Live, die, repeat. There is a familiar feeling of pathos in watching the latest Manchester United manager loom into view, carpetbag in hand, squaring those fragile shoulders, another face, another four-year plan, all these brave hopeful souls, like men in hats and coats heading off to Flanders.
It should be said United have been impressively efficient in reaching this point. Unsticking a premium European manager from a Champions League club in mid-season is no simple task. The announcement of Ruben Amorim as head-coach-in-waiting comes four days on from the sacking of Erik ten Hag. After the Weekend at Bernie’s absurdity of Ten Hag’s new contract, after the four-month zombie-stumble into the current season that has made Amorim’s own task so much harder, this has at least been surgical and decisive.
At which point it is tempting to see the start of another whodunnit. We know this story by now. We know it ends with a body. We know the optics, the chalk lines, the world-weary forensics team, the detective inspector in the rumpled overcoat. The key point of interest at this early stage is always the same. Exactly how, in what highly personalised way, are Manchester United going to do for this poor soul?
The pattern in the post-Ferguson era has been to tease out one particular quality, to reduce the incumbent to an exaggerated cartoon. It took four months for David Moyes to be recast as a boggle-eyed impostor, the salesman with an empty suitcase. By the end of his own time Ten Hag looked like a quietly doomed knight-errant, out there still stubbornly riding his horse backwards into battle. Louis van Gaal: amusingly insane Dutch robot. José Mourinho: toxic super-villain. Ralf Rangnick: unhappy driving instructor. This place is an enchanted island. It will stretch you thin, twist you out of shape.
The difference this time is the club has actually done something new. Against all odds, bravely hurling the rulebook out of the window, Manchester United have appointed the right person. This is a novel concept all round. It is also a genuine test of the institution. It has been easy to grow resigned to the structural problems at this sclerotic super-club, the feeling as managers come and go of watching someone constantly changing the steering wheel cover on a car with a snapped timing belt.
But results, efficiency and good choices also have a tangible effect. Too many of those who came before were clearly out of their depth, symptoms of wider executive incompetence rather than a challenge to it. Well, here we have, if not the coming man of European football, then a coming man. We have a ruthlessness and self-possession, plus a new administration who have so far talked a good game without actually playing one. The ingredients are actually in place for something different. How’s this going to work out then?
Listing the potential pros and cons is fairly easy at this stage. All the good stuff is Amorim. All the bad stuff is Manchester United. The manager’s basic CV is hugely impressive. Domestic trophies, a compellingly intense Champions League presence, a Sporting team still on the rise four years in.
The optics are also compelling, and optics matter here. Amorim looks great. Beard, hair, jawline, tailoring. The eyes? The eyes are piercing. He looks like the handsome, successful man in an advert for caffeine-powered shampoo.
We already hear constant references to his Porsche, his personal charm, the energy of his press conferences. This shouldn’t matter, but it does. We’re dealing with magic, voodoo, haunted houses, extreme qualities of perseverance and resilience. Anybody walking through those doors needs to come tooled up with a pretty robust sense of self.
There has already been a vast amount of tactical analysis of Amorim’s teams and of his imaginary teams of the future. He likes to play three central defenders. In an ideal world Lenny Yoro, Matthijs de Ligt and Lisandro Martínez could be in line to form a theoretical dream backline, which does presuppose all three are going to be fit and in form at the same time. Rúben? Meet Jonny Evans. He’s quite useful.
There is early concern over the identity of potential wing-backs, but Luke Shaw and Diogo Dalot is hardly the most notable bodge of recent Manchester United selections. Manuel Ugarte should be pleased to see his former mentor turning up. United have done something new here too. Reverse-engineer it. Sign the £50m holding midfielder. Then sign the right manager to actually make him work.
Otherwise phrases such as intensity, pressing, short passing and high defensive lines have swirled around. And yes, we have heard this before. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the Manchester United. Joining in the middle of the season doesn’t help either. But then, this just has to be a long-term project.
It is here that Amorim’s record comes into focus in other ways. Why is this a good fit? Try this. Sporting sold or released 30 professional players in his first seven months at the club. There is something almost sensually appealing about the idea of this process being enacted at Old Trafford. Oh yes. Raise the cleaver. Purge me daddy. Take that wire brush and scrape me down. Don’t talk about building, not yet. Just burn it all down.
Even better, Sporting traded at a combined profit of at least £200m across his four years in charge, while still moving forward, winning and getting better. This is not just impressive but overwhelmingly on point with where United are and how the owners work. This guy: he’s a one-man McKinsey. He’s Ineos in a €3,000 merino wool sports coat. He’s Kendall Roy striding the floor saying please leave your desks immediately, security will take your passes now.
This isn’t a criticism. It is instead necessary medicine at a club where filling the vast inherited hole at the heart of the midfield must go hand in hand with fixing the vast inherited hole at the heart of the institution. The astonishing amount of money spent on players endorsed by Ten Hag remains an affront to professional sports club administration. Somebody needs to fix this, recoup, regear.
United have played down the significance of their recently announced £113m losses. But this remains a flashing red light, just as a two-year (probably) absence from the start of the regeared Champions League is a massive structural failure. Nothing lasts for ever. No brand is an island. And that boat is already leaving the port.
In this sense the message for United should be very simple. Every step taken must run the same simple test. Is this breaking the cycle? Is this the opposite of what went before? Didn’t fix the roof? Do fix the roof. Didn’t appoint the best available hyper-competent young manager? Do it now.
By the same token, the United job will continue to pull everyone out of shape until someone breaks that pattern. Amorim has been ruthless, driven and smart in the milder air of Lisbon. United simply need to back him from here. Not so much financially but in methods, style and internal decision-making; to make it work, finally, for the right man in the wrong place.
