However, Amorim’s version of the events in Lisbon does not quite add up.
After taking over on March 4, 2020, Sporting won six of their first 11 matches and drew three.
Their two defeats came in the last three games of a campaign interrupted by Covid-19, in away games against FC Porto, when Amorim’s team lost 2-0, and against Benfica, when they were defeated 2-0. -1 with a goal two minutes from time.
“I had this stage at Sporting and if you have a little experience in football, this happens in many clubs,” he said. “We have to continue doing the same thing and improve the team because this will change.”
About 20 minutes before Amorim addressed the media about his team’s second defeat in four days following the 2-0 result at Arsenal, sporting director Dan Ashworth crossed the press conference room on his way from the directors’ room to the main exit of the stadium. .
Ashworth kept his head down and made no eye contact with those present.
He is in a complicated situation. First with Erik ten Hag and now with Amorim, it is becoming clear that United’s squad is not good enough.
They simply cannot afford to give away goals to opponents like they did with Forest, particularly goalkeeper Andre Onana’s inexplicable failure to read Morgan Gibbs-White’s shot from the edge of the area early in the second half.
Onana began to move to the right, but when the ball was not going in the same direction, the Cameroonian international could not move his weight quickly enough and was hit to the left, in the center of his goal.
Gibbs-White admitted that when the ball left his foot, he expected the £47.2m Inter Milan signing to “pick it up”.
“Onana has already saved us many times, so we have to find a way, when this happens, to turn around and score two goals to help our goalkeeper, the same way he helped us at Ipswich,” Amorim said.
“We lose as a team and we have to improve in all aspects of the game.”
If Onana’s mistake had been the only one, it would have been bad enough for United.
But, with their coach’s warning ringing in their ears about not repeating the Emirates Stadium mistakes when they conceded twice from set pieces, they quickly did it again after two minutes when Nikola Milenkovic out-forced Lisandro Martínez in the near post and headed home from Forest’s first corner.
Then, as they tried to clear their heads of Onana’s mistake, neither the goalkeeper nor Matthijs de Ligt attempted to deal with Chris Wood’s header that bounced over them and Martínez let the ball go over him and into the net. .
