The early steps in learning any new skill are often accompanied by silly mistakes.
Learning a new language involves getting your words mixed up, struggling to learn grammatical rules and butchering the accent. When you pick up an instrument there’s the patch where your fingers struggle to keep up with the musical flow. If you want to take up stand-up comedy, you first have to accept you will spend a long time being very bad at stand-up comedy. To paraphrase a well-known cartoon sidekick, “Being bad at something is the first towards learning how to be good at something.”
Which brings us to Ruben Amorim’s Manchester United. The Portuguese is attempting to get his players to unlearn a collection of bad playing habits while teaching them a set of new routines. Six games into his tenure, mistakes are commonplace. Players are prone to moments of indecision and overreaction. Confidence wavers. But for the most part, this team are trying to push forward and take on something new.
United were not particularly impressive in the first half of the 2-1 win over FC Viktoria Plzen on Thursday. The pace at which Amorim’s side moves with the ball does not match the speed at which they lose it. There are sizeable periods of matches where opponents can defend in a compact shape, safe in the knowledge that United attacks can eventually fizzle out of their own accord. Plzen were no different, pressing well in phases, but rarely troubled by a United attack that passed the ball in a ponderous fashion and rarely attempted to run in behind.
Joshua Zirkzee had a difficult night for United (Michal Cizek/AFP via Getty Images)
They were also helped protected by Joshua Zirkzee’s difficult first-half performance. The Dutchman’s hold-up play and link-up skills shone in Serie A last season, but he appears short on confidence and consistency in a United shirt. The game’s opening 10 minutes saw the striker lose possession after attempting to flick the ball around the corner. Bruno Fernandes would make a cynical foul to stop the resultant Plzen counter-attack, and from the free-kick after that Andre Onana would collide and hurt Casemiro.
Errors have had a worrying domino effect for United in 2024. Amorim has spoken of a need to eliminate sloppiness from players when they have the ball. He also wants them to be calmer and braver before making crucial decisions. Trying to teach these lessons with minimal time training time is difficult.
Mistakes are inevitable; sometimes they are small, like a first touch that causes the ball to bobble and slow down play for a fraction of a second. Sometimes they are larger, such as Onana’s hospital pass to Matthijs de Ligt early in the second half. The goalkeeper attempted to thread a pass between Matej Vydra and Pavel Sulc and kickstart a new phase of play…
But his pass was loose, allowing Sulc to best the Dutch centre-back.
He then cut the ball back to Vydra.
And United were a goal down.
It’s the sort of mistake Amorim might treat as a “teachable moment” but United fans will want these early dips and periods of inconsistency to be small troughs ahead of an eventual climb.
There are glimmers of change in these six most recent matches. Amorim has acknowledged some of the long-standing weaknesses of his squad and made changes to better address them. United had spent 50 minutes at the Doosan Arena unable to get their Czech opponents to turn around and sprint back to their own goal. Three substitutions in rapid sequence corrected that, with Marcus Rashford coming off for Rasmus Hojlund, Antony replacing Tyrell Malacia and Mason Mount swapping for Zirkzee. A minute after that, United found their equaliser, Hojlund bundling in a rebound after Amad Diallo’s dribble-and-shoot effort down the right.
Amorim refined things further in the 81st minute, bringing Alejandro Garnacho and Manuel Ugarte on for Diogo Dalot and Casemiro. Each change brought his team closer to a positive result.
Hojlund brought a more direct running threat to the centre-forward role. Mount improved the side’s ability to press from the front. Antony offered width and willingness to stretch the play. Garnacho bolstered United’s counter-attacking options, while Ugarte protected teammates in the middle. It all built to a critical mass.
Amad and Fernandes were improved by the additional passing options as the game reached its conclusion. The winner came from a clever free-kick routine between Fernandes and Hojlund. A well-disguised pass from the captain found the Denmark international, who held off his defender to take the pass with one foot, before spinning and shooting with the other.
GO DEEPER
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It wasn’t a pleasant experience from minute one to minute 90, but United earned a win and are now seventh in the league phase of the Europa League. As for Amorim, he can see signs of progress.
“The speed improved,” said Amorim. “I told the players we need more movement in front because they have to feel we are a danger. We changed a little bit of our game and the players from the bench also helped. We improved not just the way we play, but also the speed of the game.”
Amorim and his two managerial predecessors have strung together a shaky sequence of six matches, but there is enough to suggest United might make a deep run in the tournament, even if only the most optimistic fan would consider this team among the favourites to qualify for the Champions League in 2025-26.
Not every member of the 2024-25 squad is well suited for what Amorim wants to do, but there’s a growing sense of who can best contribute. Amorim’s United can be prone to the occasional error, but the head coach appears dedicated to finding proper solutions.
(Top photo: Gabriel Kuchta/Getty Images)
