Systems evangelist Amorim meets Slot’s simpler pragmatism at Anfield | Barney Ronay
Share:
Manchester United’s new manager is increasingly looking like an odd hire, especially compared to the successful succession at their arch rivals. Perhaps the most striking aspect of Ruben Amorim’s time at Manchester United is the physical effect of the job, the altered optics. Amorim turned up at Old Trafford looking like a handsome pirate: the jawline, the seigneurial smile, the elite Euro-cardigan styling, the sense that here is someone who smells at all times of high-spec automobile upholstery.
![[Barney Ronay]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2022/11/21/Barney_Ronay.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Seven weeks in he has the air of a doomed royal hostage, shuttled joylessly from corridor to touchline by unseen handlers. The smile has fractured, the shoulders have drooped. Most recently United’s head coach has developed a habit of dropping down on to his haunches mid-match and staring deep into the Old Trafford turf, as though searching for a) a contact lens; and b) the remaining fragments of his own shredded and tender soul.
![[Ruben Amorim crouches]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/18216581001056c3572de5eac82effc5131aa432/0_80_2394_1436/master/2394.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Welcome to the meat grinder. Amorim has gone almost overnight from notions of perfectibility, systems, control, six-month unbeaten runs, to looking like a catalogue knitwear model having an existential crisis, bowed under the weight of all that scar tissue, the ghosts in the eaves, the voices through the wall.
![[Ryan Gravenberch attacks for Liverpool]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/34a7bc4ac549e28877336996fe95ccc16e1f4913/0_198_4322_2594/master/4322.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
And so, on to Anfield then. The real problem for Manchester United before Sunday’s trip to face the league leaders isn’t the run of four straight defeats with no goals scored in the past three. It isn’t the fact their recent results against these opponents include 3-0, 7-0, 4-0 and 5-0 defeats. It isn’t the prospect of pretty much every part of this ghost ship beginning to rattle and squeak on its hinges, from tearful new additions to faded celebrity time-servers.
