Ruben Amorim told us at the end of last season that the good times are coming. His Manchester United side just finished the 2024-25 season in 15th place with a minus-10 goal differential while earning half of hated-rivals Liverpool, who just finished as champions.
But optimism was in the air. The season was done, United had won their final home game of the season and the general consensus was this team would improve with a full summer under Amorim as he prepared the squad for their first full season together.
Six matches into this new Premier League season, Manchester United sits in 14th place with a minus-4 goal differential. They are coming off of a 3-1 embarrassment at Brentford that occurred only two weeks after a 3-0 dismantling at Manchester City. Sprinkled in between was a scrappy 2-1 win over Chelsea, which included scoring two goals with a man advantage before a nervy second half following a Casemiro red card.
While Manchester United’s current position in the table is technically better, I don’t think I’ll be holding my breath until the good times roll through.
Amorim’s resume at Manchester United includes nine wins in 33 Premier League matches and a piss-poor showing in the Europa League Final against Tottenham – a side who were smart to upgrade managers over the summer in spite of winning a long-desired trophy.
He has been backed both financially and in a disciplinary sense. He has had a summer to better implement his system after his mid-season appointment forced him to white-knuckle it through multiple competitions.
I mused on The Busby Babe’s Twitter account following the Brentford loss, “at what point will it be decided that giving the manager time has turned into wasting everyone else’s?” After sleeping on it, I think leadership needs to hurry up and get to that point.
United don’t score goals even though they’ve spent embarrassing sums of money on forwards. And, even though they play with an extra defender on the pitch, they concede goals with frustrating regularity and are one of four teams in the league yet to keep a clean sheet.
This isn’t sustainable. This isn’t acceptable.
I have empathy for this being an extremely difficult job. And I have empathy for the fact that he was dealt a difficult hand, having to clean up the mess left by Erik ten Hag and his predecessors. Amorim also willingly accepted the job. He was not forced at gunpoint.
He regularly concedes that the results have not been good enough, and he knows his job is on the line if the team doesn’t get results. Yet, he doesn’t make changes to try and get a different result – how does that famous quote about insanity go again?
It’s nearly impossible to imagine this improving enough to overcome the stench of the first 33 games let alone push forward to a league title by 2028. The vibes are catastrophically bad, and it’s time for leadership to eat some humble pie.
It’s time to make the change.
MD6 Vibes Reading
Now, the Manchester United 2025-26 Vibes-O-Meter is a very specific device developed with the most advanced science available to us: our gut.
The Vibes-O-Meter uses a scale of 1-10 based on the contemporary highs and lows of the Post-Fergie era; one being the feelings immediately after losing to Brentford 4-0 in 2022, and 10 being the feelings after signing Bryan Mbeumo (really had to force a good feeling around a match involving Brentford since we’ve been so poor against them).
0/10
Positive Influences
- Benjamin Sesko scored!
Negative Influences
- * Gestures at everything *
- The vibes have been so chaotic over the last two weeks that I failed to read the meter!
