‘Ruben Amorim needs to be more flexible – the best bosses are able to switch between formations’ Former Manchester United defender voices concerns at manager’s tactics

There was great hope that Ruben Amorim could turn around Manchester United’s fortunes when he arrived as manager – so far, that hasn’t happened.

The Red Devils still sit firmly in the bottom half of the table after eight league defeats under the new boss, ahead of Sunday’s game with Arsenal.

Amorim switched Manchester United to a 3-4-3 formation upon his arrival, having had success with the system in Portugal with Sporting, and has stuck to it despite difficult results since.

Former defender's verdict

Former Manchester United defender Mikael Silvestre is not convinced that the system is currently working, believing it doesn’t suit the squad that Amorim has at his disposal.

“I think he could have changed his system a little bit,” the Frenchman said.

“We know that he wants to play a 3-4-3, we know that he was incredibly successful at Sporting playing that system, but I think he should have also realised that he doesn’t have the perfect squad to implement his preferred tactics and tweaked things a little bit.

“If we talk about the best managers or the top managers, they are able to switch from a back three to a back four or they change the formation completely.

“In modern football, you need to be flexible. You need to be able to adapt to injuries, and sometimes you have to adapt to an opponent that is superior to you, and when that happens, you normally want to match their system and focus on winning individual battles.

“I would have liked to have seen him show a little bit more tactical flexibility and given a few other approaches a go.”

Silvestre believes that Manchester United may currently perform better in a different system – they exited the FA Cup last weekend after a penalty shoot-out loss at home to Fulham.

“I don’t think the team would play worse if they were playing in a 4-3-3 or 4-4-2,” he said, speaking in association with yaysweepstakes.com. “Because we haven’t seen any improvement in the relationship between the players since Amorim has come in.

“The flow of the game is not there, the confidence of the players is not there, and that is a recipe for disaster because the mistakes start to stack up as the pressure builds.

“You can see that in every United performance at the moment, simple passes going astray. Against Fulham, technically, the first half performance was a disaster.”