Arguably Ruben Amorim's biggest games of his time in charge of United begins with tomorrow night's first leg at Bilbao. After THAT comeback over Lyon in the last round, Amorim will be hoping that that fuels his players for what will be another tough couple of matches. He was joined in the presser with Manuel Ugarte.
Despite the positivity of seeing Amad and Matthijs De Ligt back in training, Ruben Amorim says that neither are fit enough to start but can be part of the squad. The extra players that have traveled with the squad is because United will stay and train in Spain ahead of Sunday's trip to Brentford which explains the inclusion of someone like Chido Obi who isn't eligible to play in Europe.
Amorim admits that there is a different edge about United and everyone ahead of this all important tie. While it will be "huge" to win the Europa League, the United boss still maintains that "nothing can save our season" as he has said on multiple occasions.
The Portuguese doesn't actually know why his team performs better in Europe than they do in the league when taking into consideration the amount of goals scored in the Europa compared to the Premier League. He does claim that United have improved in terms of their chance creation but that there's no explanation as to why the goals aren't coming domestically.
The MUFC boss says that focus is on "helping the players we have" rather than look elsewhere. Amorim says that the only way to improve individuals is to improve the way the team plays and mentions that United are "far from being a really consistent team" that can help the strikers score more goals.
"We have a lack of goals and that cost us a lot of points."
Hojlund scored in the last game against Bournemouth with his manager expecting him to do more of the same tomorrow night. Amorim was very praising of his under fire forward saying that throughout the Europa League, whilst Hojlund may not have scored, his movement and overall play were key in United getting the goals. However, he does still want him to work hard for the team. "I think he's in a good spirit to do a great game tomorrow."
Amorim acknowledges that a victory like the one against Lyon will have boosted the confidence but that the defeat to Wolves in the following game knocked that confidence back down even though his side created a lot of goal scoring opportunities which they unfortunately failed to take.
Midfielder Manuel Ugarte says that the main difference as to why United perform better in Europe than in the league is because of the physical aspect of the two competitions. He adds that it may also do with the focus of the players that they were more focused in Europe than in the PL.
Ugarte says that he is "learning a lot" playing alongside Casemiro and that he has a "very good relation" with his fellow South American.
Final Thoughts
It is difficult to explain why we score more in Europe and the cups in general compared to the league. I even tried to figure it out here. Give it a read and let me know your thoughts.
But Amorim is right though. We have improved in terms of our attacking prowess since the international break as when you look at the amount of chances we had in games like the derby, Arsenal, Forest and Wolves, we really should've won all of them. When we do this in Europe, we tend to actually take those chances because we still create good goal scoring opportunities but United seem to waste them in the PL for some reason.
When Amorim says that we have to improve as a team to help improve individuals, 100% correct. I want to applaud that 👏.
People say we need a new striker and we need this player and that player and perhaps we do but what's the point in bringing in a Viktor Gyokeres if we still don't create for the no 9? How many times a game do we see our players not cross the ball or not play it into the striker? Yes Hojlund isn't good enough (at the moment) but the team is still expected to play the pass whenever in certain situations.
Do this first and then start thinking about bringing players in.
That win over Lyon was one for the ages. Let's be honest though, it really shouldn't have come to that as we should've won it comfortably in normal time.
But what a win like that can do is galvanise the troops and just lift everyone's spirits. Every time I watch it (which is about 5 or 6 times a day) I get goosebumps and there's a huge smile on my face. There's also a feeling of optimism, one of 'LET'S FUCKING WIN THIS THING!'
That is what a win like that can do and hopefully those players use that energy as fuel for this tie which will be another roller coaster.
It's interesting that Ugarte says that it maybe down to physicality and focus that makes the difference for us in the two competitions. I don't actually think we've played that much different in either the PL or EL as we've made silly mistakes in Europe as well but somehow we manage to come through by taking the chances we create which we fail to do in the PL.
It's truly difficult to comprehend because there's not much difference in terms of play style.
Ernesto Valverde | Photo By Oscar J. Barroso/Europa Press via Getty Images - Barca Blaugranes
Ruben Amorim | Image via Manchester United official X (@ManUtd)