• Team ‘need time’ says manager after fourth loss in five
• Pereira praises Cunha after Wolves’ second straight win

Ruben Amorim said Manchester United must adopt survival mode to end their miserable run after a fourth defeat in five Premier League matches dropped them to 14th, eight points above the relegation zone.

United’s Portuguese manager blamed the lack of time to coach his players as a barrier to progress after a sapping Boxing Day defeat at Wolves, where his captain, Bruno Fernandes, was sent off early in the second half after picking up a second yellow card.

It is impossible to ignore the shift in mood, the supporters singing the name of their charismatic Portuguese head coach, parachuted in to solve myriad issues but chiefly miserable results and a leaky defence with a particular weakness at set pieces. Determined to immerse himself in the local culture, he spent Christmas Day enjoying lunch at a local pub a few miles out of town.

Then there is the friction between those who pay their money in the stands and those who spend it in the boardroom. An unhappy backdrop has been brewing for a while, some presumably plotting an appropriate escape route. The problem for Ruben Amorim is that Vítor Pereira was the manager who triumphed here.

• Updates from the 5.30pm GMT kick-off at Molinuex
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4 min Cunha gets away from Yoro, who pulls him back and is booked.

4 min Ugarte makes a good tackle on Joao Gomes and tries to put Hojlund through from the halfway line with a sliderule pass. It’s slightly underhit and Hojlund was offside anyway.

In today’s newsletter: Boxing Day fixtures are a reminder of the dying traditions in a sport where everything is for sale. Journalist and author Nick Miller explains how the beautiful game came to put finances over fans

Good morning – I hope you had a great Christmas. If you love football, and even if you hate it, one inescapable feature of Boxing Day is the festive fixture list – and a look at today’s matches in the Premier League tells a familiar story of a game that has been swallowed whole by international investors.

Ten of the 20 top-flight clubs are US owned, and many others are linked to nation states or private equity. When the Premier League formed in 1992, 21 of 22 clubs were majority English owned; today, only four are. But if these owners are expecting to make money, they have chosen a lousy economic model. Only five out of the 20 clubs now in the league made a profit in the 2022-23 season, with an aggregate loss of £685m.

Rodent sightings cause club’s food hygiene rating to tumble at century-old stadium already afflicted by roof leaks

While matchday punters pay huge sums to see their heroes, it seems rodents have found a way to get into Old Trafford for free, leaving behind Christmas gifts for the food hygiene inspector to find.

Manchester United’s food hygiene rating tumbled to two stars out of five on the most recent inspection, after mouse droppings were found in a kiosk that sells food to fans and a ground-level corporate suite.

• Long-serving players have ‘big responsibility’ says coach
• Rashford is still keen to play for United, insists Amorim

Ruben Amorim has stated Marcus Rashford has a “big responsibility” to help Manchester United out of one of the club’s lowest moments by performing at his best, with the manager saying the forward wants to play.

Rashford has been excluded from United’s past three match-day squads owing to his performance in training and for “selection reasons”, the head coach has said. Amorim takes his side to Wolves on Boxing Day after the Carabao Cup defeat at Tottenham and Sunday’s 3-0 loss to Bournemouth in the Premier League at Old Trafford.

• England forward omitted from past three squads
• Coach’s decision not a result of pressure from upstairs

Ruben Amorim’s exclusion of Marcus Rashford from Manchester United’s past three match-day squads is solely his decision, with the head coach under no pressure from Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s football department to do so.

Rashford is for sale in the January transfer window, a decision approved by Ratcliffe, but it is understood the player’s demotion from the squad was purely Amorim’s decision.

Liverpool make a statement, Pep Guardiola tries to see the funny side and Sandro Tonali fires on all cylinders

Midway through Ruben Amorim’s post-defeat media conference the roof in the press room, located in the bowels of Old Trafford, did what some of the outside sections of the stadium do: leak. Spots of water hit a scribe perched in the front row, merriment ensued, and Manchester United’s head coach offered a wry smile, a fitting end to an afternoon on which Bournemouth had rained on his side’s pre-Christmas Day parade. Nine games into his tenure, the Portuguese’s coach record is poor – four wins, four losses and a draw – and the next four matches look tough: Wolves (away), Newcastle (home), Liverpool (away) and a trip to Arsenal in the FA Cup. Amorim, who continually repeats the need for victory, knows things have to improve. Jamie Jackson

• Visitors enjoy successive 3-0 wins at Old Trafford
• ‘I felt it from the first minute, there’s a lot of anxiety’

Ruben Amorim has admitted Manchester United’s players were nervous on Sunday during their 3-0 defeat against Bournemouth, which left the club 13th and in the bottom half on Christmas Day for the first time since 1989.

The defeat was a second in a row by that scoreline at home against Bournemouth, almost exactly a year after the first. United went behind to the seventh goal they have conceded in the past six games at a set play.

Ruben Amorim said Manchester United's players and fans were 'suffering' after a damaging 3-0 Premier League loss to Bournemouth at Old Trafford. Dean Huijsen exposed United's frailties from set pieces with a first-half header before Justin Kluivert and Antoine Semenyo added goals after the break to secure three points for the visitors

• Semenyo seals stunning Bournemouth win to add to Manchester United misery

After mid-morning wind and rain that might have caused Noah a problem, the skies cleared and Bournemouth took apart a Manchester United as amateurish as any of the iterations of the past decade or so.

Ruben Amorim’s men could not defend, retain the ball, or finish. So in these three fundamentals they failed, to leave their head coach appearing hapless and isolated.

Winger has jumped to the top of the pecking order of wide men since Portuguese took the reins at Old Trafford

Most of the noise around those in red at the Etihad Stadium last Sunday related to the dropping of two wingers until Amad Diallo intercepted Matheus Nunes’s woeful back-pass and won a penalty before scoring a last-minute winner. The Ivorian was Manchester United’s main threat in a mediocre derby as his flourishing under Ruben Amorim continued, while others drifted into the shadows.

As Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho endured a watching brief after being stood down, putting them below Antony in the pecking order, Diallo shone. The new head coach is constantly tinkering and rotating personnel as he searches for the best players for individual roles but Diallo is making himself almost undroppable and will get another start against Bournemouth on Sunday as he aims to add to his two league goals and six assists this season.

• Player was taken off during victory at Manchester City
• Amorim plans to teach Mount more about team play

Mason Mount will be out for “a long time” with the muscle injury sustained in Manchester United’s win against Manchester City, with Ruben Amorim stating the recovery time will be used to teach the England international more about team play.

Mount was forced off after 14 minutes of Sunday’s 2-1 derby victory at the Etihad Stadium. This continued his bad luck since signing in summer 2023, being restricted to 32 appearances owing to injuries. Amorim was asked how long the 25-year-old will be unavailable.

Bournemouth look to repeat Old Trafford heroics, Saints must get ugly and it’s Füllkrug time for West Ham

Approaching the halfway point, it is hard to gauge where Aston Villa are at. Regardless of Manchester City’s extended wobble, a result at home to Pep Guardiola’s side will go a long way to providing an indication. It was always going to be a big ask for Villa to better or even equal last season’s achievements but, with automatic qualification to the Champions League last 16 a distinct possibility and a top-four finish within reach, it has been another solid, if imperfect, start. Only once this season have Villa recorded victory after a European night, in September after winning at Young Boys. This time last season Villa were third in the division, two points off the summit, on 35 points. They may be 10 points worse off now but, despite defeat at Nottingham Forest last time out, they remain in a good spot. Ben Fisher

Aston Villa v Manchester City, Saturday 12.30pm (all times GMT)

Brentford v Nottingham Forest, Saturday 3pm

Ipswich v Newcastle, Saturday 3pm

West Ham v Brighton, Saturday 3pm

Crystal Palace v Arsenal, Saturday 5.30pm

• ‘Massive credit’ after 4-3 win over Manchester United
• Amorim defends decision to leave out Rashford again

Ange Postecoglou described the first semi-final of his Tottenham Hotspur career as “progress” for his injury-ravaged side, even if they were made to sweat by Manchester United in a hectic 4-3 victory. “It’s one thing me praising them,” he said. “But they need the reward of winning, and how it makes them feel, so they can go to the well again.”

Spurs will play Liverpool over two legs in the last four of the Carabao Cup, with the first leg in north London taking place in the first week of January and the second at Anfield in the first week of February. The winner will face Arsenal or Newcastle in the final at Wembley, and Postecoglou will hope that his injury worries have eased by the time those fixtures come around.

Like a song that changes time signature for the hell of it, like a friend that inexplicably blanks you, like a match report that noodles away for ages instead of just telling you what happened, Tottenham Hotspur remain medically incapable of doing things the simple way. This is becoming a kind of mania, a disorder, a cry for help. What is this? Who are you really? And, you know, can you not?

For all this, Ange Postecoglou’s side are Carabao Cup semi-finalists, the latest plot twist in a season in which nobody can really agree whether things are going well or not. Great football. But also some terrible football. But also, two games from a trophy. But also, 10th in the Premier League. But also two goals for the brilliant Dominic Solanke. But also two goals basically given away by Fraser Forster.

• League Cup updates from the 8pm GMT kick-off
• Football Daily: Christmas awards | And mail John

Last time out for these two:

The pre-match press conferences are here.

• Investment will not be used to bolster current squad
• Club now part of wider sporting group that Ineos owns

Sir Jim Ratcliffe has increased his stake in Manchester United after injecting a further £79.3m ($100m) promised when he bought his minority stake last year.

The British billionaire now owns 28.94% of the club, up from 27.7%. The latest investment is set to help fund improvements off the pitch rather than help bolster Ruben Amorim’s squad during January’s transfer window. When Ratcliffe bought into United a year ago, the deal included a guarantee that he would put £238m ($300m) into infrastructure and this is the final instalment of those payments, which the US Securities and Exchange Commission confirmed was paid on Wednesday.

• Rashford said in interview he could seek ‘new challenge’
• Forward likely to miss Carabao Cup trip to Tottenham

Ruben Amorim has said when he was a player he would have spoken to his manager about being dropped rather than react in the media, as Marcus Rashford has done. Manchester United’s head coach is undecided about how to deal with the forward, though he is believed to have left him out of the squad for Thursday’s Carabao Cup quarter-final at Tottenham.

Rashford said in an interview with the journalist Henry Winter on Tuesday that he was “ready for a new challenge”. This came after the 27-year-old, who has struggled for form over the past two seasons, had been dropped for United’s 2-1 win against Manchester City on Sunday.

• ‘We have an election every week and get voted in or out’
• Spurs prepare to face Manchester United in Carabao Cup

A Premier League manager has a tougher job than the prime minister, according to Ange Postecoglou. The Tottenham manager was reflecting on the departure of top-flight peers Gary O’Neil and Russell Martin while looking ahead to a meeting with the new Manchester United manager, Ruben Amorim, in the Carabao Cup on Thursday.

“This job is the hardest job now in any walk of life,” declared Postecoglou. “You can say politics but this is harder than any job. The tenure and longevity of this role means very few are going to come out of it without any scars. How many times does [Keir Starmer] have an election? I have one every weekend. We have an election every weekend and either get voted in or out.”