“As a professional coach I think it’s totally wrong”: Pep Guardiola slammed Ruben Amorim for substituting ONE particular player during Nottingham Forest game
Gary Neville and former Manchester United goalkeeper Tim Howard have criticised Ruben Amorim for repeating a mistake made by Erik ten Hag during his final days at Old Trafford.
After an encouraging start that saw Man Utd unbeaten in Amorim’s first three games in charge, the Red Devils have suffered two successive defeats.
Both of Arsenal’s goals in their 2-0 win last weekend came from set pieces. Nikola Milenkovic’s opening goal for Nottingham Forest in their 3-2 win on Saturday also came from a corner.
But when asked for their assessment of Amorim’s performance and management so far, former United goalkeeper Tim Howard and club legend Gary Neville took aim at the manager’s use of substitutes.
Howard focused on Amorim changing key parts of his defence midway through the game.
Neville explained why the policy is a mistake and a decision that did not serve the former Ten Hag boss well in his final days in Manchester.
“There’s still a long way to go,” Howard told NBC Soccer. “It’s been tough. I think what’s worrying – it’s not a big issue – is the substitutions for me. “Identical substitutions, changing two players from your defense in the 65th minute. There’s got to be other issues that need to be changed and fixed. “Sometimes you have to let the players suffer a little bit.
Removing a player almost relieves them of their responsibilities. You have ideas you want to convey, let them play. “He (Amorimi) follows the game, I think he follows the game in a different way. It shows what a long-term project it is.” Gary Neville responded: “When you keep changing players, when you keep changing the back three and taking five out, you are basically telling all those players – actually because you leave them out at the start of the game – that you are not going to be able to play in the back three – that you don’t trust them.
“Ten Hag continued to do this a few weeks ago. He kept changing defenders and midfielders and suddenly you end up with a completely different system and a completely different group of players on the pitch at the end of the game and you can never get consistency or stability. “I think there is an element of what Tim said.
We have to leave it on the pitch, they (the players) didn’t play that badly in the first half. “Obviously they were undermined by (Forest’s) set pieces, but the football wasn’t that bad overall.
Then you make two mistakes after half-time in the first 10 minutes and you get hurt, then you make changes and suddenly everything falls apart. “It looked very poor, really poor, it looked like a disaster at the end for United, no real form.
In the first half they weren’t great but at least they had some form.” What changes does Amorization bring? Amorim decided to replace Leny Yoro and Matthijs De Ligt with Noussair Mazraoui and Harry Maguire in the 65th minute against Forest.
Yoro’s replacement in particular shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, as Amorim recently said the young Frenchman was under “time constraints”. Essentially, Amorim said Yoro’s minutes would be strictly managed after his return from a four-month absence with a broken metatarsal.
Against Arsenal last week, Amorim replaced defender Tyrell Malacia at half-time (with Amad Diallo) before replacing Yoro with Maguire in the 59th minute.
Two changes to the five-man defence were made in the 56th minute against Everton, three changes to the backline before the hour mark against Bodo/Glimt, and one change at full-back (56th minute) against Ipswich Town.
As such, Amorim has yet to manage a Man Utd game in which he failed to break down the five-man defence with at least one substitution in the 65th minute or earlier.
Man Utd latest news – Martinez ‘bullied’ / Antony leaves Separately, Sky Sports pundit Jamie Redknapp claimed Lisandro Martinez was ‘scared’ during the defeat at Forest. “Martinez is being bullied, let’s be honest. Milenkovic will think it’s his lucky day. ‘I’m too big, too powerful, too strong for you,’ Redknapp told Sky Sports.
Former Man Utd defender Phil Jones also questioned the Argentine’s stance during his failed attempts to stop Milenkovic going for goal. “United will be really disappointed not to score with a header.
He [Martinez] is almost too obsessed with stopping him from scoring (instead of getting the header himself). “His body shape is probably not good, he needs to be a bit more on the side,” Jones said.
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