Wayne Rooney calls out Ruben Amorim with brutal assessment of Man Utd – 'It's strange'

Wayne Rooney has given a scathing assessment of under after on Sunday. Amorim picked an inexperienced team to face the Bees and saw his side beaten for the 16th time in the this season.

before United scored two late goals to close the gap, but it was ultimately another disappointing day for Amorim and his players. They have now gone six league games without a win .

With Thursday’s semi-final second leg against Athletic Bilbao the clear priority, Amorim named the third youngest Premier League starting XI of any club. Youngsters Chido Obi-Martin, Harry Amass and Tyler Fredricson were all handed opportunities but did not impress.

However, United legend Rooney was more critical of Amorim and the more experienced players who were out there. Speaking on Match of the Day 2, he called out for “switching off” for two of Brentford’s goals and Amorim for fielding substitute Amad Diallo out of position at right wingback and for putting a “disjointed” team together which put “no pressure on the ball” and lacked intensity.

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Expanding on Rooney’s points, ex-Liverpool midfielder Danny Murphy said: “It is about intensity, but with wingbacks, different to a back four, it allows you to go and press because you’ve got the extra centre half behind you.

“But surely that’s what they do in training, no? If you’re a coach of a system – the basics of this system with wingbacks is they press the wide men quick and it doesn’t look like they’re doing it. It’s bizarre for me to see.”

Rooney replied: “It’s strange, because that’s why you play a back five with wingbacks. They have to put pressure on the ball or otherwise you get outnumbered in the midfield and the ball comes back into midfield. It was strange, but they had a lot of young players.”

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“There was a lack of movement and a lack of knowhow on the pitch,” he added. “They’ve got a 17-year-old lad up front – the youngest ever to start up front for United – and they’re just launching balls up to him. I really felt for Obi today because you can tell he’s inexperienced but it looked like he had no help, they were just throwing balls up to him.”

Murphy added: “I get that there’s young players, I understand that and they’re playing against good teams. But he (Amorim) only plays one system, he’s not mixing things up, personnel and system and he’s been there a while now. When you play a system that much and you work on it in training, surely we can see more improvement, irrelevant of who is playing because they should be organised in that system.”

Rooney responded: “You’d think so, but I think the second team are playing a back four, which I found strange, because those players who are coming into the first team now with the under-23s or under-21s are playing a different system.

"For me, that’s a bit confusing. Getting to the Europa League final is papering over a lot of cracks for Manchester United and that needs solving quickly.”

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