Good Riddance – Ruben Amorim’s United Was a Vanity Project

Manchester United finally did the kind thing, the merciful thing, the one decision that did not arrive two months late and a hundred million pounds over budget. They sacked Ruben Amorim, and for once the club acted like it could still feel embarrassment.

Amorim came in with a sermon and a straight spine, convinced the world would bend to his system. Back three or bust, like it was sacred geometry, like the Premier League is a polite seminar where everyone agrees to learn. It is not. It is a bar fight with better lighting, and if you show up insisting the universe honor your preferred stance, you get punched in the mouth.

What made it unforgivable was not the back three itself. Plenty of smart people have made a back three sing. What made it unforgivable was the arrogance, the refusal to adjust even when the evidence piled up like unpaid invoices. Week after week, United looked like a team playing with handcuffs, terrified of making the wrong movement, waiting for permission to attack. Amorim called it identity. It looked more like vanity, the sort that demands the room admire you even as the party dies.

Then came the Europa League final, that long, miserable hour and a half where United chased a game and Amorim chased his own reflection. Down a goal, needing urgency, needing risk, he kept the extra defender on as if safeguarding the purity of the shape mattered more than saving the match. You could feel the moment turn, not because Tottenham were brilliant, but because United were timid by design. The most dangerous thing on the pitch was not a winger, or a runner in behind, it was the idea of Amorim admitting he might be wrong.

And the mouth on him, too. The way he talked about the squad, the youngsters, the future, like they were props in a one man show. That tone, the public scolding, the hints of blame, the performative toughness, it always reads the same way at a club like United. It is not leadership, it is self preservation. When the results go sour, he does not circle the wagons, he points at the nearest kid and starts writing his alibi.

The cruel joke is that the team showed him the answer anyway. Against Newcastle, when circumstances nudged them into a back four, United looked better. Not perfect, not suddenly reborn, but freer, more coherent, more willing to play football instead of diagramming it. They moved like a side with options, not a side trapped in someone else’s stubbornness. The players did not need a manifesto. They needed a plan that fit the bodies in the room.

So yes, good riddance. This is one of the most timely decisions INEOS have made yet, which is saying something, considering they have made more than their fair share of mistakes. They have treated key roles like disposable cutlery, and the Dan Ashworth fiasco is the kind of self inflicted wound that will keep getting dragged into daylight, especially given the reporting that he was not exactly pounding the table to hire Amorim in the first place.

But on this, they finally stopped the bleeding. Let Fletcher hold the wheel, let the club breathe, and let the next appointment be someone who understands a simple truth, tactics are not a religion, they are a tool. If you care more about being right than getting results, Old Trafford will eventually do what it always does. It will spit you out, and it will be right.