thinking and please give us the time to work on it and when I sit here in 4 years I think we won one title in this time I'm pretty
sure if you look at klopp's time at Liverpool one of the best managers in the modern history of the Premier League and the Bundesliga taking over a team that nearly won the Premier League two seasons prior he was able to turn them into serial winners in about four years through massive massive investment van djk Allison the attack the midfielders he finished eighth fourth fourth and second when win the champions league and then finally the Premier League artetta I mean look at the side he inherited names you'll want to forget as an Arsenal supporter and look
at the team now unrecognizable through spending more money than 97% of the teams in European football over the last four or five years don't quote me on that percentage but it's up there there's very few that have spent more a ton of money spent and they're yet to win something other than that FA Cup in the first season that artetta took over and there was some smelly seasons in between as you can see for maresa at Chelsea the work has mostly been taken care of for him when it comes to rejuvenating the squad little changes
here and there but mostly a great base to work with but for amarim he has dived into United at a terrible point with little support in the transfer market with the goal of implementing his system there are players that will be moved on there will be new ones brought in but for those who stay it's worth not changing his system at the moment it's worth continuing with his own approach because like I said the difference between finishing 15th through 10th is not worth throwing the progress out for no matter how difficult it may be to
see that progress right now
