Somewhere along the line, the lap of honour became a lap of appreciation. Yet Manchester United still felt like pioneers on Sunday, ending their season with a lap of apology. Ruben Amorim addressed the crowd in contrition after a calamity of a campaign. After spending much of his first few months at Old Trafford delivering doom-laden predictions and talking his team down, he at least provided a shift in tone. “Today, after this disaster season, I want to tell you the good days are coming,” he said.
It prompts a host of questions. When? How? Why? Really? And if none appears to have an easy answer, there is also a question of how Amorim would define the good days. Some would say United have not experienced them since Sir Alex Ferguson retired. Yet compared to their terrible 2024-25 – to borrow another adjective Amorim used – Erik ten Hag’s 2022-23 campaign, which brought a third-placed finish and a trophy feels good, even if it did not prove, as it then looked, a platform for further progress. Now, relatively speaking, coming 15th means a 14th-place finish could qualify as improvement, if not good days.
