The crawling rain never helps the image of a failing football manager and there have been times when it turned out to be career determination. For many, Steve McClaren will always be the Wally with the Brolly.
But the sight of a rain -driven Ruben Amorim, plastered her over his forehead, roaring with small tactical magnets on a kind of plate that he had put over his knees in the dugout of Grimsby, brought really bad optics to a different level, because his Manchester United Team humiliated himself.
Accurate examination of the aforementioned tactical tool, published by Amorim When United followed their League Two opponents 2-0, raised more questions than answers. The 'players' actually did not seem to have been well tackled.
By the time the Un
Perhaps this gloomy opportunity on the east coast – the first defeat of United ever by the fourth grade opposition – represents the line in the sand for Amorim's United. A ritual humiliation that will shake this richly collected side from his lethargy and the 40-year-old will show us what he had to be made of. But I really didn't bet on it.
This united team is now and are alone, but nine months after his arrival there are errors in the core. The lack of a usable keeper, from a reliable defensive unit, from a midfielder with the lungs to give a shift while he sees the photos for him as Graeme Souness, the excellent exponent of the art of the central player, always calls it.
And then there is the biggest problem of all. Amorims obsessive compliance from the 3-4-3 system for which his united team is clearly not equipped. The irony of that dugout scene is that we all know exactly how he will position his magnets, regardless of score or opponent.
Amorim's restraint to making a compromise on his 3-4-3 point was something that Liverpool discovered when he considered him the successor to Jurgen Klopp a year ago and instead chose Arne Slot at some distance.
We have been here earlier in August with a defective Manchester United. I was at the MK Down's Stadium in the late summer night, 11 years ago, when the Louis Van Gaal team had just taken over, were beaten 4-0 with that third side.
Van Gaal was then full of his usual bombast in the small press room – and stated that the result did not surprise him a bit.
“It is difficult for the fans to believe in the philosophy of Louis van Gaal, but you have to do that because I am here to build a new team and a new team that was not built in in one month,” said the man they called King Louis.
But the significant others is that Van Gaal was tactically flexible. He hinted, on that night in 2014, that he was considering changing his system to integrate the incoming Angel Di Maria, which he thought he would be transforming and turned out to be anything but.
The care must be whether Amorim actually has it in him to reverse a club that is still in the handles of such a desperate battle. I was not popular under many splitting to the idea that he was a kind of savior when he wrote in October last year that his trophy trail – two Portuguese league titles in four years and three Portuguese League Cups – did not look like the CV of a man who was asked to undertake the most complicated club track in world football. But I would dare to say that my argument is still standing.
On Wednesday evening, Amorim's 19th defeat of 45 games represented at the helm. He has challenged more losses than victories (17) in his time months that United have and has a winning stratio that has been the worst of a United Manager since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013. His enigmatic offer in the Press Room of Blundell Park was about as impressive as the Dugout scenes had been.
Amorim's repeated claim that his united players 'really loudly spoke' in the defeat, created the need for clarification, but when he was asked, he obscured. “I think it is really clear what they spoke, so let's continue from this day,” he said. He certainly did not take a personal responsibility for what his sustainable composite team had delivered.
After that competition cup that banging in Milton Keynes in 2014, there was a United team with British records signing di Maria in their ranks opposite Burnley, as they do again this weekend. The improvement was not immediately.
United drew that game 0-0 and the Argentinian was given an inhospitable welcome by one of the most physical parties in the Premier League. But Van Gaal supervised an improvement that brought them to a fourth -placed finish, 17 points behind Champions Chelsea, with victories over Arsenal and Liverpool in a sparkling autumn trun.
It is a solution that Amorim would certainly take, although there is a mountain to climb if they even want to reach that level. We are still waiting for a Manchester United manager who seems to be able to lead the team of what a difficult decade of struggle has been.
The image of the newest established operator, who placed his magnets in the rain shower, can prove to be a defining.