Ruben Amorim: Man United face a ‘long road’ back to the top

Ruben Amorim said Manchester United face a “long road” back to the top after Nottingham Forest recorded their first win at Old Trafford in 30 years.

Forest won 3-2 on Saturday, condemning Amorim to back-to-back defeats in the top flight for the first time since August 2022, when he managed Sporting CP.

This leaves United in 13th place in the table with just 19 points – their lowest tally after 15 games since the 1986/87 season.

“We already knew (it would be difficult),” Amorim said.

“It will be a long road but we want to win because this is a huge club. You can feel it, when you lose a game, it’s really hard for everyone.”

“I can understand that. I can feel it in the stadium after the first goal. We understand the context, but we have to continue in the same way and do the same things. The same words I have here (the 4-0 Everton, I have to focus on the performance today. We have to improve in many aspects of the game and do the same in training tomorrow.

United were undone by a series of defensive errors that allowed Forest to follow up their victory at Old Trafford with a 1-0 victory over Liverpool at Anfield in September.

Nikola Milenković scored with a powerful header after just 90 seconds when Lisandro Martínez failed to jump for a corner.

A bad pass from Bruno Fernandes and a howler from André Onana allowed Morgan Gibbs-White to score the second goal, and Chirs Wood’s third goal saw a series of errors from Onana, Martínez and Matthijs de Ligt.

“I had that and worse at the beginning at Sporting,” said Amorim.

“The feeling is the same for me, but for the world it is completely different. You know Sporting in Portugal but Manchester (United) has a lot of attention but for me it’s the same feeling.”

“I had that time at Sporting and when you have a bit of experience in football, that happens at a lot of clubs and we have to manage to keep doing the same things and improve the team because that will change. We need time and to continue working in the same way every day.”