IT was a masterclass of laughing in the face of adversity — from the man whose team is labelled a JOKE.
His dressing-room duds may be frozen with fear but Ruben Amorim most definitely remains a paid-up member of the smile-high club.
For all there has been little to chuckle about in nearly two months as Manchester United manager — even saying his struggling players are “too anxious and too afraid to play football” — a grin is never far away.
And as the Portuguese coach prepared to send the worst United side in Premier League history into the lion’s den that is Anfield, the humour bubbled to the surface again.
How does he deal with the enormous pressure that comes with being gaffer of the biggest basket case club in the country?
A twinkle in the eye as he cleared his throat, pointing a finger at his smiling fizzog, as he joked: “You can see in my face... you can compare it with when I arrived and now!”
In truth, there has been no change. Four defeats on the bounce, no domestic win in a month and Liverpool and Arsenal to come but no grey yet on that boot-polish black head.
At 39 maybe he is still a little young. And the arrival of wife Maria Joao Diogo and the two kids after Christmas certainly helped to ease the pain of a 2-0 Boxing Day defeat at Wolves.
Amorim admitted: “Of course when you are losing there is a lot of pressure but for me it’s more the pride and the performance.
“I think it’s harder when we don’t perform well but even when you guys were talking about the top four after beating Everton, I explained I was expecting this.
“But it is hard to cope with all the problems here and the bad performances and the losses, it is really hard. It is supposed to be really hard.
“The only thing that can help me is training with the players but I also have my family now here so it’s so much different. They came on the 27th... it was a good day.”
There have not been many of them since he arrived. And it is hard to find a United fan who sees anything beyond respectability against the Premier League’s top dogs.
Amorim knows it will take a superhuman effort.
Especially now the fear of losing has left so many of his players almost too scared to play — a point raised by the manager himself.
He added: “We have to cope with that. We need the leaders to step up to help the other guys — and I’m the most responsible person here to improve the performances.
“You can see the players are trying but sometimes they are too anxious and too afraid to play football because this is a difficult moment — so I will help the players to be better.”
They certainly need something to make them better or the former Sporting Lisbon chief’s stark warning of a relegation scrap will become a frightening reality.
He always insisted it was not a comment made for effect, simply an attempt to shake his snoozing losers into life.
Amorim added: “I know it is a problem here for the manager to say those kinds of things but, in this moment, in our club, everybody has to understand that.
“So let’s focus on the reality. We know we are Manchester United and I know I am not supposed to talk about these things.
“But I want to be very clear with the fans and the players, I think that is really important in this moment.
“Anything can happen, but we must be focused on winning games and to improve our performance. Then relegation won’t be an issue in the future.”
That is why Amorim’s focus ahead of the trip to Anfield was not so much finding Liverpool’s faults but correcting his own side’s.
A back-to-square-one game plan.
He said: “Of course even the best teams have their problems and we will try to find them — but to be honest, I am more focused on our basics.
“Rather than trying to find things in Liverpool’s shape, I’m concentrating on the way we are supposed to play our game, the way we must play to win a football match.
“Without the basics, you can’t do that so for two days we have just been doing the basics, focusing on our idea and doing our thing.”
Whether that brings an against-all-odds triumph at the home of their fiercest rivals remains doubtful.
But it would certainly mean that for once, Amorim would not be the only one with a smile as wide as the Mersey.
