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Rob Dawson, Correspondent
Manchester United boss Rúben Amorim has admitted Pep Guardiola’s new contract at Manchester City is “a problem for everybody.”
Amorim has been tasked with bringing the Premier League title back to Old Trafford after succeeding Erik ten Hag as head coach.
The 39-year-old’s arrival has coincided with Guardiola’s decision to sign a new two-year contract, which will keep him at the Etihad Stadium until 2027.
Given his ambitions with United, Amorim said it is not ideal that Guardiola, who has won the league title in six of the last seven seasons, is sticking around.
“I think it’s a problem for everybody but we have so much to do we cannot focus on anybody,” Amorim said. “We just have to focus on improving our club and not focus on the other clubs. It’s amazing, if you can beat that team it’s a good sign but we are focused on Manchester United.”
Amorim, who will take charge of his first game against Ipswich on Sunday, is looking to become the first United manager to win the title since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013.
Still only two weeks into the job, he said he is “not yet had the opportunity” to meet Ferguson. Despite the Scot’s unbelievable success at the club, Amorim said he is not in Manchester “to copy” the legendary manager.
“It’s not to copy someone, so I have to be me,” he said. “We have to be very demanding. This is a club that has to win things, we have to show that to our players. But it’s a different time. I cannot be the same guy that Alex Ferguson was. It’s a different time and I need to have a different approach but I can also be demanding with that different approach.”
Amorim has been parachuted into the United job following a miserable start to the season under Ten Hag.
The former Sporting CP coach, who hinted that he would have preferred to stay in Portugal until the end of the season before moving on, admitted that trying to implement his methods halfway through the campaign will be tough.
“It’s so much harder to come to the team in the middle of the season because you have to get to know the players during the games,” Amorim said.
“You are talking about no national team periods to work with the players, it’s just games. It depends. If you are winning it’s a lot of fun, having a lot of games, trying to make changes tactically and winning games.
“But if you are losing you don’t have time in training to work out everything you want to work on. To improve a team, training is the most important aspect.
“Players can recover very fast but if you don’t do any exercise with that it’s really hard to do that in video or recovery training sessions. It’s really hard but we’ll try to find ways to cope with that.”