All reason and evidence tells us that Manchester United should sack Ruben Amorim – here's the alarming reason why they won't, writes IAN LADYMAN

Football managers usually get sacked when clubs get desperate. At Manchester United, it may be the other way round.

United are desperate, all right. Desperate not to go back to square one. Desperate not to have to start all over again. Desperate not to admit they’ve got it wrong once more.

It’s all this that stands in favour of Ruben Amorim and a stay at Old Trafford beyond the summer. What it’s not in his favour – so far at least – is the football.

Sometimes it’s worth writing some truths down, or saying them out loud, to believe and appreciate their sheer gravity. This is where we are with United.

Amorim’s team are unfathomably poor to the point where we are almost immune to it and accepting of it. They are the worst United team since before Sir Alex Ferguson first assumed control of the first team in 1986 and they are not getting better.

In some ways they are regressing and a significant chunk of the blame for that sits with their young manager.

In Amorim’s native Portugal they cannot believe what they are seeing. Amorim, in his previous roles at Braga and Sporting Lisbon, was always the optimist, always the believer, the one with the ideas and the solutions.

At United he is none of those things. Since he took over from Erik ten Hag last November, his team have got worse and that is something none of us ever thought we would say.

In Portugal, there are whispers that he is unhappy and that he is disappointed to have found things to be more chaotic and more challenging than he imagined at Old Trafford. They wonder if he may come back home – possibly to Benfica – in the summer. Amorim denies all this. He says he wants to stay in England to fight.

But the 40-year-old knows the ground is shifting beneath his feet. He says that results are everything but he is not quite right. Often when teams are struggling there are chinks of lights. An individual player may improve. There may be an occasional performance when things click, something to hint at better times ahead if the faith is held.

There has been precious little of that under Amorim. A good draw at Liverpool. A gutsy FA Cup win at Arsenal. And then a dollop of regression. Arguably, Amorim’s results have been better than his team’s performances and that is quite something to say when you look at the Premier League table.

Former United captain Gary Neville spoke this week about how poor the atmosphere was at a game he attended as a supporter. Both inside the stadium and outside, by the Holy Trinity Statue that acts as a meeting point by the main entrance.

Years of Glazer drift and shrift and now 12 months of INEOS cost-cutting plays in to all of that but the fact is that it’s the football that sets the tone on a match day.

Live football is largely an immersive experience, pretty good at diverting the mind from life’s troubles or wider issues affecting a football club. The football is all consuming and at the moment the football being delivered by Amorim’s faltering, confidence-stripped and tactically-rigid team is so far from good enough it’s terrifying.

Context is always required. Amorim has not been in charge very long and needs a longer go at this. The squad he inherited isn’t a top four squad and it has suffered injuries. Last weekend against Fulham, Amorim couldn’t even fill his substitutes bench. One of his very best players, Marcus Rashford, was a lost cause before Amorim walked through the door. He had to go. Last summer’s new players were signed for a different coach with different ideas.

Still, Amorim just has to find a way to do better. He must find a way to impose his ideas and personality and tactics on the players he has.

It is accepted that United’s direction of travel since Ferguson stood down has been south but the league finishes in the seasons that have followed have been seventh, fourth, fifth, sixth, second, sixth, third, second, sixth, third and eighth. It’s a long way from there to the 14th position currently occupied by Amorim’s team. So Amorim is failing, of that there is no doubt.

Other Premier League clubs have made managerial changes this season and have been rewarded with marginal gains. At Wolves and West Ham, improvements have been slight but evident all the same. Vitor Pereira has won four league games out of 10 and drawn two others. Graham Potter has taken three wins and a draw out of seven. At Everton, meanwhile, David Moyes has returned and shot the lights out.

Amorim’s points per game average over his 16 league matches is 1.1. Along with Leicester’s Ruud van Nistelrooy and Southampton’s Ivan Juric, he is among the three worst-performing managers in the Premier League.

The other two will in all likelihood be sacked this summer. What is there to save Amorim from the same? Currently, blind hope and optimism trump hard evidence.

Parish’s grave error

Steve Parish shouldn’t have taken the BBC microphone at half-time to say what he said about the challenge inflicted by Millwall goalkeeper Liam Roberts on Crystal Palace striker Jean-Philippe Mateta at Selhurst Park.

It was a dreadful challenge by Roberts and Parish’s concern for his own player was genuine and understandable.

But the interval of a highly-charged FA Cup tie between two London rivals was absolutely not the time or place to start talking about Roberts’ actions in such an inflammatory way.

Parish is not a fanzine editor or supporters’ spokesman. He is the Palace chairman and he would have been better advised to press pause on his emotions at least until the dust had settled and the stadium had emptied.

Simpler solutions for old problems

Footballer’s rule makers wish to clamp down on goalkeepers’ time-wasting and will trial a new idea at this summer’s Club World Cup in America.

If a goalkeeper holds on to the ball for more than eight seconds then a corner to the opposition will be awarded.

The motive here is sound but there are simpler solutions. Currently keepers only tend to be cautioned for multiple time-wasting offences, usually late in the game.

Warn them the first time, book them the second and then wait and see if they are prepared to risk a red card by going for the hat-trick. Chances are they won’t.

Ain’t no game big enough

FIFA will introduce a half-time show at the 2026 World Cup Final in New Jersey.

Does anyone have a number for Diana Ross?

(Look it up)

Prolific Kane remains the only option for England

Thomas Tuchel will pick his first England squad this week and goodness me has had long enough to think about. He got the job in October.

What seems certain is that Harry Kane will be playing up front against Albania and Latvia at Wembley.

There was a fuss last autumn when Kane was dropped by Lee Carsley for a big Nations League game in Greece and there is a legitimate debate to be had about whether his tendency to come deep towards the ball squeezes England’s football and slows them down.

But Kane’s numbers continue to talk for him. His two goals for Bayern Munich against Bayer Leverkusen this week took his season’s tally to 31 and he has now scored more goals across all competitions – 75 – than any player in Europe’s top five leagues since moving to Munich at the start of last season.

So Kane will play for Tuchel and, anyway, who are and what is the convincing alternative?

Ollie Watkins of Aston Villa has scored one Champions League goal all season and that was against Celtic.