Manchester United sank to defeat at Wolves on Boxing Day, losing 2-0 at Molineux to a Wanderers side on the up under new boss Vitor Pereira
Ruben Amorim has placed Manchester United on a survival footing after their Molineux collapse.
The club’s boss watched in frustration as Bruno Fernandes was dismissed, and then a goalkeeping gaffe from Andre Onana helped relegation-threatened Wolves to a 2-0 victory. Amorim has already admitted the club is in a ‘tough moment’ and has asked for time.
But, more worryingly, he said an upturn was some way off in the distance – and he couldn’t hazard a guess at when it would come.
He said: “This is a tough moment. We are far from the end of this moment. That’s it. We have to continue. Now, we have to survive and work on the team. We already knew it. It’s a long journey. We have to fight these bad moments. It’s part of football.
“We have to work on a lot of things in our club, inside the club, outside the club – and use every moment of training and games to improve the team.”
Amorim admitted he had ‘no idea’ of how long it would take the situation to improve, insisting he wanted to take it ‘day-by-day.’ He was not helped by Fernandes who picked up his second red card of the season. His dismissal against Spurs was overturned.
He said: “The sending-off changed the game. It can happen. He wanted to go towards the ball. It wasn’t like he wanted to stop a player. The other player got to the ball first.”
And he suggested that Onana might have been impeded as Matheus Cunha set Wolves on their way by scoring directly from a corner.
He added: “I saw that the same way I saw the goal against Tottenham. When you are jumping, there was a slight touch. Tottenham was in the arm – this one was in the back. It’s really hard to catch the ball when that happens.”
Wolves boss Vitor Pereira followed up a win in his first game at Leicester in fine style with the hosts fully deserving of the points. He said: “It’s a fantastic feeling – special because of the spirit of the team.
“Now, I think we can see the players are ready to suffer together. To run, fight, compete for each ball and this is the confidence I feel they have to play, win duels – this is the most important.”
And Pereira suggested that Wolves had targeted the set-piece delivery from a corner that gave them the breakthrough.
He added: “We analyse every match and we tried to examine the spaces we could explore. This is football, sometimes it happens, sometimes not.”
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