Man Utd legend Rio Ferdinand insists Ruben Amorim is “playing Russian Roulette with his job” after refusing to change his tactics.
The Red Devils made a poor start to the new season, with just two wins from their first six games, and there were concerns that Man Utd were heading for a similar finish to last campaign, where they ended up 15th in the Premier League.
However, victories over Sunderland and Liverpool saw them win back-to-back matches for the first time since Amorim joined, while another win over Brighton on Saturday made it three in a row.
Man Utd are now up to sixth in the Premier League table with a bit of a feel-good factor around Old Trafford after months of misery.
Amorim had stubbornly refused to move away from his preferred formation and tactics earlier in the season and it now seems to be paying off.
However, Ferdinand reckons Amorim is “playing Russian Roulette with his job” by being so inflexible about the way he wants his team to play.
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Ferdinand said on his YouTube channel: “I admire it to a certain extent. But, like I said, I think he is playing Russian Roulette with his job. I don’t think he’s changed drastically, he’s just tweaked.
“That’s what a lot of fans were asking for. Just tweak what you’ve got. Maybe don’t be so much on the front foot, maybe be a bit more conservative at times when we haven’t got the ball.
“You can’t press, press, press for 90 minutes, unless you’re an absolute beast of a team. PSG do it. This manager couldn’t do that with this squad.
“That’s just sometimes how the cookie crumbles. We might look back in six months and, say Man United finish in the Champions League or something like that, he’ll probably sit there confidently and go, ‘Well, if I did change, I probably would be out of a job because I have been doing things that are alien to me’.”
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Gary Neville insists he was “a little worried” that Amorim had lost the belief of the players a few weeks ago but now believes the Man Utd head coach has survived the “month of reckoning” at Old Trafford.
Neville said on Sky Sports: “A few weeks ago I was a little bit worried that the players didn’t believe in Ruben Amorim’s system. That maybe there was an element of not winning matches and starting to question and listening to the noise that all of us – including myself – had added to that.
“But one thing that’s been absolutely not in doubt when you speak to people around the club is that they really like him as a person, and that does count for a lot. Because I think there’s no doubt – he’s not lost the dressing room in terms of spirit and energy and how they feel towards him.
“I think they want to play for him, they’re desperate to win and I think you’ve seen that coming together in the last week. I mean, winning at Anfield in any season is special, but for Ruben Amorim to win at Anfield when it was so unexpected I think has given them such a big lift.
“We’ll look forward to the game next week against Nottingham Forest, Tottenham away the week after – there’s still a big job to do in the next month. But I felt it was a month of reckoning. If it had started badly last week against Liverpool it could have gone a different way but it feels very different, it feels like the momentum is with them a little bit and the spirit is good.”
