Ruben Amorim has suggested that Manchester United would have lost to Nottingham Forest if the match had been played last season. United took the lead at the City Ground through Casemiro’s header, but the game turned around dramatically at the second-half kick-off.
Morgan Gibbs-White equalized and Nicolo Savona put Forest ahead just two minutes later. Forest supporters were hoping for a first league win since August, but Amad’s stunning goal with nine minutes remaining ensured a draw. Asked if the Red Devils had lost the same game last season, Amorim simply replied: “Yes.”
He added: “If we didn’t score more goals (they) would have lost. That’s how I feel.” When asked why, Amorim explained: “It’s the confidence. Of course, it’s completely different. We’ve had three good matches, but the confidence is different. We understand each other better.”
“We talked about it more and said that this is what football is like, and this year we proved it. There are bad moments, but then all of a sudden you have three good games. So that’s what football is like, and that’s how games are too.”
“We had some good moments, we scored and by the end of the first half you could feel that we were in control of the game. We struggled at the start of the second half and were stopped for five minutes, which is good enough in the Premier League, but we managed to bounce back from that. It felt good.”
Reflecting on the game, Amorim said: “We lost control of the game for five minutes and we paid the price. We did some things well. Our energy level went down a little bit.
“And when our energy drops a little bit, you can feel it. We can play well, but we’re not at full strength. But my feeling is the guys tried, they really tried. They worked all week and tried again today.”
“Before, if you had a bad five minutes like this and conceded two goals, you couldn’t recover. Today there was a different feeling and you can feel that we could win this game, but we weren’t going to lose. That’s the feeling big teams have sometimes.”
“In the end we had a chance to win, but we drew. We dropped two points. I think we struggled a lot last year. We want to win games and get over moments like this, but now they know how to do that.
“We just have to stay in the game until the last 10 minutes of the game. That’s part of football. Previously, you could lose everything because of your position or the way you played the game.
“I think we’re improving on that front. Again, we did some things right, but we also have the potential to play better. That’s the goal.”
