Cliff Notes – Man United can beat Liverpool but why not midtable sides?
- Ruben Amorim achieved his first back-to-back Premier League wins as Manchester United manager, including a notable victory over Liverpool at Anfield, the first for United since 2016.
- Despite a respectable record against the Big Six, United struggles against midtable teams, with a win percentage of just 16.67% in those matches.
- Amorim emphasised the added pressure of expected victories against teams like Brighton, suggesting it affects player performance and tactical execution.
Man United can beat Liverpool, but why not midtable sides?
Ruben Amorim is fresh off the biggest win of his Manchester United reign. The team’s 2-1 victory over Liverpool on Sunday was the first time the Portuguese coach has managed back-to-back Premier League wins since his appointment nearly a year ago. It also made him the first United boss to win at Anfield since 2016.
There is, though, an argument that Brighton’s visit to Old Trafford on Saturday is even more significant. Amid all the problems Amorim’s faced since taking the job a little under a year ago in November 2024, United’s record against the rest of the so-called Big Six has been respectable. In 11 Premier League games against those teams (Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur), Amorim has recorded three wins, three draws and five defeats. Victory over Liverpool served to reinforce a point the 40-year-old made after the narrow defeat to Arsenal on the opening weekend of the season: that United “can win any game in the Premier League.”
Amorim’s record against newly promoted teams is also good — five wins, one draw in six matches against Ipswich Town, Southampton and Leicester City last season, and Burnley and Sunderland in 2025-26. For a while, it looked like his players were only capable of beating sides not long removed from the Championship. But in games against the other 11 teams (Brighton, Bournemouth, Newcastle United, Aston Villa, Everton, Crystal Palace, Brentford, Fulham, Nottingham Forest, West Ham United and Wolves) his record drops to just three wins, three draws and 12 defeats from 18 games.
United’s biggest problem isn’t in games against Liverpool and Manchester City, or Southampton, Sunderland and Burnley. The issue, rather, is when they play anyone else.
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Against the Big Six, Amorim has a win percentage of 27.7% and has earned 1.09 points per game (PPG). For newly promoted teams, it’s a 83.3% win rate and 2.67 PPG. Against everyone else, however, Amorim’s win percentage is just 16.67%, with a miserable 0.67 points earned per game.
The match against Liverpool was a big result, but there’s a case to be made that victory over Brighton this weekend would represent a far better yardstick of United’s progress.
For Amorim, the issue around games against teams like Brighton is about pressure. There’s naturally extra pressure around a game United should win; beyond that, there’s an additional pressure to win in a certain way. Amorim touched on it himself before the trip to Anfield when he was asked why his team have fared better against bigger teams.
“Maybe the expectations,” he said. “When you have to win, it’s so much harder to play like that. That’s why when you play in big clubs, you need to win every match, especially when people are expecting you to win. We have some difficulties sometimes to deal with that. When people expect Manchester United to win that game, maybe it’s easier for the players to perform, and we need to change that.”
To a certain degree, what happened against Liverpool played into that. Despite Arne Slot’s team heading into the game on the back of three straight defeats, Liverpool were still heavy favorites. Against Brighton, United will be expected to win.
It was perhaps what drove Amorim to attempt to control the view of his team after beating Liverpool. “I want you guys [the media] to continue with the narrative you are,” he said. “Don’t change that. That is best for me.”
Ruben Amorim guided Manchester United to their first win over Liverpool at Anfield in nearly a decade. Carl Recine/Getty Images
The one thing Amorim can control is how United play, and that in itself has caused him problems. It’s also something he predicted before he even arrived in Manchester. When Amorim’s Sporting CP thrashed Manchester City during his long goodbye in Portugal, he was quick to explain why United fans shouldn’t get too carried away. Sporting won 4-1 despite having only 27.3% possession and nine shots, compared with City’s 72.7% possession and 20 shots.
Asked afterward if he realized how excited United fans would be after the result, Amorim played it down. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “Manchester United can’t play that defensively.”
It’s something he has battled with throughout his time at Old Trafford. After beating Ipswich 3-2 in February with 10 men following Patrick Dorgu’s first-half red card, Amorim acknowledged that his team was having more success when forced to play on the back foot.
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“I think that is clear, and it is hard for me,” he said. “If we have players like Harry Maguire and [Matthijs] de Ligt defending the box, they are really strong, but then when they have to cover a lot of space, the game changes for them. … It is really hard for me to play like we play in the second half. But I feel the players are more comfortable sometimes defending in the low block.”
Not only did United not have expectations weighing them down at Anfield, Amorim also felt comfortable employing tactics that irked Slot. “It is always difficult to play against a team that defends in a low block and mainly plays the long ball,” the Liverpool manager said after watching his team have the majority of possession, more shots and more shots on target.
Brighton at home is a different game than Liverpool away. Fabian Hurzeler’s side won 3-1 at Old Trafford in January despite having less than 50% possession and only three shots on target. Seven days after facing Brighton, United will travel to Nottingham Forest, where they lost 1-0 in April despite having 62.8% possession and 23 shots. Forest had 31.8% possession and just two shots on targets, but won thanks to a clinical early counterattack finished off by Anthony Elanga.
In short, Brighton and Forest offer Amorim a different problem to the one he faced at Anfield. It’s one that, so far, he has struggled to solve. Amorim called the result at Liverpool “the biggest win in my time at Manchester United,” and it’s easy to understand why. It was a statement victory in a big game against a fierce rival.
But the true measure of where his team is at will come this weekend. Amorim acknowledged that in the media room at Anfield on Sunday. “It has been a good day,” he said. “Now we must focus on Brighton. We will see after Brighton.”
Brighton at Old Trafford perhaps doesn’t come with the hype and glamor of playing Liverpool at Anfield. For Amorim, however, it has taken on an even greater importance.