How Ruben Amorim can overhaul Man Utd squad with a helpful lesson from Mikel Arteta | OneFootball

Manchester United have received informal contact for homegrown stars like Marcus Rashford, Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo but, so far, nothing has come close to anything the club would find acceptable. That’s just one complication to this transfer window.

Another is what happened when a European club learned of United’s interest in one of their players. He was told to “forget the Champions League or proper European competition, and you won’t even be competing for the domestic league”. It's been a consideration for other targets, putting players off Old Trafford. United won’t even have to deal with such hurdles until they can make sales, of course, which isn’t guaranteed.

If Ruben Amorim is frustrated, he might find a sympathetic ear at Arsenal on Sunday. Mikel Arteta was in exactly this situation five years ago. Arsenal, to use the term from within the game, were “a basketcase”. Years of institutional lethargy had allowed a build-up of issues, especially in the dressing room. Wages were high but morale was rock-bottom, as Arteta attempted to reshape what insiders described as a “plain group” in a toxic atmosphere. “There were some guys who just didn’t give a s**t,” in the words of one source.

Arsenal couldn’t find buyers for overpaid squad members, with that slowing their own recruitment, for the players that wanted to go to them. Their own questionable decisions compounded this. Arsenal would be highly unlikely to sign Willian on that kind of contract now.

It will all sound familiar to Amorim. One of the reasons he wants this overhaul is because of the need to change that dressing room. It isn’t just about suitability to tactics. It’s about the need to transform the whole mood, while allowing the manager to build a team he feels is in his image. That is what Arteta did. And, for all the criticisms about a recent regression or lack of silverware, the Basque has restored Arsenal from that “basketcase” to one of the best teams in Europe. They are very much a team in his image, too.

As with that Arsenal side, it’s not really the case that United's players are “bad eggs”, to use another term commonly repeated. Many are described as the classic “good lads”. It’s just that, as Arteta found with Arsenal, there has been a long-term build-up of traits and habits that aren't exactly champions’ standards. They need breaking.

There is an obvious echo from United’s own history, of course. That was when Sir Alex Ferguson arrived. United might also be trying to break the fixation with that era, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons from its start.

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Ruben Amorim has big decisions to make at Old Trafford (Getty Images)

Ferguson arrived at a club where many of his players had attended outgoing manager Ron Atkinson’s farewell party, admitting he could hardly bear to contemplate the implication that the players involved did not care a monkey’s about the fact he was introducing himself the next morning. Having berated them for that after a 2-0 defeat at Oxford United, Ferguson gradually found the team didn’t mirror him in any shape or form.

He would later state in his first autobiography: “I was certain in my own mind that most of them lacked the resolve and endurance to challenge for a title. Minor tinkering would not suffice.”

It again sounds familiar, save for one key detail. Ferguson has been strident about how the major problem was excessive drinking, in a way that is mercifully impossible in the modern game.

That very modernity does bring other complications, though. Insiders speak of how “social media and indulgent entourages” are almost equivalents of the old drink culture, since they can corrode a player’s drive. One chief executive of a rival recently rolled their eyes at how this thing – pointing to their phone – is what obsesses modern talent, and clubs have to proactively think around that. Banning mobiles doesn’t really cut it anymore. Arteta has even insisted that some of his staff are in their twenties so they have that better connection to players. That will involve knowledge of gaming, given how the modern dressing room works. Card schools aren’t as prevalent.

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Mikel Arteta made a bold call over Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Getty Images)

How can they be when players earn so much? As recently as 1999, club captain Roy Keane was negotiating contracts with concerns for his financial future in mind. By contrast, none of the current squad need to ever work again, with many having been extremely well paid despite achieving little. That naturally forms another problem. In the same way as Arsenal found with Willian, it is highly unlikely United would do a contract like Antony’s again.

Such discussions are obviously far from unique to United. The point is more how many different issues have been allowed to combine at a club that is supposed to have the most exacting standards.

Sources close to one star who has since left Old Trafford say he “fell into the trap of a lot of players there,” he was not physically sharp enough and became too active with his social life. This has then led to a sense of just turning up without an energising squad culture. This is further compounded by the lack of a tactical ideology.

There have been occasional cliques, too. This was at its most pronounced during Cristiano Ronaldo’s return, when players such as David De Gea, Raphael Varane and Diogo Dalot grouped around the Portuguese in his push to be dressing room leader. Bruno Fernandes backed away from that and it has since evolved into a South American group, complemented by a longer-term England-centred group.

None of these issues would be so bad on their own but they have all gradually combined for this nadir. It’s hard not to link it to the week’s debate over why it takes opposition like Liverpool for the team to lift it as they did at Anfield.

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Amorim has not been enamoured by Marcus Rashford so far (PA Wire)

Amorim was reminiscent of Ferguson in assertively calling that out. It’s also why the Portuguese is making dressing-room decisions that are seen as “the right calls”, but they will inevitably be unpopular calls. That dressing room has its own chemistry. In the long run, as both Ferguson and Arteta found, there is really only one solution. That’s to go to the market, which returns the discussion to the problems United have there.

Excessive spending over the years has brought the club to the brink of PSR restrictions, they essentially have to take this stance that they will listen to almost any offer. That will involve “hard decisions”, as Ferguson himself put it, so it isn't new.

The great Scot jettisoned much-loved legends from the 1980s cup era. Arteta had to take tough financial calls, with Arsenal’s willingness to get rid of players on huge contracts arguably representing bigger investments than some big signings. The club naturally adopted the Borussia Dortmund model, too: recruit young and develop.

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Man Utd would entertain offers for some of their biggest names (AP)

United now have to face up to similar, which explains why they pretty much have to consider almost any offer. They want to emulate Arsenal in doing this quickly, too, and maximise what will likely lead to fallow seasons this year and next.

First, they must face Arsenal on Sunday. Amorim has had a full week of pure coaching for the first time at United. That work on the training ground may not just be crucial to the game, it might be crucial to who goes this January and the future way beyond that. It needs to be a lot closer to what Amorim finds acceptable.