Ruben Amorim on Wednesday sought to clarify his bombshell statement that his Manchester United side are “the worst team” in the club’s history, with the manager accepting a share of responsibility for the crisis at Old Trafford.
United’s 3-1 defeat against Brighton on Sunday was the sixth loss in their past nine Premier League games under Amorim, who arrived in November to replace the sacked Erik ten Hag.
The club, languishing in 13th place in the Premier League table, face Scottish giants Rangers in the Europa League on Thursday, a competition in which they are well-positioned to qualify for the knockout stages.
Former Sporting Lisbon boss Amorim, 39, addressed his post-Brighton comments during a pre-match press conference on Wednesday.
“I was talking more about me than the players,” he said. “I also talked in the same response (that) I was not helping my players and if you look around, every time I speak, and I speak a lot, every time you push that the players are not good enough I never put the spot(light) on my players.”
He added: “I’m frustrated sometimes and sometimes I should not say it in those terms but it is what it is and sometimes it’s really hard to hide the frustration in some moments. But the good thing is that I said the same things in a different way in the dressing room five minutes before.
“The response was quite normal because I’m really blunt with my players”.
Amorim said his under-performing side were “too nervous, really anxious” and games at Old Trafford were even tougher.
“We are more nervous playing at home than away because we lost a lot of games, like four games in five. So it’s getting harder,” he said.
“But we can improve. I think if we don’t suffer the first goal, like in the fourth minute, and I remember like it’s fourth minute, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and then it’s really hard to calm down the team.
“The first thing in my mind is they (the opposition) cannot score. We need to score the first one. If we score the first one, I think that will change and we’ll play better at home in the beginning.”
Former United captain Harry Maguire, speaking at the same press conference, said the players have “got to look at ourselves”.
“We’ve got to take responsibility on ourselves and as an individual that’s what I do. I go home and think about how I can help this team improve and get back to where we want to get back to and that’s challenging,” he said.
Amorim shut down a question over the potential sale of Alejandro Garnacho — the Argentine winger has been linked with moves to Napoli and Chelsea during the January transfer window.
“I understand the question but let’s focus on the game,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about that, especially before a game. Our focus is that our players are here to play. We need to improve and we need to win games to have that feeling of winning. Let’s focus on that.”
