{"id":382567,"date":"2025-12-31T12:37:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T12:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/382567\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T12:37:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T12:37:11","slug":"man-utd-boss-ruben-amorims-decision-to-change-formation-in-wolves-draw-baffles-gary-neville-football-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/382567\/","title":{"rendered":"Man Utd boss Ruben Amorim’s decision to change formation in Wolves draw baffles Gary Neville | Football News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gary Neville says Manchester United went backwards in the 1-1 draw against winless Wolves because of Ruben Amorim’s decision to revert to a back three.<\/p>\n

United missed out on the chance to go fourth and became the first side to drop points to Wolves since October after a run of 11 consecutive defeats as Amorim’s side were booed off by their own fans at Old Trafford.<\/p>\n

“That was the baddest of the bad that,” the Sky Sports pundit said on the Gary Neville podcast.<\/p>\n

“They weren’t just booed off at full-time. The fans waited in the stadium to continue to boo them.”<\/p>\n

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United were flat from the off but led through Joshua Zirkzee’s deflected strike before Wolves scored a deserved equaliser just before half-time through Ladislav Krejci’s header.<\/p>\n

Neville was surprised Amorim had not stuck with the back four that earned a big win over Newcastle at Old Trafford on Boxing Day, given his only change was Zirkzee for the injured Mason Mount.<\/p>\n

“They’ve gone backwards,” the Sky Sports pundit said on co-commentary after the equaliser. “I’m not quite sure why they have changed. Wolves have probably been the better team.”<\/p>\n

Just 20 minutes into the game, he had said: “This isn’t right. I’ve watched enough of United over the last five or six weeks to know what looks right and what isn’t right.”<\/p>\n

‘No Ruben, why have you done that?’ <\/p>\n

\"Manchester<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Amorim looks to the heavens during his side’s draw against winless Wolves<\/p>\n

Neville was no more impressed by United’s performance as the game wore on, with Wolves coming close to claiming their first win of the season only to be denied by two crucial Senne Lammens saves.<\/p>\n

The Sky Sports pundit felt Amorim’s choice of formation was to blame for the drop-off and questioned his comments in a press conference<\/a> when the head coach said he could not tweak the system because of media pressure.<\/p>\n

“He doesn’t need to say ‘I haven’t changed because of the media’ because then he’s telling us basically that the media is in his head,” Neville said on his Sky Sports podcast.<\/p>\n

“The reason he’s had to change is because the performance levels with the 3-4-3 have been so poor and the results have been appalling.<\/p>\n

“When I see that we go back [to three at the back] after five minutes tonight and I’m thinking, no, Ruben, why have you done that?,” Neville added.<\/p>\n

“The manager has to look at that and think, I got that wrong. I complicated it.”<\/p>\n

\"Amorim's<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Amorim’s XI in the draw<\/p>\n

‘Amorim subs made Man Utd worse’<\/p>\n

Neville was once again critical of Amorim’s substitutions after he decided to take off Zirkzee at half-time despite having a bench with five teenagers on it.<\/p>\n

Amorim explained after the game that it was a tactical decision to remove Zirkzee rather than due to an injury.<\/p>\n

“They made Manchester United worse,” Neville said of the changes. “Every single substitution was bizarre.<\/p>\n

“If Zirkzee wasn’t injured and that was a tactical substitution, it was a really poor one. Zirkzee isn’t Eric Cantona, by any stretch of the imagination, but he needed to be out there for physicality, for presence, for experience.<\/p>\n

“And he’d scored. You couldn’t take him off. So I’m hoping he’s injured. I’m hoping he’s injured for Ruben Amorim.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gary Neville says Manchester United went backwards in the 1-1 draw against winless Wolves because of Ruben Amorim’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-382567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}