Patrick Dorgu’s huge potential mustn’t be ruined by Ruben Amorim | OneFootball

As the Ruben Amorim era grinds relentlessly into its second year, there are still new things to learn about the Portuguese’s exhaustingly inflexible approach.

Most recently, Manchester United’s head coach demonstrated that even when chasing a goal at home against a bottom-half side reduced to ten men for nearly 80 minutes he would still not move from playing three centre-backs.

It was an entirely expected extra insight into how Amorim’s mind works, the 3-4-3 tunnel vision that presumably dictates everything from the layout of his football team to how he organises his spice rack.

We also saw how vulnerable United are with key men such as Matheus Cunha sidelined, and how hamstrung they are by the quality of their wing-backs.

Dorgu’s Everton slog

Amorim’s system relies so heavily on wide men able to defend and attack, to protect and create, that there’s a reasonable argument that against Everton Noussair Mazraoui and Patrick Dorgu were two of the most important men on the pitch.

Both fumbled their lines and Dorgu was replaced in the second half by Diogo Dalot, having seen plenty of the ball but done very little with it.

In a different timeline it’s a situation which would have been unthinkable, and not only because Dalot is the footballing equivalent of boiled chicken.

The bombastic Dorgu has all the traits to be utterly formidable as a wing-back, and could have been the man to grab the game by the scruff of its neck – but instead the Dane looked lost and overwhelmed.

In at the deep end

In many ways Dorgu and Dalot are chalk and cheese, crisp red apples and mouldering old oranges, and two different lenses should be used when casting judgements.

Dorgu hasn’t even been at the club for a year; Dalot arrived seven years ago. Dorgu is 21 and was plucked from the relative obscurity of Lecce; Dalot has so much experience at the top level that he is part of Amorim’s leadership group.

Criticism of Dalot is abundant and justified, and while the 21-year-old Dane is certainly underperforming at the moment any attacks on him should be heavily caveated.

Dorgu was the first major signing of the Amorim era and introduced as a specialist wing-back to a squad which barely seemed to understand what that meant.

The intense pressure that created was bound to come to a head sooner or later, and the depressingly predictable pile-on on an inexperienced youngster is already starting.

Raw potential needs to be tapped

One thing that can never be argued is that Dorgu has some extraordinary positives to his game.

The combative Dane has won the most duels of anyone in the squad this season and consistently tops the charts for that metric in the wars of attrition United make out of every match they play.

Speed on the overlap, frequent involvement in play, limitless energy – Dorgu is desperately willing if not always able, an Aaron Wan-Bissaka mk2 with a higher ceiling and a real potential to storm into true wing-back territory.

It’s a potential that shouldn’t require much excavation and after nearly ten months in red for Amorim and his coaches to get the measure of him, bringing it to the surface needs to be a priority on the training pitches.

The timing of his transfer and the position he plays make Dorgu the pivot point of INEOS’ Amorim gamble, unfair as that is on the player himself. Amorim has the raw materials to fashion himself the ideal wing-back; the ball is in his court to make something of Dorgu before the pressure crushes him for good.

Featured image Michael Regan via Getty Images

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