Trust the process! Ruben Amorim is following Mikel Arteta's blueprint for rebuilding Man Utd in bid to replicate Arsenal's resurgence

Both Arteta and Amorim faced the daunting task of inheriting a mess at a huge club in the middle of the season, with barely any time to get their ideas across to their players on the training ground due to the unrelenting schedule. Arteta's first season in charge with Arsenal was full of frustrating results and he did not make immediate progress when he succeeded Emery in December 2019, winning just one of his opening eight league games, including failing to beat Burnley, Sheffield United and Crystal Palace.

But the one game he did win in that spell was against United and it was one of the best performances of his first season in charge of the Gunners. It was not the only big result of his first term, as his side knocked Manchester City out of the FA Cup semi-finals and then beat Chelsea, who had finished four places and 10 points above them in the league, in the FA Cup final.

Amorim's start to life at Old Trafford has also witnessed some terrible results, including home defeats by Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth and Newcastle and an infuriating surrender at Wolves. But he has also pulled off a stunning late win at Manchester City and saw his side come agonisingly close to snatching victory at Anfield. The United manager admitted to feeling annoyed after the game at Liverpool because it begged the question why his side could not have played with the same passion in their other games. But as Arteta's record shows, being able to produce in the games that matter the most is a good sign.

Arteta and Amorim have two things in common when it comes to their communication style. They both are skilled orators and they have the good fortune to have succeeded coaches who struggled to get their message across. Arteta's predecessor Unai Emery had a patchy level of English when he took the Arsenal job in 2018 and he was cruelly mocked on social media for beginning every interview by saying "Good Ebening". He also made easy, albeit funny, linguistic mistakes, such as calling Petr Cech "a very big person" when he meant to say "a very good person".

Arteta hails from the same province in the Basque country as Emery but whereas the latter had never previously lived in England when he stepped into the Arsenal dugout, the former had lived in England or Scotland since 2002 and had an excellent grasp of the language. And it showed in his first press conference as Gunners boss before facing Everton.

Arteta made the obvious statement of saying he felt "back at home" in his unveiling but he also addressed the problems that had beset Arsenal in the last few years of the Arsene Wenger era and under Emery. He said the team needed to "change the energy", he talked of "engaging everybody" and he warned: "If you don't have the right culture, in the difficult moments, the tree is going to shake."

Amorim also impressed the media in his first press conference as United boss and talked in similar terms to Arteta when he said: "As a coach you have to choose one way or another, I choose always 100 percent our way. There is no second way." The Portuguese continued to preach the same message as his reign continued, talking of the importance of "the way you train, the way you dress" after leaving Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho out of the squad for the Manchester derby.

And both managers have been true to their word, having no qualms about moving on some of their best players when it became clear they did not fit with the culture they were trying to build. Arteta took on Mesut Ozil, at the time the club's best-paid player, early on in his tenure after the German refused to agree to a pay cut during the coronavirus pandemic. He sidelined the playmaker from that moment on and he never played for Arsenal again, terminating his contract six months early in January 2021.

Just two months later Arteta made the surprising call of dropping Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang against Tottenham due to the striker's apparent lack of punctuality and the following December he stripped him of the captaincy for returning late from a trip to France. Weeks later Arteta urged the club to cut their losses and pay up the player's contract so he could join Barcelona on a free transfer.

It was a remarkably bold move against a player who had signed a bumper new deal the previous season and who had been the talisman of their FA Cup win. But the move sent out a message that no player could defy the manager.

The similarities between those cases and Amorim's treatment of Marcus Rashford are striking. Rashford became one of United's highest earners when he signed a new contract in the summer of 2023 and had an even bigger standing within the club than Aubameyang or Ozil due to being a homegrown player. But Amorim does not like the player's attitude towards training, namely the fact he went on a night out shortly before the game against Everton, and is not willing to play him until he sees an improvement.

Rashford scored twice in that game against Everton, as well as the first goal of the Amorim era, but the coach cannot hope to rebuild United if certain players are flouting their usual responsibilities and not preparing for matches as they should.

Arsenal have made real progress since sending Ozil and Aubameyang on their way and history has proven Arteta right, with the midfielder retiring at the age of 34 in 2023 and the striker now playing his football in Saudi Arabia. Removing the brilliant yet tempestuous personalities from the club was crucial to the cultural reset he talked about on day one.

Only time will tell if Rashford can turn his flagging career around, but Amorim is absolutely right to sanction his departure in January, even if it means making a big loss.

Amorim has had a clear style of play ever since he first entered management, using the 3-4-2-1 formation with first club Casa Pia and then with Braga and Sporting CP. He is also implementing it at United, even though it is clear he will have to seriously overhaul his squad to be successful at Old Trafford.

The Portuguese is a long way off from imprinting his philosophy on United but there are early signs that he is slowly getting through to them after getting a bit more time on the training ground. Amorim had six days to prepare for the Liverpool game and a whole week for the trip to the Emirates Stadium, where he will hope to avenge his side's 2-0 loss in December in his fourth game in charge.

"It was different [before Anfield] because we could train, so you can push them, you can show them what they need to do. It’s so much easier with training, and then the environment is different because they felt the confidence in the performance," he explained. "But we can say anything after a match or during a week, we have to show it in the next game so we are focused on that. But I felt that, during the week, they were focused on improving and they were open to learn, and that was a good feeling this week."

Arteta, meanwhile, has evolved a lot as a coach, moving from a Pep Guardiola disciple at Manchester City to a pragmatist who has prioritised defending and being deadly at set-pieces. He has made Arsenal tough and streetwise and has unquestionably imposed a different style on the team than his predecessors Emery and Wenger. United are evolving in a different way to Arsenal and the Gunners' coach can already see the direction his counterpart is trying to take his side.

"Yeah [you can see differences and] it is true they are playing a little bit different as well with the personnel that they use, the location of certain players," Arteta said ahead of Sunday's FA Cup third-round tie. "The characteristic of the players at the end dictates as well what they do, where they have more threats on both sides, two feet, in behind, because in the end that's what determines the behaviours of a team. It is different the last few weeks to when we played them here at home so I am expecting a few different things."

The Arsenal boss also believes that Amorim is better prepared than he was when he took the Arsenal job, which was his first position as a head coach. He said: "Ruben has much more experience than I had at the time so he is in a better place and there is no Covid-19 so I think he has got better options in that case. It is tough because obviously you need time to implement your ideas, especially your way of playing and explaining that. When you have that many games, it is tricky so I understand that."

Arteta then got philosophical when he added: "Every manager gets appointed for a reason. The reasons can be different. Sometimes it is just to improve a football team, to get more performance out of certain players. Sometimes it is to transform a football club. That is a totally different dimension of a job and if I have to relate to mine at that time, it was more towards that than the previous one I mentioned."

United are indeed trusting Amorim to transform the club. It is why they spent £21m ($25m) to hire him in the middle of the season and why they have been happy for him to leave one of their biggest assets out of the squad for a prolonged period. Performances like the one at Liverpool go some way to show they are right to do so. Another strong display against the Gunners will be a further indication that they need to keep trusting the process. After all, it has worked pretty well for Arsenal.