Revealed: The date Ruben Amorim will be sacked and why with this ‘as bad as it gets’ for Manchester United | OneFootball

When David Moyes said Manchester United “must improve in a number of areas”, he listed three facets of their game. Or, well, the entire sport: “Passing, creating chances and defending.”

He did not cite whipping balls into the box. Little wonder, as exactly two months later his team was breaking the record for the most crosses attempted by a team in a single Premier League game.

Rene Meulensteen called the Manchester United approach “quite straightforward” and “easy to defend against”. Dan Burn had “never headed that many balls since the Conference” and was “happy for them to play like that”. Darren Bent “knew that was going to happen” and was also “happy for them to play like that,” having had as many touches in his own box as the opposition’s despite scoring a last-minute equaliser.

And Moyes admitted it was “as bad as it gets”, with his P45 ultimately swung in 72 days after those 81 crosses epitomised his reign.

It was Moyes securing his first ever Premier League win as a visiting manager at Old Trafford in 18 attempts dating back to 2002, Manchester United suffering their first ever Premier League home defeat after seeing the opposition have a player sent off, and Everton not failing to have a single shot after their goal, but instead rather sagely identifying the distinct lack of any need to try.

They had Idrissa Gueye dismissed for a baffling moment of self-destruction in the 13th minute but produced a performance of determined grit and organised obduracy which had both managers praising the infighting post-match.

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“I quite like when my players have a fight,” said Moyes, resisting the obvious temptation to say only that the situation would be handled internally. “I don’t want them to accept someone not doing well enough.”

“I hope my players, when they lose the ball, they fight each other,” Amorim added.

But when the Portuguese also describes it as “my fault” that said players “didn’t understand the moments of the game during the 90 minutes,” and that he needs to better “explain to the players how to play in every situation of the game,” it is difficult to see how Casemiro scrapping with Matthijs de Ligt over a misplaced pass would help.

At least Jose Mourinho controlled the “brain” if not the body of only Luke Shaw, the manager “making every decision” for a player who “cannot play with my understanding of the game”.

Amorim has taken on that responsibility for an entire team which apparently cannot think for itself even when confronted by an opponent with one win in four games, reduced to ten men for 77 minutes and without a win of any kind at that stadium since December 2013, during the mess of the Moyes season when it felt like a team would record their first win at Old Trafford in decades every other week.

If this group needs a coach to issue reminders about the need to raise their intensity and diversify their course of attack somewhat against a team down one player then it is yet again difficult to envisage quite how this arrangement ultimately works.

Manchester United put in 38 crosses against Everton, bringing into question Amorim’s claim about having spent the international break watching what opposition managers do before coming to the conclusion that James Tarkowski and Michael Keane might struggle under an aerial assault.

That is not even close to touching those absurd numbers posted against Fulham but still nine more than their previous season high across 120 minutes on that miserable evening at Grimsby, and their most in a Premier League game since October 2018.

That was when Mourinho was to be sacked regardless of the result delivered against Newcastle, only for Alexis Sanchez to grant him a stay of execution with a last-minute winner in a wretched game.

Mourinho was finally shown the door 73 days later, lasting about 24 hours longer than Moyes after he bore those 81 crosses.

Perhaps that represents a harbinger of doom for Amorim, whose rollercoaster would finally end on February 5 going by that timeline. Manchester United’s last match before that execution date being at home to Fulham is almost too narratively satisfying.

This was every bit as desperate as those displays under patently doomed managers, every inch as uninspiring a gameplan and reaction. That it was so thoroughly exposed by Moyes, long but no longer the poster boy for Manchester United’s era of sustained failure post-Ferguson, was most damning of all.

The list of things Manchester United must improve remains painfully long more than a decade later; despite that slight recent upturn, the manager is still towards the top of it after all these years.