The haunting Ruben Amorim image that sums up Manchester United’s deep-rooted decay | OneFootball

Ruben Amorim claimed he now had “nothing to say” but, in vintage fashion for such a crisis, one picture said enough.

The haunting image of the Manchester United manager looking away during the shootout, having already been playing with a tactics board, was one thing. Well, two things… and they mount up.

But for all that to come in defeat by a League Two side in Grimsby Town just adds a sense of farce to something that had seemed almost alien.

Even those who know him from Portugal admit they’ve never seen him like this. This is what United now do to people. They may have their own version of Steve McClaren and the “wally with a brolly”.

Of course, you can do and say pretty much anything so long as you’re winning. But this was just another humiliation. And such images alone mean it’s more than just another humiliation. It's become something else.

So here we are, less than two weeks into a new season, and United are not just in crisis but somehow in a new nadir. This was the first time in the club’s history they had been eliminated from a competition by a fourth-tier side. It should be Grimsby’s day but it’s impossible not to talk about another United nightmare.

open image in gallery

Ruben Amorim consults his tactics board in the dugout during Man United's Carabao Cup second-round tie with Grimsby (CBS Sports)

Yes, this is rock bottom. Again.

What must the new players, who are supposed to bring that charge of excitement, be thinking? Worse was that all three of them played here, in a strong team. Two became significant parts of the storyline, since there was so much focus on Benjamin Sesko taking his penalty kick so late – 10th in the shootout – before Bryan Mbuemo missed the decisive penalty.

Perhaps the most fascinating question in all of this is how United keep doing this to people, how it somehow stays so bad.

Everything changes and yet nothing changes. As one insider said, it’s like the club is “cursed”, as if a deal with the devil had been done after two decades of impossible success.

And yet, amid such inevitable appeals to the supernatural, there is a rationale. This is explainable.

The club has now been surrounded by gloom and frustration for so long that it doesn’t take much for that to swarm around again. Any flicker of doubt and it’s in.

The pressure alone is immense. This has long become the sort of situation where you would wonder about putting in any kind of callow youth. It’s not about the weight of the United shirt any more. It’s about the far, far greater weight of United disarray.

That’s also where some of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s decisions have only added to problems, rather than solved them. As one source at a title challenger remarked on seeing news stories about cutbacks in the canteen after redundancies: “These are the little decisions that sour a culture.” The view was that these are the details that do matter, and betray a misunderstanding of how a club works. The canteen is where a club comes together. At United, it's instead another factor in why they are falling apart again.

You still can’t really get away from the pitch, though, and all of this has been compounded by more than a decade of dysfunctional recruitment. It has left a squad that just doesn’t work.

open image in gallery

Manchester United were humbled by Grimsby (Getty)

They make changes but one window is never going to be enough. And since it's never enough, residual issues build back up before you get to the next window, until you have… this. It’s a team always catching up with itself.

And yet this is where it comes back to Amorim, and how he works.

In such situations, where you have to put up with elements that are not currently ideal, you need someone that does not depend on the ideal. You need to dig in, and work something out. You need to adapt.

This is not an argument to go back to a totally opposite style of football. The game is long past that. We’re not talking about Jose Mourinho against Pep Guardiola any more. Guardiola’s idea has conquered the sport, and everyone now plays some form of that.

Thomas Frank, who United perhaps should have gone for in the summer of 2024, put it best.

“I’m pretty sure what my end goal is but also very aware I have a group of players and those are the players I need to work with. I need to work with them inside the principles and how I want to play, but depending on their qualities and abilities I will tweak it accordingly.”

Even a disciple like Arne Slot, after all, tweaks his idea of that football. It’s impossible not to keep coming back to that decision Liverpool made in 2024, as much as United. They really liked Amorim and felt he could be brilliant in the right setting. They felt that setting wasn’t theirs, and they would have to spend £500m to give him the squad required.

So Liverpool went with Slot. And within that decision lies a difference that explains so much about where the teams are and how elite clubs now work.

open image in gallery

Ruben Amorim hunkered down in his dugout during the penalty shootout (Getty Images)

Liverpool ultimately went for Slot because he was willing to fit into a new holistic approach. They were insistent they were not going to be driven by one manager any more, because that can leave you so much more susceptible to fortune.

You have to have something above that, that your chosen coach fits into. You decide on a guiding idea and ensure everything feeds into that. It’s incredible we’re still even talking about this in 2025.

United, not for the first time, did this the wrong way around. They didn’t choose an idea. They put absolutely everything into a specific manager’s ideology. And into conditions that just aren’t right for him.

So you have this: frustration, dysfunction, gloom, humiliation.

Amorim claimed he had nothing to say, but his comments about the players’ attitude caused headlines. They have left people wondering whether he might even resign during the upcoming international break. It comes after previous comments which tanked the value of many players, with Kobbie Mainoo the most recent case study.

Some at United insist that this kind of abrasive approach is still needed, because the rot had set in too deep; that they needed someone to shake everything up. That may have an effect in time. Amorim may well be vindicated.

But it’s still such a long road from here to there. “The storm,” as he put it at the end of last season, is far from over yet.

Amorim instead found himself sat there in the rain, forming an image that looks much, much worse.