No doubt, Manchester United had a really bad season, but a lot of the commentary about how bad the club really is, are exaggerated.

There are 3 camps:

  1. Those who think Manchester United is irretrievably damaged.

  2. Those who think the club should sack Ruben Amorim because he’s out of his depth and worse than Erik.

  3. Those who have faith in the manager’s ability to turn things around.

I belong to the third category.

First, I can understand opposition fans who believe Manchester United is dead and buried. It’s normal.

A lot of them don’t watch our matches and conclude from every loss that the club plays badly in every match.

If you, as a fan, watch the matches though, you should be able to realise that what Manchester United struggles with is individual errors. And it's from players that are leaving anyway.

We play well, then succumb to a mistake from one of the players we all know will leave.

It could be Onana, Lindelof, Shaw, Evans, Eriksen, Casemiro. Human errors.

These human errors are sometimes the difference between winning or losing a match, and when you have a striker that can’t score goals, going down to mistakes like that can cost you matches. And it’s cost us a lot.

You can’t honestly watch all our matches and think the club is damaged beyond control or is in some dark space.

You panic as a fan because you listen to the fear-mongering from the media.

Look at our Asian tour for instance. Look at the negativity around the loss to the ASEAN all stars.

I dropped a funny post about it online but I was surprised to see some of our fans genuinely pained by the loss.

I was amused, seeing how the media blew a preseason loss out of proportion.

If you didn’t watch the match, you’d have panicked. Until you look at the lineup and see that the club had lots of academy players on the pitch and subbed in players to get 15-20 minutes game time.

Preseason matches at this stage are for fitness and to show appreciation to the club’s global fans. Not a must-win game that a club should be crucified for if they lose it.

Even Fergie lost pre-season games. We used to joke about “last time we lost a pre-season match, we won the league” — not this media sensationalism around losses in a friendly tour.

But that’s not just what worries me. The category of fans that rub me the wrong way are those who say the manager should have tweaked his formation to fit the players he had for now.

I’m sorry, but if you’ve said that at any point during this season, you have a problem.

Ruben was practically brought in mid-season so that he can use the rest of the season to see who would fit into his plans and who the club should sell. That was why the club insisted on him joining mid-season rather than wait for him to complete his season at Sporting CP.

How exactly would he have fulfilled that aim if he ditched his tactics and used something the players were familiar with?

You’d have won a few more matches, finished in a Europa League or Conference League spot and maybe won the Europa League only to end the season and not know the players that can play the manager’s tactics.

How did a half season that was supposed to be about the manager rebuilding the team culture and figuring out who stays and who leaves become one judged by an inability to win things or a record low finish?

That’s what happens when you listen to the media more than you listen to the club you support.

You only show up on matchday to watch matches and then run with the nonsense that media platforms sell you. That’s why you suffer.

We all would have loved to see the club finish higher, but not at the expense of the players understanding the manager’s style and being able to sign players that fit.

Lastly, if you doubt the manager’s ability to steer the ship correctly, you haven’t been paying attention.

Amorim’s stubbornness is seen by some as a sign of not being a good manager, but that’s wrong. His stubbornness is proof that we got the right man.

Anyone could have panicked and changed their strategy because they didn’t want to be known as the manager that managed United into a record 15th place on the table.

Anyone could have changed things because “if I can win this Europa, dem no go sack me.”

That would be proof that we got the wrong person.

Erik Ten Hag panicked after the early losses and changed his approach. He went on to win one or two games and two trophies but paid for it.

He stopped being one of the smartest and in-demand managers to being just another manager with a big club. Won short term victories but lost at the end. He paid for the compromise and got fired.

Which is why you should not see Ruben’s stubbornness as a vice, rather a confirmation of the fact that the club got the right man.

We saw and loved his type of football. A commitment to play that way no matter what is a plus.

In Ruben's first season at Sporting CP (2019/2020), he lost 10 matches and finished 4th. The next season, he lost just 1 match the entire season and led Sporting CP to their first league title in 19 years. Won a treble that season, including the League Cup and the Super Cup.

He would go on to win the league a total of 2 times in 5 years, and his total trophy haul as a manager in the Portuguese League to 6 trophies.

Good things take time and require patience. Requires doggedness. Requires faith, not fear. Requires you to shut out the noise and have faith in the manager’s abilities to turn things around.

If you can’t do that and you’re rooting for a manager to get fired after a terrible half season where he was brought in to evaluate who leaves and who stays, then you aren’t really a very good fan.