Ruben Amorim's 14 months at Manchester United ended with a dismissal, but Omar Berrada is still defending the appointment. The club chief said Amorim deserves credit for what he left behind, even if the job did not finish the way United expected.
Why United are pushing back on the easy verdict
Berrada's line was clear enough. "I don't see it as black or white in the sense that, yes, because it didn't work out in the end the way we expected it to do, then you know you can look at it in hindsight and say it wasn't the right appointment, but I actually think that Ruben deserves a lot of credit for many things," he told manchestereveningnews.co.uk.
He went further on the dressing room impact. "He went through a very difficult season last year. He was put under difficult circumstances, but he did help raise the standards in the dressing room. So, I think he deserves a lot of credit for that."
That matters because the public version of the story has been harsher than United's own. The feature calls Amorim the club's biggest mistake, yet the message coming from the hierarchy is that the 14-month spell was not a simple washout. Amorim also cut adrift Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho for not conforming to his standards, which shows how hard he pushed that point.
The tactical criticism is still part of the picture. Amorim's strict 3-2-4-1 system is described as not working, and his lack of flexibility is highlighted as a problem. United have not tried to deny that side of it, but Berrada's defence suggests they see a coach who set a higher bar, even if the football never settled properly.
What the league finish says about the wider picture
The numbers from United's season give Berrada's argument some backing. They finished third in the Premier League, with 68 points, a +16 goal difference, 19 wins and only seven defeats. That is not the profile of a team that collapsed entirely under the weight of the appointment.
For now, United are choosing to present Amorim's spell as flawed but not worthless. That is a narrower and fairer reading than the one-line verdict suggests, and it fits the evidence in the season totals as well as the dressing-room comments.
Bruno Fernandes has also been in the spotlight elsewhere. In Portugal's 2-1 friendly win over Chile, GOAL rated Bruno Fernandes 8/10 and said he scored Portugal's second goal with an expertly executed strike from distance. It was their penultimate pre-World Cup friendly, and Fernandes again looked central to Roberto Martinez's side.
United's next job is not to rewrite what went wrong under Amorim, but to decide how much of the structure he left behind is worth keeping. For now, the club are publicly saying there was more to his 14 months than the dismissal.
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