Ruben Amorim acknowledged that Manchester United “need to work on” their play from the back after Andre Onana’s mistake led to Viktoria Plzen’s opening goal in their Europa League win.
Onana, who had been passive during Arsenal’s two corner goals last week and made a costly error against Nottingham Forest, underhit a pass to Matthijs de Ligt in the 48th minute. The ball was intercepted by Pavel Sulc, who then set up Matej Vydra to score.
United signed Onana for £47.2 million, with former manager Erik ten Hag believing that a ball-playing goalkeeper was needed to replace David de Gea. Although Onana had a strong season up until Arsenal exploited his set-piece weaknesses, he has since made notable errors against Forest and Plzen.
Onana, visibly relieved after Rasmus Hojlund’s late winner, ran the length of the pitch to celebrate with his teammates. Despite Onana’s mistake, Amorim also noted a “disconnect” among United’s outfield players.
“You have to take it like it is,” Amorim said. “He had already, in the past, a past situation like that. We have to work on this.
“If you see the play we are trying to build up a lot with the goalkeeper making the bounce with Mattha. This time we have a disconnect a little bit during the play. And when we try this we suffered a goal. A difficult goal for us in the second half.
“But we managed today, not like against Nottingham. We managed to help Onana. Like he did in the past for us.”
Amorim had earlier praised Plzen’s work rate, having focused on improving his own team’s running stats before their match against United, similar to his preparation before their tie against Bodo/Glimt.
As United prepares to face Manchester City on Sunday, Amorim criticized the “lack of pace” during the first hour of the victory against Plzen, particularly pointing to the lackluster performances of Marcus Rashford and Joshua Zirkzee, who were substituted early in the second half. Amorim emphasized the importance of players working harder, implementing small targets on the training pitch to improve team performance.
“It’s about putting some small targets,” he explained. “Some marks on the pitch telling players where players would be when the ball is near our box.
“I think they are improving and if you see the transitions you can see that we are improving on the speed. Sometimes we cannot do it but we are training and I can feel it in the team.”
