Rúben Amorim has been using his big Manchester United advantage vs Liverpool this week

Rúben Amorim has a big advantage as he prepares Manchester United to face Liverpool in the Premier League on Sunday afternoon at Anfield.

Since Rúben Amorim took over as head coach of Manchester United, he has managed eleven games, with the first of those having been not even a month and a half ago.

He came in at an incredibly challenging time, with games coming on thick and fast for the Portuguese coach. The number of days between each game has typically been quite short, too.

Since his first game away at Ipswich, there have been breaks of three, two, two, two, four, two, three, two, three, and three days between games – not including the matchdays themselves.

The game where there was a break of four days beforehand was the Europa League away game against Viktoria Plzen, United’s longest travelling distance in this period.

Amorim has a big advantage ahead of the Liverpool tie

When you factor in recovery sessions and travelling for away games which require overnight stays, that’s an incredibly limited number of days for training. With key players being injured here and there too, Amorim has barely had a chance to train with the squad.

Amorim himself said following the defeat to Newcastle United that they have had just four proper training days.

Going into the fixture at Anfield on Sunday, Amorim will have had five days. He does not have a long distance to travel and it does not require an overnight stay. After recovery from the Newcastle game, he has the opportunity for around three training sessions played with intensity.

Given he has said they have had four proper training sessions so far since he took over in November, this poses an incredible opportunity for Amorim to really work on getting his ideas across to players in training and correct the errors we have seen with the system so far.

It also gives players such as Alejandro Garnacho, who has fallen out of favour due to training performances, an opportunity to earn a place back in the starting XI.

The same would apply to Marcus Rashford, but the 27-year-old is unlikely to feature due to an illness that has made him unable to train across the last few days.

It also gives some of the academy boys who have been involved with squads so far, such as Toby Collyer, an opportunity to really make themselves known to the manager over a number of days.

There are many academy players who are very promising and in United’s current state should really have some kind of opportunity to show what they’re about.

Finally, it could offer some extra recovery time to some players who have been carrying a lot of load. Rasmus Højlund began life under Amorim on fire with five goals in five, establishing himself as the clear first-choice number nine.

He has, however, tailed off since, and looks increasingly tired towards the end of games. Amad Diallo and Noussair Mazraoui are two others who have been playing a lot of football. It looks like some extra recovery time would benefit them to freshen up and return to the incredible levels they were performing.

All in all, whilst United are as far from favourites for the game as you can get, Amorim has been presented with an opportunity to do some work that in the coming weeks could turn the fortunes of his team around.

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