Ruben Amorim’s unusual decision to hold a full training session after Manchester United’s FA Cup win over Leicester City has been branded ‘unprofessional’ by Martin Keown.
United scrapped through to the FA Cup fifth round with a 2-1 win at Old Trafford courtesy of Harry Maguire’s controversial late winner.
Despite the victory, Friday night’s performance marked another unconvincing display from Ruben Amorim’s side as they struggled to break down their Premier League opposition.
Amorim was quick to take action at full-time, though, ordering some players to be put through their paces in a training session on the Old Trafford pitch shortly after full-time.
And despite playing the full 90 minutes, Rasmus Hojlund appeared to be one of the players to take part in the session.
United were keen to show off the training, posting on social media: ‘Working for the badge. Some of the United squad completed a full training session at Old Trafford following the full-time whistle on Friday.’
However, the move did not go down well with everyone, with Keown labelling the decision as ‘unprofessional’ and simply designed to embarrass a portion of Amorim’s squad.
‘Does it come across as a punishment though for the players?’ Keown told talkSPORT.
‘I mean he can do what he wants. It does feel a little bit unprofessional, [like]: ‘Because we haven’t got time in the week to do it, so we are doing a session afterwards’.
‘It’s very unorthodox. It’s not the norm, there’s recovery, there’s stretching, okay? They’ve got nine days before they play their next game.’
The former Arsenal centre-back continued: ‘Is it about embarrassing the players a little bit? Look, they were awful for large periods of that game.
‘For me, it has to be [that] he’s so annoyed, there’s no time to wait, and no time to lose because he could be out of a job as well, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.
‘But you’ve got some players who played a full 90 minutes taking part in that training session. I don’t think that’s ideal.
‘So he’s got to do better in the time that he has got available. He’s got nine days between now and the next match, he could have waited but he didn’t want to.’
Reflecting on United’s narrow win on Friday, Amorim admitted that his side still had plenty of aspects to improve upon.
‘Today is just the feeling of the win, and the fans will go home with that feeling of when they perform really well, they help us a lot to change the game,’ he said.
‘The rest is hard to point to something to give them a little bit [of] confidence. Just the spirit in the second half, more energy, more second balls, small things.
‘But the rest, we have a lot to improve. So we already knew that. But yeah, we need to do better.’
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