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Amorim: We need to be braver at Old Trafford

Ruben Amorim wants to see his Manchester United team deal better with 'the responsibility' of playing at Old Trafford, when the Reds step out against Bournemouth on Monday evening.

The Portuguese's side were victorious at Wolves on Monday evening, and also triumphed in our preceding away game, against Crystal Palace.

But, in contrast, the Reds failed to win either of the last two Premier League games to take place at Old Trafford, against Everton and West Ham.

In an exclusive interview with club media before Monday's game against the Cherries, which you can watch in full below, Amorim implied that his team need to deal better with the levels of expectation that surround home games, and the more conservative approach that visiting teams sometimes adopt in M16.

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“Everyone knows that when you play at Old Trafford, all the responsibility is on us,” began the boss. “So it's a different game completely. So we have the responsibility of winning and playing well.

”[Bournemouth have] a lot of intensity, quality in the final third, [win] a lot of duels, and have quality on set-pieces also, so it's one more Premier League game that we want to win, especially at home, to have that feeling of winning at home back. So it's a big match on Monday.“

Andoni Iraola's team were up to second in the league table as recently as late October, but have not won any of their last six games in the division – a stretch which also included four defeats.
 
But Amorim is keen to dismiss suggestions that we might be catching the Cherries at a vulnerable moment. Or, indeed, the alternative view: that Bournemouth are more hungry because of their recent setbacks. The 'wounded tiger' cliche.
 
“I don't think they are more dangerous now; they are always dangerous,”
stated Amorim. “I just look at – more than the results, because that can change, and we are proof of that – the way they play the game, and the quality that they have and the manager that they have.”

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Another note that the 40-year-old touched on during the interview was United's defensive record. The Reds are conceding an unhealthy amount of goals despite facing fewer shots, according to Amorim's analysis, which is something our head coach is keen to resolve.
 
“I think we are scoring goals but we are suffering so many goals [too], and we will try to find the solutions,”
he said. 
 
“We need to press better, we need to protect our goal better, because we are not suffering a lot of shots in the last games, I think. We are improving on that. But we know that any opportunity, we are suffering a goal.
 
”So we want to continue to score goals but focus on not suffering [goals] – that is a key point to win games.“

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