On January 5, 2026, Manchester United sacked Ruben Amorim. It was, by that point, not a surprise. What made it remarkable was how it happened — and what it revealed about the communications dysfunction at the heart of the club.
Amorim had been publicly candid throughout his tenure. That was part of his appeal. Fans loved that he told the truth in press conferences, called out poor performances, and refused to hide behind corporate non-speak. But candor has limits when your bosses are watching. After a draw at Elland Road in late December, Amorim made critical comments about the club’s recruitment direction and his lack of involvement in transfer decisions. He had already clashed privately with technical director Jason Wilcox days earlier. The public comments were, in effect, the last straw. The following day, Wilcox and CEO Omar Berrada called him to Carrington and informed him he was out.
From a PR standpoint, this is fascinating and troubling in equal measure.
Here was a manager whose communication style had been one of his most praised qualities — and it was ultimately that same quality that ended his job. The message United sent, whether intentionally or not, was this: we want honesty in public until it becomes inconvenient. That is a deeply damaging message to send to your own fanbase, your players, and the wider football world.
The financial fallout made it worse. United had paid Sporting CP £10 million to secure Amorim in November 2024. His severance package reportedly cost another £16 million. When you add in the compensation owed back to Sporting from the original deal, the total bill for hiring and firing Amorim approaches £27 million — for 14 months of football that produced the worst Premier League win rate of any manager in the club’s history. Thirty-two percent. In 47 games.
United announced Michael Carrick as head coach on January 12. He had briefly served as caretaker back in 2021 and earned widespread respect for his work at Middlesbrough. The appointment was framed publicly as bringing in someone who “knows what it takes to win at Manchester United” — careful, familiar language designed to calm a fanbase that had been through Ten Hag, then Amorim, in the space of barely a year.
What nobody expected was that Carrick would actually work.
Since January, United have gone on a 12-game unbeaten run and climbed to third in the Premier League. Carrick ditched Amorim’s complicated three-back system, simplified the structure, and let players like Kobbie Mainoo and Bruno Fernandes operate in roles that suit them. The results have been immediate.
But here is the PR question that deserves asking: is the Carrick turnaround a genuine story of good management, or is it partly the result of a softer run of fixtures, Chelsea’s collapse up the table, and the bounce effect that often follows a managerial change? Some underlying stats — expected goals, chances created, touches in the opposition box — actually favor the end of the Amorim era over the start of Carrick’s.
United’s communications team has understandably leaned into the feel-good narrative. Every post-match quote, every stat about form tables, every carefully placed Ryan Giggs interview praising Carrick — it is all part of a deliberate attempt to rebuild confidence around the club before the season ends. And it is working, at least in the short term.
But the unresolved question remains: what happened at Manchester United that made a well-regarded, genuinely communicative manager feel he had no choice but to publicly confront his own employers? And if INEOS cannot maintain a working relationship with a manager who was, by most accounts, operating in good faith, what does that say about the culture they are building?
The Carrick feel-good story is real. But the Amorim firing is a case study in what happens when a club has no clear communications philosophy — no shared understanding of who speaks, about what, and when. That is the story underneath the story. And it is not over yet.
Was Amorim right to speak out, or did he break an unwritten rule that managers simply cannot afford to break? Leave your thoughts below.
