If nothing else, Ruben Amorim does not try to sugarcoat things. The manager who had said he had perhaps the worst team in Manchester United’s history stood in the middle of the Old Trafford pitch and said: “Today, after this disaster season.” The disaster season: piercing as some of the criticisms of a campaign where United had fared worse than had seemed possible, few were as pithy as Amorim’s description. The rest of his message marked a real shift in tone. “I want to tell you the good days are coming,” he added.
That was May. In Amorim’s own timescale, therefore, the good days are arriving, beginning now. There is a sense they have to: not merely for Amorim, who was probably guilty of smiling exaggeration when he said on the pre-season tour of the United States that he wanted to stay for 20 years but is actually in the last two of his contract, but for the club.
