NEWCASTLE, England: Manchester United coach Ruben Amorim insisted he understood the criticism aimed at him and his team after another Premier League (EPL) defeat at Newcastle United early this morning, but claimed losing a game was worse than any personal curse.
Amorim’s team lost for the 14th time in the league this season – matching the number of defeats they suffered throughout the 2023-24 campaign.
United showed some impressive moves at St James’ Park but two goals from Harvey Barnes, capitalising on a number of defensive errors, left Amorim’s side stranded in 14th place in the table with six games remaining.
“I understand (the criticism) but I don’t care,” said Amorim.
“There’s nothing worse than losing a game. They can say whatever they want. I don’t want to defend myself or anything like that. If you look at where we are in the table, it says it all.
“When we were penalised for the second goal at the start of the second half, we started to get frustrated and we need to act better in moments like this, we need to deal with it.
“We need to improve a lot of things and our position is a reflection of our performance this season.”
On the verge of the worst EPL points tally in history, Amorim made five changes to the starting line-up, with the Europa League quarter-final second leg against Olympique Lyonnais taking centre stage early this Friday morning.
The change that stole the spotlight was when first-choice goalkeeper Andre Onana was left out of the squad, with Altay Bayindir making his EPL debut.
The Turkiye international struggled, however, with his mistake gifting Newcastle their fourth goal.
“Even if we put in a different starting line-up, we don’t know the outcome,” said Amorim. “But we have to make a choice, we played three days ago.
“We will analyse the game, but we need to focus on the next one, we can’t change this one, the next one is our big strength, so let’s focus on the next one this Thursday to perform better and win the match.”