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The original was posted on /r/soccer by /u/Sparky-moon on 2026-01-05 14:21:01+00:00.
As seismic as Ruben Amorim’s defenestration at Manchester United might seem, it is firmly on-brand for owners who specialise in promising the earth and delivering nothing more than a few savings on Sellotape. Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his Ineos politburo have long shown their sureness of touch as football masterminds, whether in extending Erik ten Hag’s contract and sacking him three months later, or in paying Newcastle £4m for the services of “best in class” Dan Ashworth and jettisoning him after 15 league games.
Now Amorim, a man whom Ratcliffe predicted this year would stay at Old Trafford “for a long time”, has discovered that the billionaire’s assurances are about as concrete as fairy dust. Ratcliffe might be admired within his petrochemicals empire for his plain speaking, but at United his only distinguishing attribute is to say one thing and do another. Here is the figure who, in a recent interview, gave Amorim three years to prove himself. That promise has not even lasted three months. Once the Ferrari of football, United are now a clown car.
For a man who insists he is following a coherent strategy, Ratcliffe has shown through his treatment of Amorim that he is susceptible to panic. Plus, he appears to have no instinct for when to pull the trigger. The time for dismissing Amorim was after last year’s Europa League final in Bilbao, where United succumbed feebly to a dreadful Tottenham side. Instead, Ratcliffe backed him to the tune of £225m in the summer transfer window, watched him claw the team to the cusp of Champions League qualification this season, only to scrap the entire project at the first signs of a power struggle, with no blueprint for how to start afresh.
History might not repeat itself, or so the saying goes, but it often rhymes. And there is a distinct echo in Amorim’s fate of what happened to Ten Hag, retained when Ratcliffe allowed the emotion of an FA Cup triumph to cloud his better judgment but kicked to the curb as soon as United’s league form went south once more. This circular pattern, where Ratcliffe plays the tough guy but loses his nerve at the truly consequential moments, threatens to erode faith among supporters in his methods.
Ineos have burned through eight managers during their six years running Nice in Ligue 1, with some of those let go subsequently enjoying much success elsewhere. Francesco Farioli, for example, has since proved his credentials at both Ajax and Porto. It hardly says much about Ineos’ capacity for identifying and retaining talent in football. In the same way as Scott McTominay, the midfielder somehow considered surplus to requirements, has since torn up trees for Napoli, you would not bet against Amorim, still one of Europe’s most precocious managers at 40, re-establishing his reputation in a less dysfunctional set-up.
When you reflect on this saga, perhaps the most extraordinary detail is United’s surprise at the manager that Amorim turned out to be. Ratcliffe prised him from Sporting Lisbon in the first place, knowing full well that he was a headstrong personality wedded to a rigid tactical system. And yet now he has cast him aside for the very same reasons. An impression grows that Ratcliffe, for all his staggering business successes, has not the faintest conception of how to put the listing United supertanker back on an even keel. For fans hoping fervently for a turning of the page, Amorim’s exit signals less a masterstroke than another desperate stab in the dark.