Marcus Rashford's 81st-second opener gave United a dream start at Portman Road, but Omari Hutchinson's equaliser earned Ipswich a point. The 1-1 draw denied Ruben Amorim the victory he had hoped for in his first game in charge.
Despite having less than a week to work with his new squad on the training pitch, the former Sporting CP coach deployed his favoured 3-4-2-1 formation and said this made the players overthink their performances.
But Amorim insists he will stick to his principles, even though he says it will lead to more suffering until his tactics work.
“I know the fans are frustrated but we are changing a lot at the moment, with a lot of games. We will have to suffer for a long time and try to win, it will take time. We could have won against Ipswich but we could have lost without Onana.
So we need to understand that and the fact that the players only have 2 days to train and change a lot of things. It is difficult for the players to adapt to everything in 3 days," Ruben Amorim said after the match.
When asked about his team's performance after the match, Amorim stressed that his team needed to understand his style better.
"It's a tough tournament, you know that from the first moment. Our players were thinking too much during the game, you could feel it. We only had two days of training together so it was really tough. I think the Man United players needed more physicality in the first half.
“If you watch the first half, you can see they were a little bit scared. Ipswich player Sam Morsy was always alone. We had to attack him. Hutchinson was always in dead space, Jonny Evans should have put pressure on him but we had two days so they were a little bit confused,” the Portuguese tactician emphasized.
Man United covered just 102km in total during the match against Ipswich, their second lowest tally of the season.
Asked why United are struggling physically, Amorim said: "We have to look at the specific data. Overall, we need to understand the game, we need to be more fit to deal with the high pressure of the opponent, as well as to cope with the high speed running volume. I understand these things but we need time to improve."
United have Premier League, Europa League and Carabao Cup fixtures to play in the coming weeks and Amorim said some players, especially those who have not played much, need to train to get used to his methods and get a feel for the game.
"With this schedule, we need to rotate the squad to try to take advantage of that to train, improve the squad and win the upcoming matches," Amorim concluded.
