They’re getting WORSE! How Man United beneath Ruben Amorim evaluate to Erik ten Hag’s disastrous final 10 video games

As Hwang Hee-Chan lashed home his first goal of the season to seal Wolves‘ comfortable victory over Manchester United, the away fans were faced with the all too familiar prospect of a long journey home with nothing to cheer about.

Presumably banking on a season-changing gift from Father Christmas, the Red Devils are heading out of the festive period looking like an even worse side than when they came in.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Old Trafford hierarchy had risked the ire of football fans and financial gurus alike by shifting beleaguered boss Erik ten Hag and replacing him with promising Portuguese manager Ruben Amorim. United had stuttered but at least they now had their man.

Things have not turned out that way, however, and the former Sporting Lisbon head coach has presided over a tepid run of form straight from the ten Hag playbook.

When the Dutchman was sacked, United languished in 14th on just 11 points from nine matches. Four points in two under interim Ruud van Nistelrooy lifted the side into the heady heights of 13th but in the month that Amorim has been at the helm they have fallen back into their previous lower mid-table slot.

Have United regressed? Mail Sport compares the new man’s 10 matches in all competitions with ten Hag’s final run of games to make sense of the Red Devils’ nightmare season.

While the United faithful were watching Wolves enjoy a sizeable new manager bounce under Vitor Pereira, their latest defeat provided the final piece of evidence, if any more was needed, that they had not been blessed with the same transformation.

On the face of it, Amorim is not doing badly.

Okay, he’s doing quite badly. But with 13 points in his 10 games compared with 15 in ten Hag’s final 10, the downturn has not quite been a nosedive.

His opening month has also included four wins, compared with his predecessor’s three, to send supporters home happy some 40 per cent of the time.

A derby day victory at Manchester City, inspired by some late Amad Diallo heroics, was the sweetest of the lot but a 4-0 demolition of Everton, as well as two Europa League wins, are not to be sneezed at either.

It’s when you delve slightly deeper into the numbers, provided by Stats Perform, that Amorim’s short story makes for grimmer reading.

While ten Hag lost just two of during a 10-match run which left fans baying for him to leave, his successor has suffered through defeat debacles in half of his games so far.

Two losses in quick succession – to Arsenal then Nottingham Forest – were broken up by a pair of victories to steady the ship.

But United have now lost three in a row, after a 4-3 defeat to Tottenham in a chaotic match, a humiliating 3-0 home loss to Bournemouth and the saga at Molineux on Boxing Day.

Ten Hag’s side struggled to click in the final third at the start of the season, scoring 18 in his final 10 games, and it was hoped that Amorim could take Sporting’s rip-roaring goalscoring form to Manchester.

The Portuguese side found the net a whopping 19 times in his last five matches in charge but the boss has failed to bless United with the same fluency.

The Red Devils have struck just 17 times in Amorim’s reign and have now blanked in consecutive matches, while also failing to score in a 2-0 defeat to Arsenal.

This lack of attacking cohesion is borne out in further statistics with the Dutchman’s United performing in line with their expected goals tally of 17.82 while Amorim’s men have an xG of just 16.78.

They have taken 38 fewer shots than ten Hag’s outfit (145 versus 183) and had far fewer touches in the opposition’s box at just 288 compared with the old boss’s 336. 

Under Amorim, United have had 28 big chances, displaying a wastefulness which has persisted from the ten Hag days. They had 29 in the last 10 under the Dutchman. 

The bigger problem, however, has been United’s defence – which has looked leaky at best and chaotic at worst.

Conceding a woeful 19 in the last 10, the move to a back three has not provided the solidity at the back that many fans hoped for, with the system earning just one clean sheet (in that rare good day out at home to Everton).

By contrast, ten Hag’s back four leaked just 11 in his final stretch at the helm and secured four clean sheets.

It is tough to know who to point the blame at in this regard, with the expected goals statistics shining a light on the fact that United’s defence may not be far from clicking at last.

Amorim’s men have conceded just 11.06 xG, far fewer than ten Hag’s 14.98, meaning they are under-performing in this regard by eight goals.

This suggests that some of the responsibility for United’s defensive woes must lie with goalkeeper Andre Onana, who conceded his second goal direct from a corner in the space of a week when Wolves’s Matheus Cunha struck in the second half. 

Indeed, Amorim’s outfit have faced 102 shots, compared with ten Hag’s 104, but have shipped almost twice as many goals as during the dying days of the previous era.

Some encouragement, then, and it seems that in other departments the Portuguese’s plan is close to coming together.

United have controlled the ball under Amorim and, although they often fail to do anything with it, their 59.4 per cent share of possession under the new man hints at an improvement compared with ten Hag’s 54 per cent.

And when they are not tapping the ball around, the Red Devils are counter-attacking at pace, with the Portuguese’s charges carrying out 16 fast breaks in 10 matches compared with just 12 under his predecessor.

It has undoubtedly been the most miserable start to the season for United in living memory and, while Amorim has done little to improve that so far, those clutching at straws might hold out hope that the new boss’s reformation might soon start taking shape.