An unbeaten Manchester United manager will be standing in the Old Trafford dugout on Friday night. That caretaker stint of Ruud van Nistelrooy’s – two weeks, four games, three wins and one draw – seem like halcyon days sandwiched between months of crises.. Van Nistelrooy was personable, objective and provided a warmth that the players seldom encountered with Erik ten Hag. One senior United player described him as “excellent”. Van Nistelrooy was destined to get an enviable job but jumped the gun in picking Leicester.. Tellingly, two of Van Nistelrooy’s wins in his snug Paul Smith attire for United were against the team he now manages. Leicester owner Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha saw the harmony and results a manager bounce can elicit.. Only Leicester’s squad is decidedly Championship standard and there were two frugal signings in the winter transfer window. Ruben Amorim promised to offer Van Nistelrooy a hug at the teams’ FA Cup fourth round tie. For a while, it looked as though Van Nistelrooy would not return to Old Trafford.. Amorim was right to jettison Van Nistelrooy on his first day as United coach on November 11. No room for sentiment in football and all that. Van Nistelrooy is also a No.1. Ineos effectively undermined Ten Hag by foisting his compatriot onto him.. But Amorim has made decisions that suggest he needs a sounding board more immersed in United’s culture. Amorim’s coaching staff is almost entirely made up of those who were with him at Sporting. Only Darren Fletcher, Andreas Georgson and Craig Mawson have remained from Ten Hag’s staff and both joined under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.. Jose Mourinho had Steve Clarke and Steve Holland in his separate two stints with Chelsea. Clarke spent 11 years with Chelsea and Holland had been embedded at the club for four years when Mourinho returned in 2013. Aitor Karanka at Real Madrid, Michael Carrick at United and Ledley King at Tottenham were other Mourinho appointments with connections to the clubs.. A manager treads a fine line. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer cultivated an old boys’ club with some of his hires. Ralf Rangnick was objective and marginalised Mike Phelan but was too wedded to Red Bull alumni. Ten Hag’s reunion with Steve McClaren was shrewd.. United won three Premier League titles, two FA Cups, the League Cup, the Champions League and the Intercontinental Cup during McClaren’s two coaching stints. Fletcher is a forceful personality but watches matches with the analysts in the stands. So does the assistant goalkeeping coach Mawson. Van Nistelrooy was as visible in the dugout as Ten Hag during their three-and-a-half month collaboration.. Amorim’s two daftest decisions at United have centred on Kobbie Mainoo: dropping him against Newcastle United and moving him to centre forward against Crystal Palace.. Mainoo is not a complicated player to fathom. He is a ball-playing midfielder capable of operating as a playmaker. He should be in the team but not as the No.9, especially three days after a potential breakthrough performance as a No.10. Fletcher must know that. Van Nistelrooy would, too, even though he never got to pick Mainoo.. Amorim has over-complicated Mainoo’s role. There were audible gasps in the Old Trafford press room when the teamsheets were distributed an hour and 15 minutes before the Newcastle match in December. Amorim had picked an unwinnable team with Casemiro and Christian Eriksen in midfield and he abandoned the experiment after 33 minutes. Joshua Zirkzee was hooked but United had not been let off the hook. They were 2-0 down.. United lost 2-0 that night and 2-0 to Palace on Sunday. The theory that Amorim dropped both strikers against Palace to make a point a day before deadline day does not wash. He does not believe in Zirkzee or Rasmus Hojlund and the pair ought to have been taken out of the team a month earlier.. The issue was Amorim overlooked Amad as a false nine, a role he occupied on loan at Sunderland a number of times two seasons ago and a handful of times as a substitute under Ten Hag. Bruno Fernandes is another option though he has improved since the turn of the year by operating from the middle third.. Casemiro did not play again for a month after the Newcastle defeat. Cristiano Ronaldo’s 40th birthday is a relevant reminder of what United miss. Ronaldo was two great players in one – a winger and a goalscorer. Amorim’s approach somewhat jars with United’s ethos as he is refusing to play pure wingers on the wing.. Settling on full backs with a limited attacking skill set has not got United anywhere. United have scored four goals in 783 minutes in the Premier League with Diogo Dalot, Noussair Mazraoui or Tyrell Malacia on the wings. That’s one goal every 196 minutes.. With Amad on the wing, United have scored 12 goals in 477 minutes – one every 40 minutes. There is a balance to strike with the Portuguese’s system and United’s identity.. Van Nistelrooy would know that. Nobody was more exasperated with Ronaldo overplaying it during his first few years than Van Nistelrooy, accustomed to David Beckham’s service.. Ronaldo and Van Nistelrooy at Carrington in 2004. It came to a head during a training session in 2006 when an irked Van Nistelrooy advised Ronaldo to go to his “daddy”, an unflattering reference to the Portuguese assistant coach Carlos Queiroz. Ronaldo’s father had passed away at the start of the season.. After Van Nistelrooy left in August 2006, Ronaldo attained the world-class status he never relinquished until he moved to Saudi Arabia in 2022. Van Nistelrooy was still the beneficiary of that talent during his first season with Ronaldo.. At Goodison Park exactly 21 years ago, United were 3-0 up at half-time but Everton remarkably levelled at 3-3. Ronaldo emerged in the 80th minute and his cross for Van Nistelrooy’s 89th-minute winner, for its sheer technical proficiency, is still one of his best.. “I think he had to change his game a little bit,” Van Nistelrooy bluntly said afterwards. “It wasn’t all about his tricks, it was about effectiveness. I think he picked it up well.. “You don’t see 20 stepovers any more. He makes one stepover and puts the ball in, which is more effective. And I think he sees that now.”. Amorim needs to start seeing it with his own players.
