Ruben Amorim has been frank about Kobbie Mainoo’s pathway to a larger role at Manchester United. The 20-year-old’s technical ability is clear, but Amorim warned that it will not be sufficient in the system he is building.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think for some guys [talent] is enough, but for him it is not enough,\u201d Amorim said. \u201cI believe in him a lot, he is a top top player, but he can be so much better.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he needs to have the technical ability that he has, but he needs more pace. He needs to understand the position better. He needs to play in different speeds. Sometimes it\u2019s slower. Sometimes it\u2019s faster, and I think he can improve on that.<\/p>\n
Amorim emphasised the tactical demands of a two-man midfield and how Manchester United now functions differently compared with the previous regime. \u201cThe way I play is completely different from the last manager. I watched a lot of Premier League games when I was in Portugal. You can feel the Manchester United team was really transitional. Sometimes I looked at Kobbie Mainoo and felt he was the only guy who calmed the game down. Now we have other players who can do that and we play a different game.<\/p>\n
\u201cMainoo is really good at controlling the game, but if he plays as an eight, he has to reach the box, returning, and sometimes he has to cover a lot of space with just two,\u201d he said. \u201cBruno [Fernandes] is doing that job. And then sometimes it\u2019s bad luck.<\/p>\n
\u201cBruno is maybe the more influential player in the last few years, and he\u2019s been playing in that position. Kobbie Mainoo could play as a six, but sometimes he passes the ball and goes away and it\u2019s not a reference as a six, so we have to balance everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amorim also confirmed he spoke with Mainoo after the transfer window closed to outline his plans. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a conversation with him before the window closed because I didn\u2019t want Kobbie Mainoo thinking that I was having a conversation with him just to hold on to him,\u201d explained Amorim. \u201cI did it this week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mainoo made his first Premier League appearance of the season before the international break, coming off the bench to replace the injured Mason Mount, and will hope to add minutes when United face Manchester City on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Amorim: Mainoo must add pace, positional awareness and varied tempo if he is to secure more minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,969],"tags":[342,1005],"class_list":["post-2778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-premier-league","tag-bruno-fernandes","tag-mainoo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}