Ruben Amorim hoping to see benefits of midweek off when Man Utd visit Liverpool
United have so far struggled to adapt to Amorim’s 3-4-3 system.
Ruben Amorim is hoping to see the benefits of a rare midweek off when Manchester United travel to Premier League leaders Liverpool on Sunday.
United have so far struggled to adapt to Amorim’s 3-4-3 system, with Monday’s 2-0 home defeat to Newcastle their fourth in a row in all competitions, and sixth in their last eight, as they have slumped to 14th place in the Premier League.
With Liverpool cruising at the top of the table, Sunday’s match appears to be Amorim’s toughest assignment yet, but he has at least had longer to prepare with this the first week without a midweek fixture since he replaced Erik ten Hag in mid-November.
“We have more time to train, two days in a row, to train with the team,” Amorim said. “I think that can help us given the environment, it’s a difficult moment because we are losing too many matches. We are going to face the best team this year.
“With training, we feel more the team, we prepare more the team and we want to improve the performance compared to the last game.”
Asked what he had focused on with his players, Amorim simply said: “Everything.
“The small things, the transitions, you can see the lack of possession in the last game in the first half. The control of the game, everybody was so anxious, so nervous.
“The crosses are really important, set pieces. It’s hard to say one thing, we work on a lot of things. The possession, the way we control the tempo of the game, the understanding where you should play was the main focus this week.”
The January transfer window has opened but it is thought United need to sell before they can fund any new signings. Amorim knows most of the answers to United’s problems need to be found within the squad that he has.
“We need time to work on the basic things, it is the only way,” he said. “Of course, when the window is open we can try to do something and we will try to do something but in the next weeks we are going to have more time to train and we have to improve.
“That’s the only way because we had a lot of games without training. Now we will have more space to grow. You can see the context is worse in the moment because we had a lot of losses, we have to manage everything.
“The solution is to work hard. We cannot change the last game. We can evaluate it and work on it but we cannot change the last game. So let’s focus on the next one and work hard during the week.”
United have not won at Anfield since 2016, and have scored only once in their last nine visits, a run that has included 7-0 and 4-0 defeats.
Given the recent trajectories of both sides, predictions of similar scorelines are being made but Amorim – who saw his side score two late goals to snatch a 2-1 win away to Manchester City last month – insisted his team could still take three points on Sunday.
“In football, one game, anything can happen,” he said. “If you talk about the season then almost every time the best win, in the moment they are better than us but we can win any game.
“We have to focus not on the context but on the performance, what we have to do, simple things. We need to improve the simple things for these kind of games and we have the responsibility to win the game.”
