Man Utd should have stuck with Ruud van Nistelrooy as interim manager rather than handing Ruben Amorim mid-season hospital pass

Van Nistelrooy only spent four games in charge of United, but it was an exciting and happy period. The team won three out of four games, as they easily beat Leicester in both the Carabao Cup and league, overcame PAOK in the Europa League and drew with Chelsea.

The former striker did have the advantage of playing all his games at Old Trafford and facing a relatively comfortable fixture list, with the exception of Chelsea. However, what has happened since has put his tenure in an even more favourable light; Amorim has lost five of his nine home games in all competitions, with the 'Theatre of Dreams' having been deathly silent and downbeat for most of his tenure. By contrast, the stadium was extremely fired up while Van Nistelrooy was in charge.

The Dutchman opted for a simple tactical approach, going with the same 4-2-3-1 formation Ten Hag had used, but made his midfield more robust by deploying Casemiro next to Manuel Ugarte. It might not have been innovative, but the two South American bruisers gave United a solid platform and a level of consistency.

Van Nistelrooy's United played a similar style to Ten Hag, geared towards counter-attacking and with heavy reliance on their wingers, but there was a renewed energy among the players, who seemed to respond better to a club icon than they had his predecessor.

Amorim started work at United the day after the thumping 3-0 Premier League win over Leicester, and there was a sense that Van Nistelrooy was leaving United in much better hands for the new coach than if he'd immediately stepped into Ten Hag's shoes. But rather than taking advantage of that upswing in form, United have gone backwards under the Portuguese.

Gary Neville said on his Sky Sports podcast: "I thought it would get better when Ruben Amorim came in, the enthusiasm of him and the new system, the players would buy into and we'd see a bounce. But we've seen the absolute opposite and it's got a lot worse - and that's surprising."

There was always a danger that this would happen given the radical style the coach was going to impose on the team, and Amorim was painfully aware of that. Indeed, just after accepting the job in early November, he admitted: "The only request I made was that it (his arrival) was at the end of the season. I spent three days asking for it. They told me it wasn't possible, that it was now or never, or Manchester United would go for another option. So, I had three days to make my mind up, to make a decision that radically changes my life."

Amorim was not wrong about that, and for now the move has radically changed his life for the worse. He went from a Sporting CP team that had won every single league game to a United side that has forgotten how to win, especially at Old Trafford.

Amorim's attempts to impose his style on United have been made harder by the relentless schedule, and he was also aware that he would have very few opportunities to get his ideas across. He said in his first press conference: "It's so much harder to come to the team in the middle of the season because you have to get to know the players during the games, you are talking about no national-team periods to work with the players, it's just games. It depends: if you are winning it's a lot of fun, having a lot of games, trying to make changes tactically and winning games. But if you are losing, you don't have time in training to work out everything you want to work on."

United are definitely not having a lot of fun. There have been some big highs, such as beating Manchester City, knocking Arsenal out of the FA Cup and holding Premier League leaders Liverpool to a draw at Anfield. When Van Nistelrooy left, United were in 13th, but the gap between them and the top four was just four points. Now while in the same league position, that gap is 14 points, with only 14 games remaining.

The team's goal difference has also fallen even further, from zero at the start of Amorim's reign to minus six; only five teams have a worse goal difference than the Red Devils. United also keep on breaking new unwanted records, as they have already lost as many home games as in their worst-ever Premier League campaign of 2013-14, and have their worst home record at this stage of a season since 1893-94.

Amorim has been painfully honest about how bad his team are, calling them "maybe the worst in the history of Manchester United" and admitting that there is an atmosphere of anxiety around the stadium. The Portuguese had a wonderful rapport with his players at Sporting, but there has been little sign of a bond with his squad at United. The fact he has insulted the players' ability both directly - with his public comments - and indirectly, such as by starting Kobbie Mainoo up front against Crystal Palace ahead of Rasmus Hojlund and Joshua Zirkzee, is not helping.

United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and CEO Omar Berrada were both enamoured with Amorim's work at Sporting and dismissed then-sporting director Dan Ashworth's opinions in their search for a new boss, leading to Ashworth ultimately being fired. It is easy to see why they were attracted to the charismatic and young coach who had awakened a sleeping giant in Sporting, but they knew they were taking a huge risk by hiring him in the middle of the season, and they are now paying a heavy price for it as they endure one of the club’s worst campaigns in modern times.

Of course, there were potential downsides to keeping Van Nistelrooy on for the rest of the campaign. United saw the negatives of an interim boss when they appointed Ralf Rangnick three years ago after sacking Ole Gunnar Solskjaer while they waited for Ten Hag to become available. The players knew Rangnick would be off in the summer and there was little long-term motivation to work hard under him. But there was another factor underlying that pitiful campaign - the fact that players did not respect the German.

Indeed, as Cristiano Ronaldo articulated in his infamous interview with Piers Morgan, many of them did not know who Rangnick was. That would not be the case with Van Nistelrooy, one of the finest strikers of his generation who many of the current squad would have watched growing up. Van Nistelrooy would have also been able to rally the Old Trafford crowd in a similar fashion to how Solskjaer did in his sensational first few months in charge.

That does, however, lead into another potential pitfall that might have come with keeping Van Nistelrooy in charge. Had he had great success, United may have been tempted to give him the job permanently, like they did with Solskjaer in a move they quickly came to regret. Yet there was an easy way around that: tie up a deal with Amorim so that the Dutchman's time had an expiry date.

There is no guarantee, of course, that Van Nistelrooy would have taken United into the top four. His time in charge of Leicester has been terrible from a results point of view, having taken just 0.6 points per match, lower than the 0.8 averaged by his sacked predecessor, Steve Cooper.

Then again, Van Nistelrooy is working with a team that was in the Championship last season and has the seventh-lowest wage bill in the league. United, by contrast, have the second-highest wage bill, only trailing City, and Van Nistelrooy's pragmatic approach would undoubtedly have been a better fit for the United squad at that very moment. By not messing too much with the formula, it is not too much of a stretch to say that the Red Devils would be around the top eight of the Premier League, rather than in 13th.

Results, such as the ones Van Nistelrooy was getting, breed confidence, while defeats drain self-belief. United are ultimately playing the long game with Amorim and some of the tougher decisions the coach has made, such as moving on Marcus Rashford and Antony, might well help the club in the long run.

There is also an argument that the team will be more in tune with the coach's methods after this half-season than if they were to start from scratch in the summer. Effectively, they believed they were trading short-term pain for long-term gain.

On the flipside, however, the endless spiral of awful results risks harming Amorim's credibility. "There's going to be a lot more pain towards the end of the season and it's going to be damaging - because they're obviously going to stick with Amorim. But the more you lose, the more difficult it is for the manager to convince the players of his idea," said Neville. "In the very early days he said, 'I will not change my idea' and you need the players to buy into that. If they keep losing and they keep getting criticised and the spotlight comes on them more and the fans are leaving unhappy, you know it creates a feeling and you can't keep losing. You just can't. It will depress the thoughts of the players to a point whereby they'll start to lose faith in the idea and it'll damage you."

Neville is right. If Amorim presides over United's worst campaign since being relegated in 1973-74, players will question whether his methods are worth following. The club, too, will become less attractive to join for prospective players, especially with no European football being a very remote possibility.

The one hope for Amorim is that the players will respond to his methods amid the increased time on the training ground. He will have had four days to prepare for the cup tie with Leicester, and then will enjoy full weeks before the next league games against Tottenham and Everton, while he will also be able to deploy his January signings - specialist left-wing back Patrick Dorgu and teenage centre-back Ayden Heaven, who will get more opportunities now that Lisandro Martinez is out for the season.

As ever, the coach was in a bullish mood before the Leicester game, relishing the challenge he finds himself in. "The risk is clear, it is also exciting," he told a press conference. "I know when I choose this profession that you have the risk of results and I knew when I came here I look at the schedule, I look at the team, changing everything in the middle of the season without new signings is a danger for a coach, but I have a clear idea of what I want to do and I take these risks because in the end it’s going to pay off. But I’m not naive, I said that many times, this is a sport of results and we are in a difficult situation."

Losing another home game to Leicester and Van Nistelrooy would make the situation yet more difficult and bring the club's decision to throw Amorim in at the deep end into sharper focus.