Man Utd's players have 'spoken loudly' - so Ruben Amorim better listen up or leave

Last season United wasted two international breaks before deciding to get rid of Erik ten Hag, finally cutting ties with the Dutchman in the middle of October. The timing was so bad that Ruud van Nistelrooy had to take charge on an interim basis because they could not officially hire Amorim until the November break. 

The first pause in club action begins after United's fixture at home to Burnley on Saturday and it could be tempting for both the coach and club to cut ties. The games get far harder after the international break, with United visiting Manchester City in their first match back and hosting Chelsea in their second.

While Ratcliffe has backed Amorim publicly and privately and has a good personal relationship with the coach, he cannot like what he is seeing. The man he hired is responsible for no end of embarrassing records, with each game obliging statisticians to delve ever further back into United's history to find a team as bad as his.

The coach presided over a hat-trick of unwanted records last season, posting the worst points total, lowest league finish and lowest goal count in the Premier League era and the lowest on all three fronts in 50 years.

Amorim's win percentage in all competitions is 35.6% and in the league it is 24.1%, the worst of any United manager in the Premier League era by a considerable margin. Ralf Rangnick's was 37.9% and David Moyes' was 52.9%.  If United do not beat Burnley on Saturday, Amorim will have the lowest win percentage of any Red Devils coach since 1931. 

The Portuguese has only won seven games in the Premier League, accumulating fewer points than games played. He set another low with the penalty shootout defeat at Grimsby: United's first-ever loss to fourth-division opposition in a cup match.

These horrendous statistics obviously reflect worst of all on Amorim but they also make Ratcliffe look bad. The co-owner said earlier this year that he no longer enjoys reading newspapers because he has to read so much criticism about himself. A lot of that criticism surrounds his cost-cutting measures and making hundreds of staff members redundant, but every bad result also paints him in a bad light, giving the impression that he is inept at running a football club. 

The INEOS chief has invested so much in Amorim both on a financial and emotional level and sacking him less than a year into his tenure would make for terrible optics. On the other hand, showing blind faith in him when the team keep losing will make him look even worse in the long run.

But Ratcliffe might not even have to part with a compensation fee, because there is a growing possibility that a defeated Amorim will jump before he is pushed.

The Portuguese hinted at this very possibility during his pitchside interviews at Blundell Park, when he said: "If we don't show up, you can feel that something has to change and you are not going to change 22 players again. I think this is a little bit the limit. In this moment, we need to focus on the weekend and then we have time to think."

It has been reported that he considered quitting as early as February after the painful defeats by Crystal Palace and Tottenham and the litany of injuries suffered. After the Europa League final loss against Spurs, again, he declared he would walk away and would forgo any severance payment if the club felt he was no longer the right man for the job. 

Explaining his thinking in a round-table interview with journalists in August, he said: "[To] Walk away is more an ego thing. I’m like that. If you saw Sporting: I won the league and we had second place in the next year. In the third year, when we lost (sold) Matheus Nunes, Joao Palhinha and all these guys, we were fourth in the league, and I put my place (up for discussion). It’s a thing that my agent says, you don’t need to sign a big contract. Because when things go bad, I put my place (up for debate). I’m maybe really romantic about things."

Amorim's ego has been repeatedly crushed by United's results and so too has his reputation. He has a dilemma though: does he quit now and forever be seen as one of the club's worst ever coaches, or does he try to salvage his reputation while potentially risking even bigger humiliations?

There is a third option, which seems remarkably obvious to everyone except Amorim: change his tactics and move away from the 3-4-2-1 formation which has defined his coaching career. He has repeatedly stated that he will never change his tactical setup and at Grimsby he even insisted the shape of the team "does not matter". But it clearly does. 

His formation, which excludes natural wingers, meant that there was no long-term place in his squad for Marcus Rashford, Alejandro Garnacho or Antony, leaving aside for a second the other problems those players presented. The formation also reduces the powers of some of his best players. Amad Diallo has had to learn a new trade as a wing-back and Kobbie Mainoo has been reduced to a bench role, while Bruno Fernandes has been forced back deeper into midfield when it seems clear that he is better suited to playing as a No.10.

The coach might find the thought of changing his formation at odds with everything he believes but it is certainly worth trying, largely because Amorim has everything else he desired; he has had a pre-season campaign to properly get to know his players, he has no European football to worry about and even fewer games now United have been knocked out of the Carabao Cup. 

He has a brand new strike force, comprised of two Premier League quality players that he craved in Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha. He has got rid of the bad eggs such as Rashford and Garnacho who tested his authority. He even has a new state-of-the-art training facility. If he cannot make it work then the only conclusion to draw is that Amorim is not the right coach for Manchester United. 

Anything less than a statement win against Burnley and everyone will start thinking that very thought. If the players 'spoke loudly' at Grimsby then Amorim must listen to them before Ratcliffe does.