THURSDAY NIGHT was the foulest mood Ruben Amorim has ever been in during his 13 months in Manchester.
Amorim’s demeanour for his pre-match engagements is consistently chirpy but it predictably wavers post-match.
There were three separate exchanges with journalists that were borderline confrontations. This correspondent was one of them, and knows from experience that Amorim tends to bite back if his selections are questioned.
After United lost 1-0 to Arsenal in August, he was aghast when yours truly suggested Tom Heaton should have started in goal instead of the gaffe-prone Altay Bayindir.
Bayindir was dropped six Premier League games into the season and has not played since September.
Amorim took umbrage with me for questioning his decision to bench Alejandro Garnacho for the Europa League final that United lost 1-0.
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Watching it back, the question centred on whether Amorim needs to be more proactive than pragmatic. Nearly seven months on, it is still a relevant question.
Drawing with a West Ham side in disarray was bound to make Amorim narky. United full back Diogo Dalot admitted the draw “hurt even more” as United could have risen to fifth.
Instead, they are back in the bottom half of the table and Amorim has managed 22 wins out of 57 games as United manager. He has nearly lost as many as he has won.
The recent three-game winning streak and five-game undefeated run did not kid Amorim. He practically said so without using the words ‘false dawn’.
United’s recent regression is so severe they are now approaching games with trepidation. That even includes winless Wolves. Wolves did the double against United last season, albeit under a different manager in Vitor Pereira.
Molineux is never a gimme for United, either. On the four occasions that United have won there since Wolves were promoted in 2018, it has been by one goal.
It has only taken three games back in the Black Country for new Wolves manager Rob Edwards to round on the players he has inherited.
“It was almost like we were waiting to get beat,” he said of the limp 1-0 home reverse to Nottingham Forest last week.
Yet no team has ever gone through an entire Premier League campaign without winning. Amorim was keen to make that point.
“Everything can happen and that will change,” he warned. “There is no team in the history of the Premier League that didn’t win one game. It can be any game.
“So we need to try to improve, rest the players, work really well and prepare for a tough match because with us it’s always a tough match.”
Amorim seems to sometimes brace himself for the worst-case scenario with his answers in press conferences. Losing to Wolves would be possibly United’s most humiliating result in the Premier League era.
They were ten minutes away from defeat to sorry Southampton at Old Trafford 11 months ago. Southampton had six points from 20 games at the time and a late Amad hat-trick spared Amorim’s blushes.
That Wolves have lost eight successive games, have two points, are 12 points from safety with a -12 goal difference feels inconsequential amid the pessimism that is rife at United again.
Although United are in a better position than this time last year, Amorim’s approval ratings are not better.
United are a tough watch, they consistently blow opportunities to occupy a Champions League place, Kobbie Mainoo has been marginalised and there are accusations that Amorim has not embraced the club’s academy.
His scepticism of United’s dream factory is valid. Shea Lacey and Jack Fletcher, unused substitutes in recent weeks, are making up the numbers and do not have the frames for the Football League, never mind the Premier League.
Mainoo is becoming a cause celebre. His first league goal as an 18-year-old was a virtuoso added-time strike in United’s last victory at Wolves in February 2024 but it is safe to assume he will be sat behind Amorim in the dugout.
Whenever Amorim sends on Mainoo, his name receives one of the loudest cheers. Scoring an FA Cup final winner against Manchester City assured Mainoo of eternal gratitude from fellow red Mancunians.
Many United fans have forgotten, or overlooked, Mainoo’s stop-start second season last term and how lackadaisical he has been when he has got off the bench since August.
Amorim and Mainoo are a manager-player mismatch: the system, its inclusion of only two midfielders, Amorim’s tendency to err on the side of caution.
And yet Amorim approached the maverick Matheus Cunha in the Old Trafford tunnel when he was a Wolves player in April to encourage him to sign for United.
Cunha settled the game at Molineux on Boxing Day last year when he whipped the ball over Andre Onana straight from a corner. At United, he has mustered only one goal.
He too has not been safe from Amorim’s mismanagement. Cunha made his first start in nearly four weeks against West Ham on Thursday and was clearly not match-fit.
The brittle Mason Mount cannot be trusted to start successive games four days apart. Mount required a thorough post-match massage after his first 90 minutes in the Premier League in nearly three years at Crystal Palace, delaying his arrival in the mixed zone by an hour.
Striker Benjamin Sesko is out for at least another week, so Amorim would argue he has a shortage of proven forwards to turn to.
When I suggested to him that Mainoo was one of them, he laughed.
That was Amorim’s only light relief during a terse press conference.
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