• Club made 250 members of staff redundant in summer
• Total debt rises to £714m after £200m transfer spend

Manchester United spent £8.6m on redundancies in the first quarter of its financial year due to Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s drive to reduce the workforce from around 1,000 by 250, the club’s latest accounts show. Ratcliffe, the largest minority shareholder, began pruning the 250 jobs in July, a decision aimed at cutting United costs. Most of those left in the summer or autumn. The first quarter results for the period ending 30 September 2024 may also take in related fees for auditors and other payments.

A statement in the accounts said: “Exceptional items for the quarter were a cost of £8.6m. This comprises costs incurred in relation to the restructuring of the Group’s operations, including the redundancy scheme implemented in the first quarter of financial year 2025. Exceptional items in the prior year quarter were £nil.”

• Clarity of coach’s messaging also impresses defender
• He says Amorim’s philosophy suits Manchester United

Diogo Dalot believes Ruben Amorim is precisely what Manchester United need as he talked up the clarity of the new head coach’s messaging and his highly demanding nature.

Amorim’s first match was Sunday’s 1-1 draw at Ipswich. Had Erik ten Hag still been in charge, the inquest would have raged because of the level of the performance and the context. Ipswich are in the relegation places. They have not won at home in the Premier League since April 2002.

Amad Diallo shows versatility, Ethan Nwaneri offers plenty of potential and Danny Welbeck’s role is key for Brighton

For the established full-back, a wing-back role must be liberating, permission granted to embark on an adventure in the other half. Amad Diallo was faced with the less desirable situation against Ipswich, a forward forced to track back as he slotted in on the right of Ruben Amorim’s 3-4-2-1. Diallo retained his attacking aggression, immediately rampaging forward and evading challenges to set up Marcus Rashford’s early opener. He was responsible in defence and one of United’s brightest performers in a mostly bleak display, even threatening to deliver a late winner when cutting inside into the box to let fly. Diallo is most likely just a stopgap in the position but his adaptability has some worth as Amorim searches for his best XI. Taha Hashim

Match report: Ipswich 1-1 Manchester United

Match report: Manchester City 0-4 Tottenham

Match report: Southampton 2-3 Liverpool

Match report: Arsenal 3-0 Nottingham Forest

Match report: Leicester 1-2 Chelsea

Match report: Fulham 1-4 Wolves

Match report: Aston Villa 2-2 Crystal Palace

Ruben Amorim said Manchester United are going 'to suffer for a long period' after his managerial debut at the club ended in a 1-1 Premier League draw at Ipswich. He added: 'We start now, we risk a little bit, we suffer a little bit and in the next year we will be better at this point so we have to risk it a little bit. They are thinking too much because we are changing too much with two training [sessions] now without space to improve in training'.

• Amorim’s Manchester United pegged back by Ipswich after rapid start

• New head coach praises André Onana after fine saves
• Players ‘need time to have some fluidity’

Ruben Amorim said that Manchester United will have to “suffer for a long period” before their fortunes turn after his first game in charge ended in a disappointing 1-1 draw at Ipswich.

The new head coach has only had a few days to work with his full squad after the international break and he felt that they struggled to absorb the numerous positional changes he demands in his 3-4-2-1 system, saying they over-thought it.

If Ruben Amorim had any doubts about the scale of the job ahead of him, his team’s display has surely banished them

Well, something to work on there then, Ruben. It will be tempting at the end of this decelerating game of semi-football to talk about Ruben Amorim at least realising the scale of the job he faces.

Except, given Amorim almost certainly possesses a TV set and is interested in football, he already knows the scale of the job. And the scale is: really very big indeed.

Marcus Rashford scored after just 81 seconds of Ruben Amorim’s regime but Omari Hutchinson equalised

Managerial news from elsewhere:

Alex Kamilewicz writes: “My heart believed it would turn around with each managerial appointment, but starting with the transfer botchings under Moyes my head believed we were in for a long run in the wilderness with no adequate replacement for Gill.

It was plainly too good to be true. Or to last. There were 82 seconds on the stadium clock when the Ruben Amorim era at Manchester United was jumpstarted. The new manager had put his faith in Marcus Rashford in the No 9 role and it was United’s great enigma who put them in front. Rashford charged about in the early running, a point to prove.

And yet it was the prompt for a slow retreat by United for the remainder of the first half. The structure was different, United set up in Amorim’s trademark 3-4-2-1, but the players were the same, along with plenty of the frustrations and faultlines from Erik ten Hag’s tenure. Control proved elusive. As it did so often under Ten Hag.

• Coach will be ‘very demanding – this club needs to win’
• Amorim takes charge for first time at Ipswich on Sunday

Ruben Amorim has warned his Manchester United players he has a ruthless streak he will not be afraid to use if they fail to meet his demands. The Portuguese has a reputation as an astute man-manager as well as an innovative tactician but it will not all be sweetness and light.

The 39-year-old begins life as head coach at Ipswich on Sunday aware of the task ahead as he tries to turn United around. Amorim arrived with the team 13th in the Premier League after four wins from 11 matches and ­needing to improve results ­if they are to have ambitions of European qualification for next season.

Portugal’s coaches and players are all the rage in part thanks to links forged between academia and the game

They always knew Ruben Amorim was a special one at the faculty of human kinetics. “I interviewed him for the course and from the start it was obvious,” says Prof António Veloso, José Mourinho’s former classmate, who runs the high-performance football coaching course at the faculty, which is affiliated to the University of Lisbon.

“The students needed to do an essay on specialist topics and Ruben’s results were fantastic. He had a leadership role in the group. When we were doing tactical drills on the pitch all the other students were looking at Ruben’s and asking for his opinion. But he was very humble.”

Previous incumbents in the Old Trafford hotseat have shown that first impressions can often prove misleading

Two days after leaving Aberdeen, Ferguson sent out an XI including Paul McGrath, Jesper Olsen, Peter Davenport, Graeme Hogg and Clayton Blackmore that fell to a 16th-minute John Aldridge penalty and an 89th-minute Neil Slatter strike. “It was a nightmare trying to concentrate with so much media attention and so many cameramen on top of me,” Ferguson said. “They [the players] were a bit uptight and they wanted to do well.” None were in the 1-0 1990 FA Cup final replay triumph over Crystal Palace, Ferguson’s first trophy, though Blackmore was an unused substitute. Twenty-six and a half years after the Oxford reverse Ferguson retired as the UK’s greatest manager and a knight.

Despite a torrid start to the season the club remain within touching distance of top four as new head coach arrives

With his breezy manner, shock of jet-black wavy hair and declaration that “we choose our way 100%”, Ruben Amorim exuded the fresh energy Manchester United need in his debut media conference at a crammed Jimmy Murphy Centre.

With only four points to third place, there is a golden chance to transform the season. Yet the issues Amorim wrestles with are the club he has walked into and the squad he has inherited.

Ruben Amorim said he is a 'dreamer' in his first press conference as Manchester United head coach after joining the club from Sporting.

The 39-year-old signed a two-and-a-half-year deal to replace Erik ten Hag who was sacked in October.

He has been compared to José Mourinho because of his nationality and success and said: 'He [José Mourinho] sent me a message and told me that this is a lovely club, a big club, with lovely people, and that is correct.'

He added: 'I am different from Mourinho. I am a different person.'

• ‘I am the right guy at the right moment,’ head coach says
• He will play 3-4-3 and wants big say on recruitment

Ruben Amorim has denied that managing Manchester United is the impossible job but says his two-and-a-half-year contract is not long enough to win the title.

Amorim is United’s sixth permanent appointment since they were last Premier League champions, under Sir Alex Ferguson, in May 2013. David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, José Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjær and Erik ten Hag failed to make them contenders. Amorim was reminded of this and asked whether United was the impossible job.

Højlund has chance to impress Amorim, Villa look to end miserable month and will Forest trouble Arsenal?

After masterminding Leicester’s return to the Premier League, Enzo Maresca jumped ship to Chelsea. The Italian had given little confidence he would stay at the King Power, despite his success amid problems in the background and the lure of London. Maresca did, however, ensure he took one thing with him in the form of the central midfielder Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, a leading light in the Foxes’ promotion charge. While Maresca has impressed at Stamford Bridge, Dewsbury-Hall is yet to find his feet and has been limited to a cup-player role. Of his 10 appearances for Chelsea, only three have been in the league and none from the start. It might be time to show some faith in him and there is no better place to do so than his old home. Dewsbury-Hall rose through the ranks at Leicester and his £30m transfer fee this summer was highly beneficial to their accounts after financial problems. Leicester fans will welcome back Maresca and Dewsbury-Hall with open arms, the embrace the latter might need to kickstart his Chelsea career. Will Unwin

Leicester v Chelsea, Saturday 12.30pm (all times GMT)

Bournemouth v Brighton, Saturday 3pm

Arsenal v Nottingham Forest, Saturday 3pm

Aston Villa v Crystal Palace, Saturday 3pm

Everton v Brentford, Saturday 3pm

Fulham v Wolves, Saturday 3pm

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and Jonathan Liew to preview the Premier League action this weekend

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On the podcast today; Pep Guardiola will stay at Manchester City beyond this season. The panel debate whether it is good for the Premier League and how it will affect the players before their game against Spurs on Saturday.

Before Portuguese’s first Manchester United game, the people who know him well explain how he got this far

The road from the Portuguese third tier to Portman Road is a unique journey and one that will take Rúben Amorim from relative obscurity to one of the most-scrutinised coaching roles in the world. Amorim felt forced to quit his first coaching job at Casa Pia after being sanctioned for not possessing the necessary coaching qualifications less than six years ago, but has rapidly risen to become one of the most sought-after coaches in Europe.

The Estádio Pina Manique is on the outskirts of Lisbon, Amorim’s home town and where he has spent most of his playing and managerial career. The venue holds about 2,500 spectators, a long way from the 30,000 or so expected to be in attendance for Amorim’s first match as Manchester United manager at Ipswich on Sunday.

It may have been an absolute mess, but McClair’s two-yard wonder strike was a window into the human soul

The reality of corporeality is a hard thing to process; just look at what we look like! But somehow, the agglomeration of weird shapes and freaky textures that comprises us responds to instructions from the quivering lump of jelly that really comprises us, and thus does football eventuate. Jesse Armstrong once said that if a joke isn’t working, one thing to try is sticking it an enclosed space so “the characters are up in each other’s physicality” and such is our beautiful game: a chaotic, hilarious gumbo of bodies controlled by brains that are fickle, stressed and distractible, having been socialised into the fanatical pursuit of an arbitrary aim to which has been ascribed inherent moral value.

Many of the most preposterous events I’ve seen in my life have been football-related: consider John Terry arranging for himself to take a Champions League-winning penalty and adjusting his captain’s armband en route, then slipping and crying, or Steven Gerrard coming on for his last appearance against Manchester United after spending the entirety of the first half being wound up by the away end, then getting himself sent off 38 seconds later. For balance, I was also at the Stadium of Light on the last day of 2011-12, but we all have our own favourites: those moments when players, asked to process footballing obsession multiplied by the human condition, simply cannot.

• Manager makes his bow at Ipswich next Sunday
• Amorim: ‘We need time, but we have to win that time’

Rúben Amorim has said Manchester United cannot rely on their history and that his most important task is to create a new identity for the club. The head coach admitted he had taken on a long-term project but that there was an immediate need for improved results.

Amorim’s first game will be next Sunday in the Premier League at Ipswich. He is yet to receive his work permit but United anticipate the paperwork will be completed soon. The Portuguese, who replaces Erik ten Hag, has signed a contract until June 2027 at United, who sit 13th in the Premier League.

• Midfielder catches passenger after he passes out
• Fernandes was on plane from Manchester to Portugal

The Manchester United captain, Bruno Fernandes, has been praised for helping an unwell passenger on a plane.

Susanna Lawson from Manchester was sitting on the row just behind Fernandes on their easyJet flight to Lisbon and witnessed the moment the midfielder caught a man who appeared to have collapsed. She said Fernandes called for help and stayed with the man for a few minutes before air stewards attended to the passenger.