Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim said the departure of sporting director Dan Ashworth was a difficult situation for the club but nothing had changed in terms of its goals.
Ashworth left the Premier League club on Sunday by mutual consent after just five months in the job.
“Of course, as I said, it’s a bad situation because you’re talking about a man, a professional, who supports us as a team,” Amorim told reporters on Wednesday.
“The most important thing is that the vision is really clear and doesn’t change just because one person leaves,” he added.
Amorim described Thursday’s Europa League clash with Viktoria Plzeň as a must-win match for his team.
United are 12th in the Europa League table with nine points and are comfortably in the play-offs, but need a win in the Czech Republic to stay within reach of the top flight.
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“At the moment it is very important for us as a club and a team that if you go to the next stage without the play-offs, you take two games out of our schedule and that is huge,” Amorim said.
We have to be much better at set pieces and we have to win this. It is very important that we win, but not only win, but also play well,” he added.
When asked in January about possible transfers, Amorim replied that the priority was player development.
“We need to organize a lot of things at our club before we start buying and selling players. Let’s focus on improving our players, improving our academy and then we will see,” he said.
“Like any other team, when the window is open we can do something, but at the moment we are focused on winning games and we need to have that feeling of winning, so we have to start tomorrow,” he concluded.
