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Peter Milner's avatar

Conversations with my son aged 31 and my father age 93, and between us we have 150 years of watching Burnley, both ended on the same note as to promotion – “ it’s Burnley you know something will go wrong“.

So Henry, please don’t tempt fate by praising any of our players or manager until we’ve won our next two games!

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Paul Cassidy's avatar

Your summary of the Amorim & United predicament is spot on. It was apparent from early on that he didn’t have the players for his preferred system.

What has ensued since then has been nothing short of hubris. I’m concerned it may have an adverse impact rolling over to next season.

A player like Garnacho, statistically was better off than Ronaldo at the same stages in their careers, now looks devoid of confidence and less effective in Amorim’s system.

3-4-2-1 can work, but it will require a complete overhaul of the squad, plus the style will most likely be similar to LVG’s style. Personally & selfishly, I would like to see United play enterprising, fast football.

What the predicament suggests is Ineos never actually had a plan. All the talk of ‘club game models’ clearly wasn’t true when they brought in a coach who plays a completely different formation to what was previously being built.

People will say 4-2-3-1 wasn’t working, but the situation was more nuanced than this - a coach who had too much influence on recruitment who primarily scoured the Dutch league for talent, and had a fundamental gap in his man management. I believe those were the more fundamental issues than the system.

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