No system ever won a football match

... but they've maybe killed a few!

Sorry, but I’m just beginning to think that 3-4-3 might not be the answer to all of the world’s problems.

Maybe a good system is not enough. Perhaps you need good players too.

There were some very, very good players on the field at Old Trafford but none of them could quite beat the system. Kevin De Bruyne’s divinely instinctive originality and craft has picked apart many a Premier League game plan over the last decade but the system dictated that his farewell derby performance would be as a kind of ‘false 9’.

It was false imprisonment. A good human rights lawyer would have made a case to free him before half-time. We would all have chipped into the crowd fund.

Pep Guardiola is nothing if not imaginative, Ruben Amorim’s 3-4-3 system is his one non-negotiable. It is his panacea, his wonder drug, the magic bullet he’s firing at the heart of Manchester United’s recurring post-Fergie problems. I’m not a coach but the first ‘3’ in his universal remedy looked more like a ‘5’ for most of the game… which made the other ‘3’ look more of a ‘1’.

And, sadly, for Ruben, the ‘1’ wasn’t Ruud van Nistelrooy.

I may not have the coaching badges but I have been to the last 27 Champions League finals and I can’t remember too many of them being won with anything resembling the system he is looking to cement into United’s foundations. There is no such thing as a cure-all master plan in football.

Ok if it’s Amorim’s preferred strategy, but it is no more than a recipe at this stage. And even Heston Blumenthal can’t make an omelette without eggs.

Chef Amorim has not walked into the Ritz. Or if he has, it’s a famous kitchen that has lost most of its Michelin stars in the last few years. He might even have a rat problem. But his notion that the most important ingredient in making his customers happy again is the menu is decidedly egg before chicken. It defies any logic.

United as a club seem to have taken on a future vision of long-term change and renewal of everything including the postcode. I’m all for the most important 11 employees on their shrinking staff getting time to match the artist’s impression of the new super stadium. But the fans are still paying 50-odd quid-a-go to dodge the leaks in the old place. They’re not forking out to witness the fiendish experiment of a mad scientist.

When comedians are looking to try out new material ahead of a major tour, they charge their audiences a little less in recognition of the fact that their act is not quite ready. (Cue a cheap joke about Patrick Dorgu and Joshua Zirkzee). LOL.

Even if Fergie came out of retirement to blow some hair in Amorim’s dressing-room there would be no guarantees. Football – gloriously – doesn’t work like that.

United’s contract with their fans is to try to put a winning team on the pitch and to bring more trophies and more nights in the company of Real Madrid and Bayern Munich to Old Trafford. That is a pressing priority, not a mission statement. Trials are for pre-season, not mid-season. United’s rehearsals should be happening at their Carrington Training Centre, not in the Premier League. Fair?

Amorim and United can’t simply write off half-a-season as some kind of necessary pain for the gain of conjectural progress that looks about as sketchy as the cartoon stadium just now. And particularly this half-season in which finishing above Nottingham Forest would have come with a guarantee of Champions League qualification… the same Forest that his United almost pegged back when he threw Harry Maguire up front last week.

Am I the only one that thinks a Plan ‘B’ is a strength, not a surrender?

Needs must and United’s most pressing need is surely to offer a return on the ticket price. Amorim’s projected XI in a year’s time probably features no more than half of the players he’s working with now, so why not mould the present personnel into a shape that suits them rather than insist on a system full of round holes filled by square pegs? Is Bruno Fernandes really on the right of his final blueprint attack? The future can wait.

I am very wary of sounding old school in questioning the credentials of coaches that never kick a ball to have the mandate to choreograph games like puppeteers with tight, short strings. But you could hear Gary Neville’s impatience with the gagging structure of the set-ups that Amorim and Guardiola imposed on the derby.

“If either team score, the other can’t complain because they haven’t done enough to win it themselves,” he lamented as late substitutes were thrown at the deadlock in the hope of staging an ambush. Any excitement arose only from the lack of excitement that preceded the high jeopardy minutes that the 4^th official’s board added on.

Is it unkind or uncool to suggest that the afternoon’s entertainment might have been richer if Amorim and Guardiola had played a private game of chess and let De Bruyne and Bruno get on with playing the match to their strengths?

I’m not ignoring the heat we turn up around headline fixtures like a Manchester derby or even the unchartered territory that Guardiola finds himself treading in search of a Top 5 escape from the corner City have unexpectedly backed into. Maybe it’s a good point for him.

Nobody wants to hear about weary millionaires but top level football looks a bit tired and emotional just now. Perhaps it’s the thought of a Club World Cup this summer that has ushered De Bruyne to the exit door. Stoking the boilers when fuel is running low is the job of the manager and it’s usually easier to organise a defence than it is to fashion an attack in team sport. Low blocks are low risk.

Pep looks ready for a golf course himself. Even geniuses can only have so many bright ideas.

Ideas are not the making of successful people in any walk of life. There are a lot of hard yards to be covered between an idea and an invention. Inventions are ready to use.

Nobody goes into a showroom to buy an idea for a self-drive car. We want to give it a test drive, take it for a spin and be sure it’s not going to crash before we part with our down-payment. Until then, we’ll stay behind the wheel of this old crate that gets us to work and back, thank you very much.

3-4-3 might be a nice idea but Manchester United look like they need something that’s ready and roadworthy for the here and now.