Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo show there is life beyond the chaos for United

They last won three back-to-back Premier League games in the same season in February 2024. When Brighton visited last January, Ruben Amorim called his team “maybe the worst in Manchester United’s history”, and it got worse between then and now.

The past year has forced a breaking point where it feels journalistically beneficial for United to win if just to avoid dragging through yet another grim obituary for a corpse that ceased twitching some time ago, pointing out that it has rotted from the head and the feet and the stomach, eulogising what a great life it lived but that frankly, in 2025, it stinks, and someone needs to bury or burn it.

But, for once, sweet relief. In a way, the follies of stubbornness and pride, the resulting siege mentality of the constant barren years, are United’s greatest assets now, the fundamental lifeforce of a potential recovery. Amorim abandoning his system at any point in the past 11 months would have basically been an admission that they might as well just bring in Ange Postecoglou and let the thing blow itself up in the most entertaining manner possible, die a young man’s death. Amorim has endured almost a year of ritual humiliation to get here, plenty of it his own fault, but he deserves praise in equal measure if and when it works.

Harry Maguire suffering ­ridicule and police-level death threats and Erik ten Hag long enough to down Liverpool last week deserves a ­psychological study in itself. Bruno Fernandes said this week that one of the main factors behind him not following the Saudi cash like a cartoon bear floating towards a freshly-baked pie was his wife asking: “Have you achieved everything you wanted to achieve at the club?” No reasonable person would have begrudged him abandoning the dream of winning the Premier League with United, something you could make the case that 10 teams are more likely to achieve before them. But then no reasonable person would still be here for love or money, and here were 11 footballers who finally looked as though they might be creating something worth fighting for, worth staying for.

Enter Casemiro. We are now 18 months on from Jamie Carragher telling the then 32-year-old to “leave the football before the football leaves you”, a quote so iconic that Sky Sports produced anniversary content for it. Stories emerged for the fourth consecutive window that in January he would be courted by Saudi Arabia, but also now that United are considering offering him a new contract. His apparent recovery, or at least renaissance, is remarkable, testament to himself and Amorim. Casemiro and Fernandes are still a deeply weird midfield partnership, a sitcom pairing of dysfunctional flatmates who learn how to live together. Life in ­service to the system, to Amorim-ball, seems to work.

And it bears saying that this should be happening. The conditions are perfect for United to improve. They have spent exorbitant sums of money before, but finally seem to employ people with a vague idea of how to best to spend it. Ineos has been in charge of the football side for 18 months now. Eight of the same players have started the past three games and there is increasingly a tangible air of unity, of collective purpose, an improvement on the previous “stand together, fall apart” vibe. Amorim has had 11 months and an uninterrupted summer with this group. This is how you build.

Matheus Cunha is arrogant and erratic and petulant, but also swaggering and instinctive and fluent, two balanced sides of the same footballer. His opening goal was the kind of assertive attacking excellence this team have lacked, for better or worse, since Cristiano Ronaldo decided to break Saudi Arabia. Bryan Mbeumo is his perfect foil, a brute force weapon in his own right. Benjamin Šeško still looks slightly like a baby giraffe stolen from its mother, but somehow feels much more likely to adapt than Rasmus Højlund ever did. Goalkeeper Senne Lammens is at least untarnished by the chaos and soul-crushing errata of his predecessors, yet.

United are in the bizarre scenario that this is their only home match in 50 days because they have no European football and are out of the Carabao Cup, a relative privilege only seven other Premier League teams currently enjoy. Three of those – Sunderland, United and Bournemouth – were in the top six this morning. Scheduling helps. If United were not noticeably improving from 15th given the circumstances it would go against all logic and received wisdom.

Perhaps the best you can say of this United side is that it feels as though they have hit rock bottom and are clambering into a brighter future. Next Saturday’s visit to Nottingham Forest might well be the first match Amorim has the privilege of losing without an instant referendum on his capability and life’s work.

The trajectory from here is unlikely to be linear, but this might be the ­heralding of a new era, if not of results then of vibes, a functional and stable United. It is no surprise that a team who have so rarely led by three goals in the past year did it pretty badly. But, moment by moment, it finally feels as though the all-consuming chaos is fading.

Photograph by Oli Scarff /AFP