Jamie Carragher has been left flabbergasted by Ruben Amorim’s latest comments.
The Manchester United manager made headlines after a 3-1 defeat to Brighton saying his side may be the worst in the club’s history.
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United’s league record is now two league wins in nine with six defeats, leaving them 13th in the Premier League.
The two-time Primera Liga winning coach with Sporting has lowered expectations ever since his arrival in November.
But this is a whole new level, and Carragher is just as bemused as everyone else.
“I don’t know Man United’s history as well as Gary Neville but I must say it was one of the most bizarre and ridiculous things I’ve ever heard a manager say,” the Sky pundit said on Monday Night Football.
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“Why you would make a comment like that? That’s the type of comment a pundit would make, someone in my position, and you’d have to defend that. I don’t know what he gains from that, what the benefit is.
“We all know it’s a poor Man United team. They’d lost another game at home to Brighton, they’d done that in the last couple of years anyway.
“We know it’s a tough season, we know it’s a poor team. He has just loosened it up. That will be a quote that follows him for the rest of the season.
“He said to the journalists there, ‘I’ll give you your headline’. Why you would like to do that as a manager? I’ll never know.”
Amorim has repeatedly lowered expectations since arriving from Sporting in November.
Notoriously stubborn, he’s insisted he won’t sway from the 3-4-3 formation that won him two Primeira Liga titles and he’s regularly told supporters that things will get worse before they get better.
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Expectation management is one thing, but Carragher thinks Amorim has gone too far now and his negative attitude will start hurting the players.
“It doesn’t help you confidence-wise going forwards,” Carragher began. “I’ve not got much sympathy for the players in the Man United dressing room, they’ve been a joke for a few years now.
“A few weeks ago, after they played Liverpool, where Lisandro Martinez was talking about the mentality that was different – I nearly couldn’t stop laughing when I saw that.
“The amount of times Man United have thrown the towel in with bad performances over the last four or five years.
“What I would say is how can the manager go into the dressing room between now and the end of the season and continually try to build them up and give them belief to beat the opposition, whoever they come up against, when he has said they’re one of the worst teams in Man United history? At no point can I see what he’ll gain from that.”
In his 15 games since moving to Old Trafford Amorim now has seven defeats, five wins and three draws.
Up next is home tie against Rangers in the Europa League where defeat could see United leapfrogged by their Scottish opponents and pushed out of the last 16 qualification spots and into the play-off places.
