Joining a club during a season there could perhaps, at least initially, be a temptation to not rock the boat too much as you get your feet under the table.
But Erik ten Hag left Manchester United as a sinking ship slumped 13th in the Premier League table and channelling rapidly in the wrong direction.
So Ruben Amorim declared that change was afoot. Immediately his ‘idea’ would be clear.
‘Day one we will start with our identity,’ Amorim vowed in the lead-up to this ding-dong clash in Suffolk.
‘I think you will see an idea. You could like it or not, I don’t know, but you will see an idea.’
Changes went beyond just personnel and formation – of which a lot was different. He put Noussair Mazroui in at right centre back, had Amad Diallo as a wing-back, Alejandro Garnacho as an inside forward and it was to be the 3-4-3 system that served him so well at Sporting.
Manchester United were held to a draw by Ipswich in Ruben Amorim’s first match in charge
The Portuguese boss used the 3-4-3 system that served him so well at Sporting Lisbon
The warm-up was transformed, too.
Led by his trusted assistant Carlos Fernandes, United did away with casual shooting drills and instead got right into a training session on set-pieces, an idea he admitted he nicked off Sergio Conceicao, a long time rival in Portugal as Sporting boss.
Adelio Candido, his 28-year-old assistant, did not want to waste a second right up until kick-off by pulling players aside for one-to-one chats for final instructions.
The opening goal, which came after 81 seconds, was a move that looked to have been worked on methodically at Carrington during the week. Amorim ball was here with a bang it seemed.
A one-two on the right wing in the United half made its way back to Amad and he burst past two players before picking out Marcus Rashford to finish with aplomb.
Diogo Dalot, operating at left wing-back, turned back to the bench and unleashed a fist-pump, a nod to a practiced move coming off. Amorim was unmoved. He knows that he could improve this team quickly. He also knows that he cannot perform miracles.
‘You will see changes, not big changes, because it is impossible in two trainings,’ he said.
What soon became clear is that old habits die hard with United and Amorim became increasingly exasperated in conversation with Fernandes in his technical area at the nature of basic errors.
The opening goal, which came after 81 seconds, with Marcus Rashford finishing off the move
Often he would hold out an open palm, calling for particularly Alejandro Garnacho to slow things down and keep the ball. It was Dalot who faced his wrath midway through the first half when he casually gave possession up and Ipswich broke.
Every stoppage in play saw Amorim calmly offering instructions to players, appearing to play real-time chess with them by dictating their positions. Amid the ferocious atmosphere that Portman Road creates on nights like these, this was a valuable coaching session in every sense.
The issue he has, and the issue he will continue to run into, is a lack of mobility in midfield.
His 3-4-3 system often caught Casemiro and Christian Eriksen, who are a combined age of 64, out and allowed 21-year-old Omari Hutchinson, Ipswich’s goalscorer and best player on the day, to feast at their expense.
‘We’ve tried to use the players who I had more time to pass information to,’ Amorim explained in the build-up.
‘Casemiro, for instance, had more time to train. [Manuel] Ugarte one day to train. Big changes are not possible in two sessions.’
So when, before the hour, Casemiro and Jonny Evans, himself struggling for pace at left centre back, were hooked for Manuel Ugarte and Luke Shaw, it was an early sign that where Ten Hag showed a reticence with his subs, Amorim was and will be proactive.
Omari Hutchinson got the hosts on level terms with a deflected long-range strike
One of the key pieces of the Amorim coaching puzzle at Sporting was that Candido would observe matches from up in a box in the stand.
It gave him a different perspective, a better assessment of the overall shape and the flow of a game.
Here at Portman Road he was sat two down from Amorim, sandwiched in between Carlos Fernandes and Emanuel Ferro. How long that lasts will be particularly interesting ahead of his Old Trafford debut on Thursday night.
By the end this felt like a case of make-do-and-mend on the fly.
Amad at wing-back looked like it could work. One sliding challenge to stop a Leif Davis cross in the early exchanges was a sign that the Ivorian has bought into defensive responsibilities where others won’t. That could see his minutes sky-rocket as a result.
But United continue to be far too easy to play through and that was frequently being pointed out to Amorim and by Amorim as he was up and down from his seat looking back at two monitors set up on tripods in front of the away bench.
When he was sending Joshua Zirkzee and Rasmus Hojlund on with 25 minutes to go, putting Bruno Fernandes in a deeper role, he made Carlos Fernandes get up from his seat, sat Zirkzee down, opened a tactical folder and began frantically pointing and passing on info.
Amorim knows that he could improve this team quickly but is not a miracle worker
‘It’s not difficult, and that is the key point,’ he promised in the build-up of his key message to players.
That may well be true. But by the end Amorim was lamenting a lack of pressing and a confusion of where players were meant to be as they looked befuddled back towards the bench.
It’s going to take more than a week of training, a new warm-up routine and a black folder of tactics to patch back up this creaky United ship.
