The good thing about football seasons is that they have to end. Eventually.
The Athletic has once again exceeded our word count when evaluating a United season. It is difficult to sum up the combined misadventures and failures of Amorim, Erik ten Hag, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and everyone else in a mere 1,000 words.
So let’s just get through this review and try to put the majority of these moments in our review mirror. For good.
This season will be remembered as…
The one where the other shoe dropped. A dozen years’ worth of focus on what United can do to return to the top of the Premier League has screeched to a halt. There’s no more talk about the club’s potential ceiling; 2024-25 saw the floor completely collapse.
Whatever game model the club hoped to implement at the start of the campaign fizzled out before it could fly. It was hoped Amorim’s arrival would conjure a new manager bounce and put the club back in the hunt for the Champions League places, but the Portuguese head coach struggled to make his bespoke 3-4-3 tactical system work in the Premier League.
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In mid-January, Amorim offered up a headline: “We are the worst team maybe in the history of Manchester United.”
Failure to win the Europa League final means there is no get-out-of-jail-free card of silverware as there was in the previous season. United fans ask whether this is rock bottom for the club. Key decision-makers need to make sure it is. There’s a lot of work to be done in the weeks and months to come.
Ruben Amorim after United lost the Europa League final (David Ramos/Getty Images)
Game of the season
We could easily fill the next three seasons with moments from an incredible game against Lyon. However, for a sprinkling of variety, we’ll plump for the December victory in the Manchester derby.
It was a match that looked largely lost until Amad sprang into action. First, he won a penalty for Bruno Fernandes to convert, before scoring a goal of the season contender to win the game in the closing minutes. As Thierry Henry would later explain, when Amad scored the winner, there was a moment where he stopped looking at the flight of Lisandro Martinez’s pass and instead focused on where it would bounce next.
There is an intuitive improvisational genius to the 22-year-old that makes him one of the side’s most important players.
Victory in the derby is always sweet, but doing it late and away from home? That makes it a delicious morsel of joy in an otherwise dreadful season.
Goal of the season
Kobbie Mainoo’s equaliser against Lyon.
Many players would have rushed a shot when the ball rolled to the midfielder in the penalty area late on. The 20-year-old (his age still makes for absurd reading) could have panicked. He didn’t.
“When the ball drops you in there, a yard feels like a mile,” he said after the game. “So, you just gotta try and stay as calm as you can and slot it.”
A future without the prodigious talent in the squad is not worth thinking about. He is a player many clubs would build a team around.
Moment of the season
Harry Maguire’s thumping winner late in stoppage time of extra time against Lyon.
If you’ve not yet listened to commentator Conor McNamara describe the goal on BBC 5 Live, we heartily recommend you fix that.
If you have, then we recommend you listen to it again.
Stop what you’re doing and turn this up 🔊@ConorMcNamaraIE’s commentary is unreal 🎙️🔥#BBCFootball #UEL pic.twitter.com/anQzBDH7KW
— BBC 5 Live Sport (@5liveSport) April 17, 2025
Amorim said he would have liked to bottle the noise Old Trafford made after Maguire’s goal. A reminder of how brilliant football can be.
Did that really happen?
Dan Ashworth’s five-month spell at the club still makes for a confounding head-scratcher.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe voiced his displeasure at how difficult it was to extricate the sporting director from Newcastle United, calling his extended period of gardening leave “absurd”. Ashworth was meant to represent INEOS’ “best in class” approach to hirings, yet he only lasted one transfer window before dismissal in early December.
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Ratcliffe would describe Ashworth’s time at the club as an “error” in a series of interviews conducted in March. Ashworth’s hiring and firing cost the club £4.1million. Ten Hag’s departure incurred a £10.6m hit on the bank balance. Amorim’s hiring? £11million. These are the sort of moves INEOS will treat as “teachable moments” — lessons they seek to learn only once.
Favourite quote
Amorim is an active listener in press conferences and is honest in interviews, almost to a fault. As a result, written, broadcast and online media all make great efforts to try to sit down with Amorim and get a spicy headline.
After his debut league match with United he complained he had done more interviews in a single week than the entirety of his time in charge of Sporting CP, but the interviews kept coming, leading to this little insight before the 0-0 draw against Manchester City in early April.
“The Premier League is so difficult. I have a lot of people saying Sir Alex Ferguson took three or four years to win something, it is not possible these days because you have to give three interviews before every game so the pressure is so much different.”
It’ll be interesting to see whether the head coach remains so candid next season.
Biggest surprise
Proposed designs for United’s new football stadium caused a stir in early March. Architects Foster + Partners unveiled bold pieces of concept art for the proposed 100,000-capacity stadium, including a canopy that drew comparisons with Butlin’s Minehead resort.
(Manchester United/Foster + Partners)
Will the finished product look like that? Only time will tell.
Will the final stadium be built within five years of work starting, and stay on budget? Consider us sceptical.
The funniest moment
Amad’s chaotic tweeting following United’s victory over Lyon.
UNITER WILL NEVER DIED, congrat manu for your’re shit goal , fuck Garna for that miss , you gaves us pain heart 😭😭 pic.twitter.com/zbv1NP82Eo
— Amad (@Amaddiallo_19) April 17, 2025
Best performance by an opposition player
Wolverhampton Wanderers became the 12th team to complete a Premier League double over United this season, thanks in part to the work of Matheus Cunha.
The Brazilian forward scored a goal and an assist in Wolves’ 2-0 win over United on Boxing Day, putting together the sort of all-action attacking performance Amorim ideally wants from his No 10s. The reverse fixture in April would see him win the free kick that led to Pablo Sarabia’s winning goal.
A few days later and The Athletic reported the club were taking the first steps in attempting to agree personal terms with the 25-year-old, with a view to signing him this summer. Nothing like a good win over United to put yourself in the shop window. Sometimes the old methods work best.
Rate the manager’s season out of 10
Amorim uses the terms head coach and manager interchangeably in press conferences (perhaps a small hint he wants a change in job title?), and used his post-Lyon interview with TNT Sports to give the best evaluation of his work thus far.
“You can be good in European games, but your reflection as a team is the league. We are underperforming, but then you have to see the context. You can see that we lack a lot of characteristics in our team.”
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Amorim gets a three out of 10 for his work this season. The head coach left Bilbao saying, “I have nothing to show to the fans, so at this moment it is a little bit of faith.” The key decision-makers have faith that the 40-year-old can turn it around.
He’ll need rapid improvement to win fans back onside.
The discontent at Old Trafford continues (Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images)
The issue that will dominate the summer
How do you go about fixing this mess?
United currently have a squad ill-equipped to take on the Premier League’s best teams, along with an improving middle-class. Amorim has made no secret of the fact he believes the team need more physicality to make his system work, but the club’s precarious financial situation means the summers of spending £250million+ on four to five first-team players could be a thing of the past.
A possible transfer kitty can be topped up with player sales. For the most part, United’s current loan players are either injured, in indifferent form, or prohibitively expensive to the sort of clubs that could utilise their talents best.
Prepare for at least one returning loanee to be described as “like a new signing” in August. Prepare for another player returning from injury to get the same treatment. Hold out hope that one (or maybe even two) academy players can make a successful jump to first-team football next season.
This time next year we’ll be saying…
“Shouldn’t they have started work on the new stadium by now?”
(Top photo: Manchester United in Bilbao; by David Ramos via Getty Images)
This news was originally published on this post .
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