Ruben Amorim’s tenure as Manchester United head coach began its final unravelling via four words uttered in Friday’s media conference to preview the weekend trip to Leeds. “You are very smart,” was Amorim’s signoff to this correspondent’s last question regarding if the Portuguese had been informed of a change in the January transfer budget by Jason Wilcox, the director of football.
The question was asked in reaction to Amorim’s odd comment on Christmas Eve that he was beginning to “understand” the finance was not available to sign the footballers needed to “play a perfect 3-4-3”. Hearing this, the radar bleeped red – Amorim was clearly countenancing changing from a system he was quasi-obsessed with.
Asked in September if Sir Jim Ratcliffe, United’s minority owner and head of football policy, had suggested a switch of shape, the 40-year-old said: “No one. Not even the pope will [make me] change. This is my job. This is my responsibility. My life. So, I will not change that.” Amorim’s inflexibility appeared baffling and naive. The evidence? Last season’s record low 15th-place finish in the Premier League and the equally pathetic 1–0 Europa League final capitulation to Tottenham. And for Wilcox and Omar Berrada, the chief executive, this lack of adaptability was a key factor in Amorim’s sacking, according to club sources.
From the moment Amorim joined United in November 2024, Wilcox and Berrada both believed that once the players bedded in under the coach, there was an agreement from him to change the side’s configuration as well as style to an attack-focused approach in line with United’s storied heritage of the Busby Babes and Sir Alex Ferguson’s thrill-a-second teams. As an illustration, last week’s 1-1 draw with Wolves is pointed to at the club. Rob Edwards’ side arrived at Old Trafford with only two points and left with a further one after Amorim reverted to a 3-4-3 formation despite having switched to a 4-2-3-1 formation for Boxing Day’s 1-0 victory over Newcastle. And the mode was dour, rather than front-foot and on Wolves’ throat.
Within United there was further consternation at Amorim’s downplaying of the academy; he recently criticised the 18-year-old defender Harry Amass for “struggling” on loan at Sheffield Wednesday, and pointed to Chido Obi, also 18, for not always starting for United’s under-21s side. Factor in how underwhelming comments about senior players, including Patrick Dorgu and Benjamin Sesko, were also not received well by United’s hierarchy, and this added to the critical mass that led to Monday’s removal.
Zoom out, however, and the wider picture of Amorim’s axing shows a morass at the club for which Berrada and Wilcox are also responsible. As highly remunerated executives tasked with ensuring the right man is in place to lead United on the field, at the training ground and in public, questions have to be asked regarding how they got Amorim’s appointment and subsequent incumbency so wrong.
Wilcox can be partly excused as Dan Ashworth was the director of football when Amorim arrived from Sporting 14 months ago. Yet as the then technical director charged with the team’s “game model”, he surely had a say in signing off the appointment. Ratcliffe also trusted him enough to interview potential replacements for Erik ten Hag in early summer 2024, when Berrada and Ashworth were yet to start their roles at the club.
Club sources insist Wilcox regularly gave Amorim feedback regarding the team and that the Portuguese became less receptive to this, which circles back to Amorim’s performance on Friday, which presaged his scattergun, indiscreet post-Leeds media conference on Sunday. It was tough not to read Amorim stating he came to United as the “manager” not “head coach”, could “move on” when his contract ended in “18 months”, and that if criticism from “Gary Neville” could not be ignored “we need to change the club”, as a premeditated back-me-or-sack-me move. If so, this was strategic from a man who had clearly filed the bad news about the change in the winter budget with other observations he gathered regarding the Wilcox-Berrada axis having serious reservations about him.
These concerns were in place before Amorim’s outburst on Sunday, as underlined by the Guardian’s reporting in December regarding United’s reluctance to sell Kobbie Mainoo, who had long been out of favour under Amorim. The 20-year-old midfielder, currently injured, has yet to start in the Premier League this season but the hierarchy always believed he could convince a future head coach that he is worth a regular place. Mainoo will hardly be disenchanted, then, to see his nemesis depart.
Amorim was backed via a £250m summer spend, primarily on Bryan Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha, Sesko, and Senne Lammens. Missing from this list of three forwards and a goalkeeper is the midfielder Amorim’s squad dearly needed going into this season. Again United insist privately that Amorim was in full agreement with the decision to prioritise a trio of attackers over a holding player. Yet with Bruno Fernandes, a natural No 10, in situ, it seemed then – and very much still now – that only one of Cunha or Mbeumo were required, thus freeing funds for, say, Brighton’s No 6, Carlos Baleba, who had been a United target.
All of the above added up to Amorim’s culling. He follows in the path of David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, José Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, and Ten Hag in being a permanent No 1 unable to tame the hydra-headed beast that is United in the post-Ferguson era. He departs with a 39% win rate and a record of 1.24 points per game in Premier League matches, having lost more matches than he won in 2025, and tasting defeat in precisely a third of his games overall, the worst of any permanent United manager since Frank O’Farrell in the 1970s.
When United kick off at Burnley on Wednesday, Darren Fletcher will be their caretaker manager. An unkind moniker his predecessor in the hot seat acquired was “Ruben Interim”. After being sacked after only 14 months in charge, the likable son of Lisbon survived barely longer than a temporary appointment.
