Manchester United's sad inconsistency frees Amorim from any illusion | manchester united

Well, then there's something to work on, Ruben. It would be tempting at the end of this slowed down game of semi-football talk at least about Ruben Amorim realize the scale of the work faces.

Except, since Amorim almost certainly owns a television and is interested in football, you already know the magnitude of the job. And the scale is: really very large.

Although it is not the scale. It is the tone, the texture, the deadly spirit of this United team that really needs to be digested in the flesh, the sheer sad incoherence, a manchester united team that is all trapped energy and broken patterns, the football equivalent of a splintered salsa boat passed down unhappily from generation to generation.

It was there, in the hilarious wandering patterns of Joshua Zirkzee, who always seems to be hovering quite close to the show, like a man listening to a podcast while strolling through the local park, tactfully avoiding dog walkers.

He was there for a fascinating interlude in the 24th minute, when United were sleepily carrying the ball, the backline failing to intersect with the midfield in front of it, no angles, no pockets to get through the press. Seeing this, Amorim seemed calm, with a poker face, right up until the moment when you looked at his feet and he seemed to be trying to stand on his tiptoes, doing some kind of secret exercise with his thighs hyper contracted, swallowing it. He spread his arms as another pass crossed the penalty area, possession without hunger, drive or purpose, football taking place in a vacuum.

With this in mind, for United fans the most encouraging aspect of this deadly 1-1 draw against Ipswich is that Amorim understands it very clearly. “We are going to suffer for a long period,” he shrugged, smiling a little wearily, at his post-match press conference at Portman Road. The task is enormous, overwhelming and perhaps even insoluble. The first positive step is to know all these things for sure. And here the Amorim players did him a favor in that sense. He is, at least, completely free of any kind of illusion.

From the start, there was something charming, windswept and vaguely Jane Austen about traveling through the Suffolk countryside to meet a handsome man with haunting eyes who has been tasked with reviving a large, ailing old estate.

The three-week pause between the appointment and the resumption of full-time duty had given this occasion a sense of delayed intrigue, nine days of intense tactical debates over full-back and centre-back partnerships.

There was a slight sense of double opinion about Amorim's starting eleven. OK. So, we go with new energy, freshness, relentless demands on the press, movement and structure. Let's go – it says here – with Casemiro, Christian Eriksen and Jonny Evans.

But it only took 82 seconds for everything to be fine, with a goal entirely the work of Amorim's rejig. Amad Diallo as right back? Yes. We can do that too. Here he took the ball about halfway and launched straight into a full, voracious, high-revving sprint. The low cross with his newly enhanced right foot was perfectly measured. Marcus Rashford just had to get the ball into the net.

Amorim's reaction was perfect, as there was no reaction, just a turn toward the bench, maybe a blink of the eyes. Rashford seemed in a bad mood in those first moments. That is to say, he seemed hungry, full of energy and furiously mobile. He ran after dropped passes, fouled out and harassed.

And for a time, while United were going through their best spell, there was a chance to persist in that vital quality: Amorim's energy on the touchline. There was an aura from the start, walking around in a thick padded coat, white trainers, fitted tailored trousers and an off-the-charts kit of European football royalty. The package is good.

Jaw line, hair, controlled energy in his movements.

United's always rowdy away support got rolling, jumping and singing about the 12 Cantonese of Christmas. It didn't last. Ipswich pressed with real purpose, a process that is always easier when you find no resistance, a gap, a space to press.

The structure of United's midfield was strange, porous, and left paths that Ipswich began to trace, moving in neat triangles between the static parts. The equalizer was always coming, and it was fitting that Omari Hutchison scored after a sublime, high-level first half.

Both André Onana teams made not one, but two stunning point-blank saves against Liam Delap. Delap is a wonderful sight in person, a huge, thick figure, running as if barely in control of his own gravity, a man always chasing a round of cheese down a Gloucestershire hillside. I really should have decided on this game.

Amorim didn't sit back through all of this. He didn't shout or point. Instead, he paced back and forth, hands in his pockets, tracing a smaller and smaller arc from left to right. Someone needs to give this thing a knife. Amorim can have a sort of Left Bank feeling, soft, deep brown eyes, the bristles neatly trimmed. But he is also lucid and ruthless. And yes, you will really need all of that.