The gap between Manchester United’s ambition and reality has never been wider – and there’s no quick way to fix it | OneFootball

Among those at Old Trafford on Sunday was a manager sacked after his side hit rock bottom. No, not Ruben Amorim. Plymouth’s past and present were watching Manchester United, Miron Muslic the day after his side acquitted themselves well at Manchester City, Wayne Rooney pontificating on his old club. Sacked with Argyle bottom of the Championship and possessing the worst defensive record in the country, a man who once said he wanted to manage Everton or United may be an expert on the gap between ambition and reality.

It has rarely been wider at Old Trafford. “The goal is to win the Premier League,” said Amorim, after Fulham ended United’s participation in the FA Cup. He may have been channelling Project 150, Mission 21 or any other Brailsford-friendly slogan but it was a misstep. Not unreasonably, Rooney suggested he sounded “naïve”.

Amorim’s response was instructive. “I’m not naive, that’s why I’m here, at 40 years old, coaching Manchester United,” he said. The mention of age may have been coincidental but Rooney turns 40 this year. His managerial career may already be over. Perhaps Amorim was trying to argue that he is not an innocent abroad, a man out of his depth.

Naïve, though, can feel an accurate accusation. Amorim’s reign feels based on a series of assumptions, forged in and by his hugely successful time in charge of Sporting CP, being tested in a very different environment as he tries to change the course of United’s leaky supertanker. It isn’t intrinsically naïve to play 3-4-3, but it may be with these players: there is still precious little evidence that it suits the United squad. Amorim’s dogmatic insistence on his favourite formation may bring a reward in the future. For now, however, it is a factor in defeats.

And if there is widespread sympathy for Amorim as he was plunged in mid-season to a job he would have preferred to take next summer, there may be a naivety about his attitude towards United’s supposed inferiors. It isn’t always true to say managers need Premier League experience, to judge them on the Allardyce-Pulis scale; but Amorim, like his sacked predecessor Erik ten Hag struggles against the division’s middle class. Many of them moneyed, all equipped with fine players and good managers, he has lost to six of them at Old Trafford already: Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth, Newcastle, Brighton, Crystal Palace and, on penalties, Fulham. The idea that United could win games because they were United, which was implicit to Rooney and his teammates, is increasingly outdated. Even when Amorim said a storm was coming, he underestimated the scale of it. He looks caught up in a hurricane.

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Man Utd’s defeat to Fulham means they have been beaten six times at Old Trafford by mid-table Premier League clubs under Ruben Amorim (Martin Rickett/PA Wire)

Meanwhile, as Marcus Rashford continues to look rejuvenated at Aston Villa, was there a naivety to exiling a man with a century of United goals while Amorim has a team who score too few? Amorim left himself short-staffed in attack, over-reliant on Rasmus Hojlund and Joshua Zirkzee. The Dane has regressed alarmingly in his reign. Suggesting Rashford was the answer all along, however, may be too easy, the sort of opinion that can be aired in a studio without considering the consequences.

“I was a pundit when I finished my career,” Amorim said on Sunday. “I know it’s really easy.” It may be a problem for him that the punditocracy is populated by the military-industrial complex of former United players. Last week, he was confronted with Roy Keane’s vituperative attack on Bruno Fernandes; Amorim, who argues his compatriot is the right leader for United, seems to have reason on his side in this particular dispute. The commentary will be a constant, though, much of it from players who achieved rather more in a United shirt than the current group.

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Amorim must also deal with the constant commentary from ex-United players criticising the club’s decline (AP)

Amorim surely still has his former teammate Cristiano Ronaldo in his corner, but the honeymoon period may be over. Initially the Portuguese could make some smiling but doom-laden statements – about relegation being a possibility or this being the worst side in United’s history – from the position of outsider and newcomer. The longer he is at Old Trafford, however, the more pertinent the question if he is the solution, or just another part of the problem.

There was a touch of self-awareness as he defended his bold aim. “Our goal is to win the Premier League,” he added. “Maybe it is not with me.” He only has a two-and-a-half year contract. It almost certainly will not be with him in that timescale, anyway. His superiors can talk about becoming champions, as though saying they have a plan constitutes a feasible strategy. They are not necessarily the same thing.

But naivety may not be confined to the youthful manager. United may have been naïve, too, in assuming Amorim could wave a magic wand. Fixing United is not that easy. For head coach and owners alike, the last few months ought to have proved a painful reality check.