Ruud van Nistelrooy is keeping his promise to Ruben Amorim ahead of Manchester United job swap

Man Utd beat PAOK 2-0 in the Europa League thanks to an excellent individual performance from Amad.

Three down, one to go. The Ruud van Nistelrooy era at Manchester United will end this weekend, but so far, the club’s legendary former striker is fulfilling his brief.

After the high of the rampant Carabao Cup win against Leicester City, things have become a little more mundane recently. They were second best in a draw against Chelsea, followed by a scrappy win against PAOK in the Europa League.

United will hope the new manager bounce under incoming head coach Ruben Amorim lasts more than one game. To be fair to Van Nistelrooy, if he can finish this weekend with three wins and a draw from his four games, he will consider that a success. He will also be doing his replacement in the Old Trafford dugout a favour.

This wasn’t a performance that would have had Amorim counting down the hours until he arrives at Carrington. It only served to highlight quite how much work is required here. For 45 minutes at least, United made incredibly hard work of beating a side sitting 33rd in the 36-team Europa League standings, although they did at least win their first European game for 380 days.

That is where they find themselves at the moment, however, and you were grateful for the 4,000-strong visiting contingent, who contributed to a fine atmosphere. Without them, this would have felt even more low-key than it was.

It certainly couldn’t match the fireworks on show in Lisbon on Tuesday. If you were being mischievous, you would suggest this 2-0 victory wasn’t even United’s best win in Europe this week.

The way Amorim’s Sporting side tore Manchester City apart in the Champions League was certainly eye-catching. It took the excitement levels over the 39-year-old up several notches and there is now a buzz around the club ahead of his arrival next week. This performance would have quelled those excitement levels just a little.

It also offered little insight into how some of these players might fit into Amorim’s style if he persists with his three-man defence. Diogo Dalot and Noussair Mazraoui spent a lot of their time moving from full-back to playing as No.8s. It was modern and inventive, but it didn’t work particularly well, and it isn’t an approach Amorim has used at Sporting.

But as Van Nistelrooy pointed out on Wednesday, he isn’t here to answer questions about how players would fit under Amorim or to begin the transition by playing a system he might not be comfortable with or believe in. His job has been to steady the ship and get results.

“To relate it to his playing style is a question I can’t answer, I’m so focused on getting results going,” he said. “We have two vital games for the season. I think I’m doing the new manager the best favour to do that.”

If Amorim takes over a side that has won three and drawn one of its four games since Erik ten Hag’s departure, he will be grateful for that before he looks to put his own stamp on this side.

He will expect to see more quality than that on show in the opening 45 minutes on Thursday, which were as disjointed as humdrum as many of the halves under Ten Hag in recent months. United lacked any kind of structure, with players told to rotate and be flexible, only for those freedoms to backfire.

It was a night that needed individual quality and it got it through Amad. His header steered back across goal for his first was inventive and his second was down to his ability to hound Baba Rahman out of possession and then finish brilliantly. Amorim would undoubtedly have taken note of that.