There was great hope that Ruben Amorim could turn around Manchester Uniteds fortunes when he arrived as manager so far, that hasnt happened.
The Red Devils still sit firmly in the bottom half of the table after eight league defeats under the new boss, ahead of Sundays game with Arsenal.
Amorim switched Manchester United to a 3-4-3 formation upon his arrival, having had success with the system in Portugal with Sporting, and has stuck to it despite difficult results since.
Former defender's verdict
Former Manchester United defender Mikael Silvestre is not convinced that the system is currently working, believing it doesnt suit the squad that Amorim has at his disposal.
I think he could have changed his system a little bit, the Frenchman said.
We know that he wants to play a 3-4-3, we know that he was incredibly successful at Sporting playing that system, but I think he should have also realised that he doesnt have the perfect squad to implement his preferred tactics and tweaked things a little bit.
If we talk about the best managers or the top managers, they are able to switch from a back three to a back four or they change the formation completely.
In modern football, you need to be flexible. You need to be able to adapt to injuries, and sometimes you have to adapt to an opponent that is superior to you, and when that happens, you normally want to match their system and focus on winning individual battles.
I would have liked to have seen him show a little bit more tactical flexibility and given a few other approaches a go.
Silvestre believes that Manchester United may currently perform better in a different system they exited the FA Cup last weekend after a penalty shoot-out loss at home to Fulham.
I dont think the team would play worse if they were playing in a 4-3-3 or 4-4-2, he said, speaking in association with yaysweepstakes.com. Because we havent seen any improvement in the relationship between the players since Amorim has come in.
The flow of the game is not there, the confidence of the players is not there, and that is a recipe for disaster because the mistakes start to stack up as the pressure builds.
You can see that in every United performance at the moment, simple passes going astray. Against Fulham, technically, the first half performance was a disaster.
