Why exasperated – and maybe broken – Ruben Amorim may have already said too much to the players he wants to sign at Man United, writes RIATH AL-SAMARRAI

Honesty is a fine thing. For Ruben Amorim, it might be all he has. But is it the best policy? Does it help? Has he heard of Gerald Ratner?

I was mulling that over earlier in the week, after Manchester United’s manager once again put candour before discretion in assessment of his side. The West Ham defeat had hurt him and ’embarrassed’ was the word he used, but he had more to get off his chest.

So he went for it: ‘Something is wrong with the way we are playing football.’

And that was both a little obvious and a little loaded, which goes to what he said next about players being too content with not winning. About root-deep deficiencies in United’s culture. About ‘losing the feeling’ of being a massive club and the possibility that, maybe, the Champions League is not where they want to be right now.

Powerful stuff, that, and then they lost to Chelsea, too. If they go the same way against Tottenham in Bilbao on Wednesday, then who knows what he will say next, and perhaps we will have already heard it.

Because, my word, Amorim has performed a lot of public surgery on his heart and mind in the past six months. It’s been one long dark night of the soul for him and an open window into grief for us.

But honesty. It’s good, right? We appreciate it. In the media we love it – easy headlines. And compared to Amorim’s predecessor, who favoured delusion, honesty is wonderful. Honesty is fresh air. Can’t knock fresh air and you can’t fault a fella for being honest.

Or can you?

That’s what I was asking someone the other day, when we were killing time at the PGA Championship in the United States by talking about the state of United. It’s how we got onto Gerald Ratner.

Remember him? Jewellery was his game, and rather like United back in the day, he was good. One of the best in the business. In 1990, his chain of cut-price jewellery stores were valued at around £840million. They were unbreakable.

And then he gave a speech one day in 1991. Talking about his firm’s sherry decanters, he said: ‘People say, “How can you sell this for such a low price?” I say because it’s total crap.’

Like Amorim, he had more, making a joke that his stores’ earrings were ‘cheaper than a Marks and Spencer prawn sandwich but probably wouldn’t last as long’.

Turns out, the speech didn’t play too well outside the room – very quickly £500m was gone from the company’s valuation and they closed more than 300 outlets across the UK and United States within a couple of years. A generation or two still talk about ‘doing a Ratner’.

So, here’s one: is Amorim doing a Ratner?

Because he’s also in the selling trade and United have a lot of dodgy earrings to sell this summer. The selling cuts two ways – selling the deadwood and selling better players on the notion that United is the place to be.

We might think they’ll be okay; even a bad Manchester United is Manchester United.

But what about those players who are a bit unsure? What about those who want more than the badge or cash? Those who want to win and won’t waste precious time on a club re-learning how to walk – they are the sort Amorim needs to fix this mess. The serious sort. The kind that aren’t like the freeloaders currently in situ; the kind that pay attention.

Well, in November, when he was not long off the plane and they lost to Ipswich, Amorim said they were going to ‘suffer for a long time’, and we all knew that. That was a sensible and obvious bit of honesty.

But in December, he had moved on to a different strand. ‘I have to sell my idea,’ he said, and that was a bit of tactical honesty, because the world and its dog and Amorim himself could see that his 3-4-3 was not working with the players he had. The problem? He also admitted it was the only way he wanted. That he couldn’t change and would have to coach his way out of the hole.

And so to January when the hole was deeper: ‘I am not helping my players at the moment.’ But that was a big month in the honesty trade, so there was more. ‘Maybe,’ he thought out loud, his version of United was the ‘worst’ in the 147-year history of the club.

February brought the lament that David Moyes had done more at Goodison Park than he had done at Old Trafford. And March saw the grim acceptance that he might not get the grace period Mikel Arteta had at Arsenal, his players were too ‘scarred’ to improve, and, hell, he just couldn’t find a way of getting through to Marcus Rashford like Unai Emery was doing at Aston Villa. April? ‘I’m not saying we’re going to win the title next year, I’m not crazy.’

We know enough about May and his fear about the proximity of unemployment next season if a record-breaking shambles doesn’t improve.

I love an honest answer to an honest question. And day by day, month by month, Amorim has given honest answers. I admire him for that.

But, again, let’s imagine hearing the honesty through the ears of those to whom Amorim will be selling United this summer.

They’ll hear an exasperated man, maybe even a broken one, who appears to doubt himself and certainly doubts a good few of the players under him, who presumably won’t have a long list of suitors and will still be there in September.

They’ll also hear a manager who fears a walloping in the Champions League. A manager who won’t pivot when his system doesn’t work. A manager who says the culture of the club is wrong in a variety of places.

So, roll up, who wants to buy this sherry decanter?

There are those who see a crafty purpose in what Amorim has been saying. Simon Jordan, for one, has used the term ‘Machiavellian’ on talkSPORT, and there would be no novelty in a manager spelling out weaknesses as a means of getting a stronger squad.

But what if the byproduct of all this honesty is that he has already said too much? What if the Ratner threshold was crossed and it all sounds a bit too grim?

It’s one thing to see how poor United have become. It’s quite another to buy into Amorim’s earrings after he himself has spent half a year warning us that they are c**p.

Lewis Hamilton has asked for patience after his tardy start to life at Ferrari.

If any of us was earning £60m a year for selling old rope, we’d probably want to take our time too.

It’s been an interesting week at the PGA Championship, where the early entertainment was supplied by Luke Donald. At the age of 47, Europe’s Ryder Cup captain delivered his best opening round in a major for 21 years and closed the first round a shot ahead of his US counterpart Keegan Bradley.

With that came the recurrence of an old thought, because one of the few unsatisfactory elements of the Cup is the protocol for a 14-14 draw. In that scenario the Cup is retained by the returning champion. Anti-climax doesn’t cover it. Now consider this: the captains contest a sudden-death play-off.

In a heartbeat that would be far more dramatic and also provides a dilemma about how one of the most over-hyped roles in sport is allocated.