THE smiling face of Ruben Amorim and the promise of a bright new future is supposed to be giving everyone at Manchester United a lift.
Unfortunately, the public face of the Red Devils hides a very different story behind the scenes.
One which could have the new boss pining for Lisbon before he knows it.
The ramifications of a disastrous summer for the club under new leadership are still being felt.
Not least among the rank-and-file staff, who are seeing their positions eroded and, in the worst-case scenario, extinguished altogether with 250 redundancies.
They understandably wonder if they are collateral damage of decisions by the ex-manager and woeful recruitment.
Even Sir Alex Ferguson has not been safe with his £2million-a-year ambassadorial role axed.
Those who championed new part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s arrival as having put a spring in everyone’s step have lost their bounce.
He took control of 27.7 per cent of the club from the Glazer family last February, with the mandate to run the football operation while the American owners sat back and continued to milk the cash cow.
He brought in trusted wingman Sir Dave Brailsford although, to this day, nobody at the club knows quite what his skills are or what he does, rather than telling everyone what is wrong.
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One of his first complaints was the state of the IT department’s office at the training ground, which he did not realise was actually an MUTV studio.
The handling of former gaffer Erik ten Hag has leapt to the top of the charts regarding bungling in 11 years since Fergie retired and the bar is already pretty high.
To cut a long story short, they wanted him out, couldn’t find anyone to replace him, asked him to stay, extended his contract, spent millions on a new coaching team at the Theatre of Dreams and then spent another £172.1MILLION in the transfer market.
Just 11 games into the new season, the hierarchy decided they would once again return to square one at great expense, with pay-offs for all those going out and a release clause fee for the new bloke coming in.
Now, questions are being asked internally at the highest level about how they got to this position, with fingers metaphorically pointed across the boardroom table.
Sir Jim has effectively washed his hands of it all, having claimed when questions about Ten Hag’s future intensified, that it wasn’t on him to provide the answers as they had a new senior management team in place to do all that.
That team includes Omar Berrada, the CEO poached from rivals Manchester City, who were not exactly tying him to the Etihad’s gates to stop him from going, and Dan Ashworth, the sporting director, who was good lower down the league on a budget.
Then there is Jason Wilcox, the technical director, who is supposed to influence how United play now.
If he’s already had input, goodness knows what he has been saying.
By Charlie Wyett
RUBEN AMORIM would have preferred to leave Lisbon in a blaze of glory after winning a third Primeira Liga title.
Yet football does not work like that. And in what was surely his final game before taking charge of Manchester United, Amorim prepared to say his goodbyes at a half-empty Estadio Jose Alvalade in a League Cup quarter-final against Nacional.
Sporting won 3-1 thanks to second-half goals by captain Morten Hjulmand and Viktor Gyokeres, who scored two.
Luis Esteves pulled back for Madeira-based Nacional.
The stadium will be a good deal more lively on Tuesday when Manchester City are here for a Champions League match — although Amorim should by then have his feet firmly under his desk at Old Trafford.
Liverpool and Aston Villa were both interested in Europe’s most sought-after coach. Even City could have been a possible destination post-Pep Guardiola.
Yet the United job is one Amorim, 39, could not turn down — even if not everyone saw it that way at Sporting last night.
There is clearly a huge split in the Portuguese club’s fan base over their coach leaving at this stage of the season with many believing he should have seen the job through.
Yet Amorim, along with the three-man coaching team who are expected to follow him, leaves a club in a much better state than when he arrived here in 2020.
Inside the stadium, there was applause — albeit muted — when his name was read out before the game along with the line-ups.
And there did not appear to be any jeers when Amorim shuffled out from the tunnel awkwardly towards the dugout.
So, while his departure is hard to take for some, none of the fans will forget his legacy.
This is a club which is back as the dominant force in Portugal. Even this term, Sporting have won their first nine league games, scoring 30 goals and conceding just two.
They are also eighth in the Champions League table, which is one hell of an effort.
In contrast, Lisbon was not exactly hit by League Cup fever last night.
Amorim made lots of changes, which saw Sporting’s star man Gyokeres, the former Coventry striker, start on the bench.
There was, however, a first appearance in six weeks for former Tottenham winger Marcus Edwards.
He is certainly one player who has been transformed by Amorim since arriving at the club from Vitoria in 2022 and will be sorry to see the coach leave.
While he changed his team, Amorim stuck with his tried and trusted formation of a back three.
It will certainly be something Manchester United’s fans will have to get used to over the coming months.
But looking at the Premier League table, none of them will be complaining about the change.
All will undoubtedly have had a significant influence on the summer spending splurge, which failed to raise the team’s performance.
The most bizarre transfer was the £36.5m paid to Bologna for Joshua Zirkzee.
Ten Hag didn’t want him. He arrived a stone overweight and has scored ONE goal.
Apparently a metatarsal problem showed up on Leny Yoro’s medical ahead of a £42m spend.
Lo and behold, in his second game of pre-season, he got a metatarsal injury and has only just started training during the current international break.
Then the question is why would Bayern Munich let go of defenders Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui at a combined total of £51.3m up front, rising to a possible £59.5m, if they were that good?
Only Manuel Ugarte, the £42.2m signing from Paris Saint-Germain, is looking close to being a United player, yet even he does not look a step up from Scott McTominay, who left for Napoli and is ripping it up.
The spending means Amorim’s ability to do anything in the next transfer window will be restricted unless he can shift players, but who is going to buy anyone from Old Trafford right now?
All this time behind the scenes, the ship is far from happy, with staff unceremoniously thrown overboard in a penny-pinching purge.
It has even led to chefs pulling their hair out to try to cover matchday hospitality on reduced budgets and staffing levels.
Long-standing employees feel like they have been cast aside like rubbish.
The most alarming story came when a staff member with 25 years at the club behind him was told he was being given a commemorative watch for his service.
He was then told to pick it up at main reception, where a security guard handed it to him in a polythene bag.
That’s a picture to show the grandkids in the future.
An award-winning journalist is currently tasked with shadowing Sir Jim and his new regime for a book on how they turned United around.
It may end up being a work of fiction.
WHEN Ruben Amorim took charge of Sporting Lisbon in March 2020, one club official compared their situation to the “walking dead”, writes Jordan Davies.
Optimism and hope was at an all-time low.
But the Amorim-effect was almost instantaneous, guiding the Portuguese sleeping giants to their first league title for 19 years in 2020/21, losing just once and only conceding 20 goals.
Since then, Sporting have lifted another league title in 2023/24 – as well as two League Cups – and currently sit top with nine wins from nine this term.
He may be young, but Amorim already has an eye for rebuilding and revitalising fallen super powers with his infectious charisma and intense tactical philosophy that hardly ever wavers.
The “walking dead” at Manchester United must be praying for a similar sort of revival.
And they may just get it from one of the most talented young coaches on the continent – a man accustomed to breathing new life back into crumbling institutions such as Old Trafford.
Amorim has spent the last decade dreaming of one day gracing England’s Premier League, such was his admiration for an ex-United boss in Jose Mourinho growing up.
Often nicknamed ‘Mourinho 2.0’, Amorim spent a week with his coaching idol in an internship capacity at United’s Carrington training base in 2018, going on to cite him as his “reference point”.
United should not be expecting a mini-Mourinho, as Amorim said himself: “Mourinho is one of a kind. There won’t be another Mourinho. Mourinho is unique.”
And yet, you cannot help but compare the two.
For all the mismanagement in the Old Trafford hot seats over the years, this would be a real get – finally a slap in the face United’s Prem rivals have no answer for.
