Collymore’s column: Amorim was justified, Ange needs to learn and much more

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why Ruben Amorim was right, why Ange Postecoglou shouldn’t be so naive and more. 

Ruben Amorim’s honesty is justified

Ruben Amorim’s honesty is welcome. I don’t think what he said was out of order, I think it was refreshing.

Jose Mourinho was honest. David Moyes and others, if you go back through the post Ferguson-era… all of the managers since then will have had moments in press conferences where they’ve where they’ve told their truth.

I think the interesting thing is with Amorim it’s so stark. Of course the press would jump on the ‘this is Manchester United’s worst ever team’ quote.

It’s no different to what we wrote in the column several weeks ago though.

If you looked at the Manchester United squad, man for man, how many of the them would pundits or football watchers keep?

I would say everyone was up for sale and I don’t think many people would bat an eyelid at that.

The reality is that you can’t guarantee that Amad is a title winning player, for example. He may well go on to be, and Manchester United would hope that’s with them, but it’s just one of many peripheral arguments about players that are currently in form and that could quite easily dip out of form.

The biggest issue at Manchester United is Sir Jim Ratcliffe and the ownership of the club.

He’s changed lots of people and processes, but I think the messaging has been mirroring the government. ‘We’re going to do this. We’re aiming in a straight line. We’re looking to grow the economy,’ but the statistics at the moment don’t really bear that out.

Fans were hoping somebody was going to come in and blow the doors off whilst not necessarily spending fortunes, and have some kind of strategy whereby everybody at Manchester United Football Club felt valued.

That hasn’t been the case and, dare I say it, Manchester United are a bit  ‘austerity lite.’

In any event, Ruben Amorim for me is the right man for the job. He’s a very good, young, talented and progressive coach, and that was proven at Sporting.

He should absolutely be given the opportunity to succeed over multiple transfer windows before passing judgment.

Erling Haaland’s Man City contract makes sense on every level

Erling Haaland’s 10-year contract…

Ten years, two years, one year, it makes no difference. All it does is give the player the whip hand.

Winston Bogarde all those years ago at Chelsea, he was on 40 or 60 odd grand a week and he wasn’t going to move anywhere. They weren’t going to get him out. He just stuck it out and Erling Haaland could do that.

I think there are a couple of key components to think about though too. One, is the player happy? Two, he’ll get the kind of money that’s just slightly dialed down from Saudi money, and why would you go to Saudi Arabia if you are at his age and his ability?

I think that Manchester City will look at it and say if we lost him to Real Madrid in a few years time, we’ve probably saved ourselves £300m/£400m in the grand scheme of things.

How?

Think about how much would it cost them to buy Erling Haaland two or three more times? The answer is anything between £150m/£200m per transfer, so if you add that up, it’ll be somewhere in the region of £400m/£500m.

Let’s say the contract is worth £700m/£800m. If he leaves before the end of it then they’ve actually made a really sound, solid financial decision that even in the hair brained bonkers world of football makes business sense to them.

They’re not paying it all up front either, it’s going to be paid over a long period of time, and that will of course help them with PSR.

I don’t think it’s just PSR related either, but it will be a nice bonus in these times when other clubs like Villa, Newcastle et al are having to look at every incoming and every outgoing transfer.

For Manchester City Football Club, it’s simple. A world class goal scorer who guarantees you 25 goals plus a season. There’s no other striker like him and it’s a deal that saves them money. No brainer.

Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham need to learn… quickly

Do I like Ange Postecoglou? Yes, I do. Do I like the way that he plays his football? Yes, I do.

As a kid and then as a professional footballer, I wanted to play attacking football. That’s what it was all about. I wanted to become a forward, and that’s why I loved to run with the ball, score goals, left foot, right foot.

Now, obviously somewhere like Celtic or in Japan, that’s going to be easy for Ange to get success, but you have to acknowledge that in the Premier League nowadays, you can’t be ‘Kevin Keegan at Newcastle MKII.’

I just don’t think that Ange’s style of play, being ‘the entertainers’ if you like, is conducive to anything other than tranches of four, five, or six games of getting great results and then two or three that really hurt.

Their current predicament isn’t just about injuries and I genuinely do like the man. I think there is something fundamentally really sweet and touching about his style of football, though I don’t want to come across as patronising, but it’s incredibly naive in the Premier League.

He’s got to get his basics right. Set pieces, defensive set pieces, attacking set pieces, second balls and the dirty stuff which you can still hide underneath the veneer of being a total football team.

Time will tell us just how good Ange Postecoglou is of course.

Everybody wants to come out and play nowadays, and he will not reinvent the wheel at Tottenham or in the Premier League.

This season he can still use the excuse of multiple injuries, but if we were to get towards Christmas 2026 and Spurs were in the same boat as they are now, I think that the club would look to look to pull the trigger. You can’t keep not learning from the mistakes.

I think the real elephant in the room, however, is whether Daniel Levy will ever leave Tottenham Hotspur because I think he should.

I think that he, as a CEO, has succeeded with infrastructure projects, has a wonderful training ground and a wonderful stadium, but he’s spectacularly failed at the business of running the football departments at the club.

Mixed bag in the UCL could benefit Man City in EPL

Another Liverpool win, another Arsenal win… they’re in a really good position in the top eight, and their destiny is in their own hands. Quite simply, they win the next game and they’re done and dusted – avoiding the playoffs.

Unai Emery was rightly disappointed by Aston Villa’s defeat at Monao, whilst Manchester City remain a spluttering Ferrari at the moment. They’re back on track in the league for the most part, and people starting to smile again.

I always think people can look way too much into the tactical issues but I can guarantee that City have been doing nothing any differently than they’ve ever done tactically and during training sessions.

What happens is confidence starts to get a bit lower, one or two injuries crop up and everybody looks at each other and says ‘who’s going to stand up to be counted?’ Before you know it, you’re in this maelstrom of losing, and it just becomes a thing.

So, the engines been changed in the Ferrari Testarossa, but there’s still one or two tuning problems.

Now, would it be the worst thing if Manchester City were eliminated from the Champions League? They’ve won everything there is to win, and if they were out of it this season, who cares? They’re going to be in it for as long as Sheikh Mansour’s involved with Manchester City Football Club, so you then look at it and go ‘what a great opportunity.’

Everybody else; Arsenal, Liverpool and others, may well qualify and will play more matches, potentially get more injuries etc. City can just concentrate on the Premier League.

I was itching in the column a couple of weeks ago to say could Manchester City win the league? It’s absurd isn’t it, unthinkable… but if they had a clear run at the league, that six to nine points between them and Liverpool, when the run in comes, isn’t an impossible target to reach.

All it takes is an injury to Salah, to Odegaard, to Rice….