Manchester United head coach Ruben Amorim spoke after his side’s 4-0 win over Everton at Old Trafford
New Manchester United head coach Ruben Amorim made a surprising admission that he believed Everton deserved more from their 4-0 thrashing at Old Trafford. The Blues competed well against the Red Devils for over half an hour but a four-goal blitz between the 34th and 64th minute ensured Sean Dyche’s side were well beaten.
Amorim said: “I want to be honest with our fans so let’s focus on the performance, not the result. In the end, I will be judged by the position where we finish.
“Let’s focus on the game and look at the performance. On Thursday (against Bodo/Glimt) it was 3-2, but I think we deserved more, here it was 4-0 but I think Everton deserved more.”
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The 39-year-old added: “We just want to play well because it’s better to start a game by scoring but if you look at these three games, all the decisive moments were for us, and you have to acknowledge that. We started very well here but we lost control of the game and were following the ball without any possession.
“Then we scored through a set-piece and that was a key point for us and then near half-time, we scored again and in the first play of the second half, we scored the third goal. We have to acknowledge in the right moments in these three games, we scored goals.”
Two of United’s goals came from the pressure they put on Everton’s players with Jarrad Branthwaite giving up possession following a back pass from Abdoulaye Doucoure and then his centre-back partner James Tarkowski guilty of a similar mistake when receiving the ball from Vitalii Mykolenko. Amorim acknowledged for him it was a case of educating his players when to make their move.
He said: “All the team needs to have these moments of pressing, looking at the type of player among the opponents who has the ball, which situation is the best time to press. They are smart players, so we try to help them, but players have to run to understand the moment and sometimes get tired and suffer a little bit on the pitch, so I’m very happy with that.
“We have to tell them sometimes, when to start the pressure. Everybody has the same mentality because the ball is going there, so this is the right moment to press.
“We tried that for every game, but you could see that Everton after 15 minutes, changed the positioning with (Idrissa) Gueye was near the line of the centre-backs and it was difficult for us to cope with that because we don’t have training and you cannot adapt like that. So, we are trying and the players are believing that in the right moments you can press and you can win the ball.”
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On both occasions with those goals, it was Amad Diallo who forced the error but a modest Amorim was happy to pass on a lot of the credit for the youngster’s progress to Ruud van Nistelrooy, who was United’s interim boss after Erik ten Hag’s sacking. He said: “It was really good, again. That moment started with Ruud and I just took advantage of Ruud’s work with Amad.
“He was really good defending, and really good attacking. He has to continue to play like that, and you could feel it at the end of the game when he was really, really tired, so we have to manage that to increase his physical ability.”
