Amorim: Casemiro is our player

The Brazilian was at his enforcing best for the Reds in Sunday's Manchester derby, winning tackles all over the pitch and showing why our manager continues to select him, after initially struggling to nail down a starting place under the Portuguese.

"The important thing with Casemiro is that he won everything with Real Madrid," began our boss in his post-match press conference.

"He wasn’t playing because I understood that in that moment he wasn’t the best option for how we want to play and he continued to work.

"I look at my players in the same way. If you improve what we ask of them, they have the opportunity. If they play well, they continue to play.

"That was the situation for Casemiro. The credit is all the player. He is our player and will continue to be our player.”

Ruben also discussed the improvement of his side and the task of changing the mentality of the Reds from a transitional side to a more possession-oriented team, among other topics.

See what the boss said in his post-match press conference below...

Was that like the Nottingham Forest game in that you played really well in patches but still didn’t really look like scoring a goal?

“Again, we create some chances. The game was completely different from Nottingham, of course. Against a different opponent but we had there same lack of goals. Sometimes we did it well and Ederson was there. It is really important to score goals to win football matches.”

You didn’t want to come in, midway through a season. Are we now seeing the benefits of you working with the players for longer and you think they will be better next season because of that?

“At the moment it is really hard, every day. But you imagine that next season is going to be so much different. That is why I am always saying that I am in a rush, because we are suffering a lot. Everyone here is suffering a lot with all these changes and we have two show something in the next year, so right away. If not, I feel that all that is happening in this moment, we are not taking advantage. I think that is an important thing. In the good days you think like that. It is important to come as soon as possible to work with the players and improve the players, to start the next season with a better idea what we want. Today was that day that we played well, of course you can feel it in the game that it is not there at the top, top level, the intensity but you have to understand the context of both teams in this moment.”

The last two home games against Arsenal and Man City, it has felt like the team has improved in the game. Does that show that you can compete with these teams?

“Every game has its story. We need to sometimes give time to the team to understand the team and then to face the game. You remember when I first came in, sometimes we concede a goal in the first 10 minutes and that can change the momentum and the game and the strategy that we have to forget the strategy because we are 1-0 down. I think these players proved not just this season but in the seasons before, when they are like this and really focused, they can win any game.”

Gary Neville was critical after the game, saying there wasn’t enough passion. Can you understand that derby games should have more passion and more blood and thunder than what it showed?

“I understand everything. I understand that Gary Neville is critical about everything and I understand that we are in the moment that we are doing the worst season in history. Manchester City won everything in the past and this season are struggling. We are not in the best moments to give the best spectacle to every fan. We are not fighting for the big things. Of course, it is different. You have to look at the context of the game and I understand the critical aspect of the players that played in this game in a different way, because they were fighting all the time for the different titles. It is a different context.”

I know you have said before you don’t want to play as a transitional team or in a low block and the players are comfortable playing in that way right now. Pep came in before and said that for nine years, United have always been a transitional team. Does that show how difficult it will be to turn it round because we are talking about a decade of playing like that?

“That I can say that we want to be competitive in a short space of time but to do that and be really dominant against any opponent is going to take a lot of time. We have to use different weapons of playing a different style when we face different opponents. In that way of playing, City is maybe the best team in the world and they are doing it for a while. The important thing is if you compare this game to that against Arsenal, we had some moments when we did the same a little bit to City. And against Arsenal we didn’t do: clearly it was transitions. Today it was a little bit different. We are improving but to play in this way, that they played for many years, is going to take a long time.”