Manchester United’s’ eighth-placed Premier League finish last season was their worst in the competition’s 32-year history.
The 14 defeats they suffered in that 2023/24 campaign were their most and while Erik ten Hag was able to cling onto the manager’s job last summer, thanks largely to his FA Cup final win over neighbour’s Manchester City, he was dismissed in October following a 2-1 defeat at West Ham, their fourth reverse in nine league games.
After a brief caretaker stint for Ruud van Nisetlrooy, Ruben Amorim was appointed as the new Manchester United boss in November as the 40-year-old Portuguese became the latest man to be tasked with turning the club around.
Ruben Amorim has snatched an unwanted Manchester United record away from Jose Mourinho
Ranked by FourFourTwo at no.11 in our list of the best managers in the world last year, Amorim arrived from Portuguese side Sporting, where he had won two Primeira Liga titles and earned a reputation as one of Europe’s best young managers.
But with Amorim in the job for just three months so far, he will be realising just how big the task is, with the club moored in the bottom half of the Premier League table, currently in 13th place and already 11 points off the European places.
The Red Devils suffered a 2-0 Old Trafford defeat to Crystal Palace at the weekend, which saw Amorim tick off an unwanted landmark.
That defeat was already his fifth home loss in the Premier League, which means that in three months Amorim already has more Old Trafford league defeats than Jose Mourinho managed during his two-and-a-half year tenure in charge of the club.
Mourinho was appointed by the Red Devils in May 2016 as the club continued to find their feet again following the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson three years earlier. David Moyes lasted less than a season, while Louis van Gaal managed two years, as the club finished seventh, fourth and then fifth in the Premier League.
Mouninho’s team at Old Trafford was by no means the finished article, but he did win the Europa League and League Cup, but his side never flirted with the bottom half of the table.
Amorim has overseen home Premier League defeats to Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth, Newcastle, Brighton and now Palace, with these five home losses coming far quicker than the Red Devils fared under Moyes and Ten Hag.
It is clear the club are in a transitional period, with minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe at the helm for his first transfer window in the summer, amid huge cost-cutting programme and a battle against PSR limits.
In FourFourTwo’s opinion, Manchester United are a huge tanker that will take some time to turn around. Will Ratcliffe have the patience to let Amorim’s ideas bed in, or will the vicious cycle the club find themselves in continue?
