The teeming rain never assists the image of a failing football manager and there have been times when it has proved career-defining. For many, Steve McClaren will always be the Wally with the Brolly.
But the sight of a rain-drenched Ruben Amorim, hair plastered across his forehead, fiddling with little tactical magnets on some kind of board which he’d laid across his knees in the Grimsby Town away dugout, really took bad optics to another level, as his Manchester United team humiliated themselves.
Close examination of the said tactical tool, brought out by Amorim as United trailed their League Two opponents 2-0, raised more questions than answers. The ‘players’ didn’t actually seem to be properly lined up against each other.
By the time United’s excruciating night had descended into an interminable penalty shootout, the magnet board had been put away and Amorim, who you rather hoped would have been a motivating presence, was hiding in the back of the dugout.
Perhaps this bleak occasion on the east coast – United’s first ever defeat by fourth-tier opposition – represents the line in the sand for Amorim’s United. A ritual humiliation which will shake this lavishly assembled side out of its lethargy and see the 40-year-old show us what he was supposed to have been made of. But I really wouldn’t bet on it.
This United team is his and his alone now, but nine months after his arrival there are flaws at its very core. The lacks of a serviceable goalkeeper, of a reliable defensive unit, of a midfielder with the lungs to put in a shift whilst ‘seeing the pictures’ ahead of him as Graeme Souness, the outstanding exponent of the central player’s art, always calls it.
As Manchester United were crashing out of the League Cup to League Two Grimsby Town, Ruben Amorim merely fiddled with some magnets on a tactics board
It harked back to the infamous night at Wembley for Steve McClaren – when he became the Wally with the Brolly, as coined by Daily Mail Sport
And then there is the biggest problem of all. Amorim’s obsessive adherence to the 3-4-3 system which his United squad is manifestly not equipped for. The irony of that dugout scene is that we all know precisely how he will position his magnets, regardless of score or opponent.
Amorim’s reluctance to compromise on his 3-4-3 point was something Liverpool discovered when considering him as Jurgen Klopp’s successor a year ago and opting for Arne Slot instead, by some distance.
We’ve been here before in August with a malfunctioning Manchester United. I was at the MK Dons stadium on the late summer’s night, 11 years ago, when the team Louis van Gaal had just taken over were defeated 4-0 by that third-tier side.
Van Gaal was full of his usual bombast in the little press room afterwards – declaring that the result did not surprise him one bit.
‘It is difficult for the fans to believe in philosophy of Louis van Gaal but you have to do that because I am here to build up a new team and a new team in not built in one month,’ declared the man they called King Louis.
But the significant different is that Van Gaal was tactically flexible. He hinted, on that night in 2014, that he was considering changing his system to integrate the incoming Angel di Maria who he felt would be transformative, and proved to be anything but.
The worry has to be whether Amorim actually has it in him to turn around a club still in the grips of such desperate struggle. I was unpopular among many cleaving to the idea of him being some kind of saviour when writing in October last year that his trophy haul – two Portuguese league titles in four years and three Portuguese League Cups – did not look like the CV of a man being asked to undertake the most complicated club job in world football. But I would venture to say that my argument still stands.
Wednesday night represented Amorim’s 19th defeat from 45 games at the helm. He has presided over more losses than wins (17) in his months running United and has a win ratio which is by far the worst of any United manager since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013. His enigmatic offering in Blundell Park’s press room was about as impressive as the dugout scenes had been.
Grimsby inflicted yet more humiliation on a team that cannot seem to buy a win at the moment
It was a glorious night for the League Two club – but how on earth had they managed to make United look so ordinary?
When his team needed him most during the closing stages of the match, Amorim was seen hiding in the dugout and was unable to watch the penalty shootout
Amorim’s repeated assertion that his United players ‘spoke really loud’ in defeat created the need for clarification but when asked for one, he obfuscated. ‘I think it’s really clear what they spoke, so let’s move on from this day,’ he said. He was certainly taking no personal responsibility for what his expensively assembled squad had delivered.
After that League Cup thumping at Milton Keynes in 2014, a United squad with British record signing Di Maria in their ranks faced Burnley, as they do again this weekend. The improvement was not immediate.
United drew that game 0-0 and the Argentine was given an inhospitable welcome by one of the Premier League’s most physical sides. But van Gaal did oversee an improvement which took them to a fourth placed finish, 17 points behind champions Chelsea, with victories over Arsenal and Liverpool in a sparkling autumn run.
It is an outcome that Amorim would certainly take right now, though there is a mountain to climb if they are to attain even that level. We still wait for a Manchester United manager who looks remotely capable of leading the team from what has been a hard decade of struggle.
The image of the latest incumbent, positioning his magnets in the rainstorm, may prove to be a defining one.
