For perhaps the first time, Ruben Amorim’s post-match reaction may revolve some errors he made and not just foibles from his Manchester United selections on the pitch.

The Red Devils went behind 2-0 to visiting Newcastle United at Old Trafford and looked capable of leaking several more goals before Amorim made a 30th-minute sub to switch his initial plans.

There was always the risk of dissonance as Bruno Fernandes and Manuel Ugarte were absent, and Amorim opted for a midfield duo of Christian Eriksen and Casemiro behind Joshua Zirkzee, Amad Diallo, and Rasmus Hojlund.

It was odd to see Kobbie Mainoo on the bench against Newcastle’s fantastic, heady midfield, and the Magpies got goals on crosses to the heart of the Red Devils’ back line. Lisandro Martinez had a rough day.

“We suffered a goal. In this moment it’s really hard to come back. We tried but without the quality, they don’t have the base with the way we play to cope with these moments. They are a better team. They controlled the game. Everything they did was like a team. For us, it was more of the moments of players. But they are trying.”

“If I think that I could do something to change the result, I do. Like I said it was more the belief from the players, less my job of changing something. In this moment we don’t have training and we don’t have the base. When you’re in the difficult moment, you need that base. They were better than us, plain and simple.”

“Training, just using every minute of the training to try to improve the team to give them that base to cope with every minute of the game.”