Manchester United - Leicester

Return of the 4-4-2! I thought we looked much better today and demonstrated much better movement with more inventive attacking play. I just wish we could have kept a clean sheet but with our "unbalanced" team of amazing attackers, 3-1 scoreline is at least more representative of our imbalance.

1) Our free kicks are much too predictable

Example 1: 

14th minute in, free kick on our right. Ever since LVG has arrived, we'll always play an in-swinging free kick (which I like and will mention on the next point). Since we're on the right here, Di Maria is going to take it with Rooney faking and running over the ball first.

Example 2:

29th minute free kick on our left. Rooney will take it with Di Maria faking and running over the ball first.  

Next time you watch us play, see if you notice that we do this exact same routine every time. I'm not sure what running over the ball to fake the kick does since it's obvious we'll do it. Maybe LVG plans to mix it up eventually or once in a blue moon will do the opposite to throw our opposition off but I haven't seen it yet. It just seems like a waste of a player who could be an extra attacker in the box. 

2) I like our in-swinging corners

Again, ever since LVG came, for our corners, we'll have a right footer take it if the corner is on our left and a left footer take it if the corner is on our right (usually Mata or Di Maria). 

I took these two pictures from the corner we scored on in minute 43. Here Rooney takes in swinging corner to near post. 

Now here is Blind coming up to head it. You see he's not even facing their goal and it's actually quite an awkward header for him. However, since the ball is already curving towards goal, all he really has to do is get a touch on it and deflect it's path to get it past their keeper. 

I think in-swinging corners are generally better overall in that it also prevents the other team from counterattacking as easily. An out-swinging corner means that if it misses all the players or gets a small deflection, it's heading towards our own goal and their players can sprint forward onto the ball while an in-swinging one at worst will leave their team with a goal kick. We also don't have great headers and with an in-swinger, all it needs is a slight touch to be dangerous while with an out-swinger, you need to have perfect contact to redirect the ball towards goal.

3) The problem with the diamond

I like our 4-4-2 diamond much better than our 3-5-2 formation and I thought we played much better today, no twitchy ass either. However, 4-4-2 diamond does leave a gap in the center midfield area. Januzaj is a wide player so if Januzaj stays out wide, Rooney needs to cover both the center and the right side or Di Maria needs to drop back more but it inevitably leads to a player having to cover more ground and fill the gaps.

It wasn't too much of a problem today so not too many instances but here's a really good example. This is 36 minutes in and Blind drops deep to receive the ball, which is normal for a player who is playing the pivot in the diamond. I actually drew the diamond with the red pen with Rooney down at the bottom of the picture and Januzaj at the top right with Di Maria out of the picture on the right. The blue circle indicates the spot where there's a big gap left by this diamond. Blind here doesn't really have too many options forward and passing it his defenders on either side doesn't really accomplish much.

Here's what happens next: Blind does a great job and he dribbles it forward a little bit to draw the Leicester players out of position. He passes the ball to Di Maria who drifted out wide right to give Blind an option. However, you see the ball path, which I indicated with the black arrow, basically passes through the gap area (blue circle). If there was someone in that area, they could have received the ball, turned and then picked a pass rather than Di Maria receiving the ball with back to goal; he had no option but to make a back pass to Rooney.

4) Why are Falcao and RVP on post duty during defensive corners?

This is taken from the 46th minute in the first half and Leicester has a corner. Our team isn't the tallest or most physical team and it really astounded me to see both RVP and Falcao on the post when we were defending our corners. They're two of our tallest players and both strikers who are decent in the air (especially Falcao) - you would think they'd be asked to mark Leicester players instead of having players like Januzaj and Di Maria mark them. My thought was that most teams put the player who is weakest in the air on the post since there's really not much to do there except to make the goal smaller for the keeper. When we played under SAF, usually it was someone like Park Ji Sung or even Evra (who's awesome in the air but just short) on the post. 

5) No need to clear it

I think Shaw is a great player and he played well today, with Jones making the most mistakes. A lot of Jones' mistakes were obvious dumb stuff but in this instance, Shaw's lack of composure really stuck out at me. 

This is during the 60th minute and Leicester was counterattacking - Ulloa was driving the ball forward and Rojo did a great job defending him. End result was Ulloa tried to cut in but he slipped and you can see him on the ground. Shaw and Jones were both running back to help defend and you see Shaw just boots the ball out to the side after Ulloa slips. 

That's obviously the safest choice but you can see in this picture there's absolutely no one near him. He had plenty of time to slow down, turn and dribble the ball or just make a slight lay off to Rojo to carry it forward and either would have kept possession for us. Booting it out like that is something I'd expect of a Sunday league center back who can barely control the ball, not of a professional defender of Shaw's quality. End result was Leicester had a throw in in a dangerous position. 

6) Unnecessary pressing

This is during the 59th minute before any substitutes have been made on our end so we're still playing our 4-4-2 diamond and we're up 3-0.

Di Maria was doing a great job pressing the Leicester players and they were forced to play it back to their keeper. For some reason, Di Maria continues running forward to press the keeper to press him. He's no where close enough to the keeper to really put any pressure on him and I don't think he should have ran forward like this as it put him out of position to defend. This leaves a gap in our midfield that either Falcao or RVP has to drop back to fill and wastes energy on Di Maria's part. Since Falcao and RVP aren't really in position to drop back, basically in this instance, as the Leicester keeper is making his pass forward, we only have 3 in midfield compared to Leicester's four with Di Maria, Falcao and RVP no where back far enough to help defend. 

I can understand if we were down one or two and chasing the game but we're winning 3-0 and there's no need to waste energy or not keep our shape. 

Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this week's post! Hopefully we build on this result and see more of the promising attacking play that we saw today.

Cambridge - Manchester United

Sorry for the late post, not used to weekday matches. Not a great result but in retrospect with the other teams going out of the cup, not the worst that could happen. Still a little worrying that we couldn't score despite all of our attacking talent.

1) We have a big gap in center mid

I'm not sure why we have this gap - sometimes it's due to Carrick staying too deep but I'm not sure if that's LVG not trusting our defense and asking him to stay deep or if it's just his natural tendency.

Example 1 (28 minutes):

I circled the place where I think one of our central or attacking midfielders should be in. You can see we have four players basically lined up against their defense with no way of getting it to them through Rojo (who has the ball here). I actually think that in this case, Di Maria should have been in circled position as that's where he was playing. Carrick could possibly run forward into that position but that probably exposes our defense a little too much. Or Fellaini (top right of the red circle) could have run more central into that position.

Example 2 (54 minutes):

Blind has the ball here at the top center of the picture and he was dribbling it down the line and cut back in a little so now he's looking diagonally towards the center. I think there should have been someone in the place where I made the red circle. Right now, Blind has basically no options with the ball - the only pass he can make is to try to force it into Di Maria who is on the right with the blue underline. I think in this case, Carrick, blue underline on the left, should have made a forward run to the red circled area to give Blind an option. It's not even so much about attacking - even for pure possession, you need to give the person with the ball options otherwise the team will end up losing possession. 

Example 3 (56 minutes)

Here, Di Maria has the ball and he makes a nice threaded short pass to Januzaj, as shown by the blue line. The problem is there's a giant gap in the attacking central third here (shown by the big red circle)! Januzaj actually ends up dribbling past the Cambridge players and if someone was in the red area and making a forward run, he would have been wide open for Januzaj to cross to. That's the area that Scholes would have ran into when he was younger. Carrick, on the top left, is just standing next to the Cambridge player - great if we were trying to defend but not great if we have the ball and we're making a solid attacking move forward.

2) Carrick excels as a deep lying playmaker

I know in the examples above, a lot of it spaces that Carrick should have run into but it's not necessarily his fault. A deep lying playmaker shouldn't necessarily be running into those spaces and it's more of a collective team chemistry/shape issue rather than a Carrick issue. I just want to highlight a few things I thought Carrick did particularly well in this game below. 

Example 1:

In the picture below, Carrick had originally dribbled forward but ran out of space and he was forced to turn back towards our own goal. The easiest pass would have been straight back to Rojo (not in this picture) but instead, he passes it to ellaini, who I circled. It's not the easiest pass and Carrick had the awareness to make it even though he was being pressed. Much better than our usually immediately pass wide - this time it gets to Fellaini who has plenty of time and space to make something happen. Unfortunately, Fellaini didn't take advantage and try to drive forward and instead made a back/side pass to Jones - end result, more useless possession. 

Example 2:

Carrick has the ball and is facing Cambridge's goal - great position here. He threads a pass into Januzaj who I circled right here. That's the type of pass I see Fabregas make all the time and I thought it was great. Januzaj doesn't have a ton of space but he is in a good position. Unfortunately he was closed down immediately - it's definitely a very difficult thing for Januzaj to turn in that area as there's not time but at least we tried it. The easy option, which I saw too often (looking at you Rooney) would have been a pass out wide to Blind on the left (not pictured) and Blind would have crossed it in. 

3) Valencia does not take advantage of space created

I think anyone can find 10 examples of Valencia not doing so but here was the worst one. Herrera, who I circled in blue, passed it to Valencia who now has the ball and Herrera immediately sprints to the right wing area. Valencia doesn't really have a pass to him in this moment but Herrera's run created space in the middle and Valencia should have just dribbled it right down that red arrow where he could have even just made a simple pass to Carrick who is in the center circle. He doesn't realize it and only starts making the run a few moments later but by that time, the space is closed down and he ends up passing it back to Rojo. All that good running by Herrera only for the ball to end up going backwards ten yards. 

QPR - Manchester United Part 2

1) We're giving other teams too much time to sit back and defend against us - we miss many counter attacking opportunities

Example 1:

At around 42 minutes into the game, Carrick makes a nice forward pass into Falcao's feet and Falcao has time to turn and dribble it a little bit. You see in this picture there's four Manchester United players and four QPR players. 

He has two QPR players in front of him and he makes a decent pass over the top to Di Maria, although maybe slightly over hit and wide. Di Maria is able to get to the ball but is forced out wide.

He dribbles it a little backwards and then passes it back to Carrick - there wasn't much else he could do. By now, there's a lot more QPR players back but it's still somewhat open and there's a few options in play here. 

End result: ball is passed back to Evans and now the entire QPR team is back in their own half and perfectly in place. We pass the ball around the ball and eventually the attack fizzles out.  

I didn't really have a huge problem with this play above as I thought that once Di Maria was forced out wide, he didn't have much of a choice but to pass back and the attacking impetus was lost but I still felt it was a good example of how we let the other team completely get set to defend our attacks rather than take advantage of a 4 on 4 situation.

Example 2

This is at the 65th minute and we're leading 1-0 so it's not the worst thing in the world that we missed a counter attacking opportunity but settling for a 1-0 lead at the 65th minute against QPR is a little pathetic.

Below, you see QPR have five players in or near the box in an attack that failed and Rooney is chasing the ball. Doing the math, there's 6 QPR players in this picture and we have 8 (including De Gea). That leaves 5 QPR players (including their goalie) defending against 3 of ours with Rooney passing to them. That's a relatively safe counter attack and considering that we have Di Maria up front who can dribble past a few players, decent chance of success.

Rooney gets to the ball and dribbles it forward, perfect.  

Except that now, he goes for the easiest pass which is to Falcao who is straight ahead of him but as you can see, Falcao's back was to goal and was tightly marked. End result: Falcao dribbles it backwards, we keep possession and we lose the chance to counter attack. 

Rooney should have gone for an outside the boot long pass to Di Maria who was running forward down the right wing area. That kind of pass should be well within Rooney's passing range and was the kind of pass we saw Scholes do all the time. 

Example 3

85th minute, QPR failed attack and Valencia has the ball in the top of the picture with space and he's already facing their goal. He also has plenty of options with the best one being diagonal forward pass to Fellaini (the player closest to him in this picture) who could then make a one time pass forward.

He ends up making yet another long pass forward to Falcao who is once again forced to play with his back to goal - counter attacking opportunity eliminated. 

End result: ball gets passed back to De Gea. 

You'll notice these examples are all in the second half after we equalized because QPR are pressing and having a go at it and we're defending more. Getting a 1-0 lead and then counter attacking is pretty much the safest way to go about it but the problem is, we're not counter attacking effectively so we end up just keeping possession to defend. In theory, that sounds okay but if you look at the picture above, you see that there's four QPR players in our 1/3rd of the pitch when the ball gets to De Gea. Without a proper counter attacking threat, the QPR players don't even have to run back to defend and they can just stay forward and press our players, making the 1-0 lead hard to defend. 

Parting words

Hope you enjoyed this week's analysis! I could write another 10 points with things I jotted down during the game but that would take forever so I tried to be more concise. Please leave comments with any suggestions on how I can improve. Hopefully the picture quality will be better next week as usually NBC keeps replays of most games online.

QPR - Manchester United Part 1

Good result today but not a good performance. LVG says he rates our teams not only by result but by performance and by performance, it was a very poor game. Three points though and here's hoping 3-5-2 and Di Maria as a striker goes extinct.

I'm going to try to not do too much on Rooney today since I focused on him last week but also because he played so poorly I'd end up spending hours showing his mistakes. I think it was mostly a bad day for him but bad day + wrong position = disaster. 

Also, sorry for the picture quality - NBC online doesn't seem to have our game up so I have to use other sources.

1) Mata had a poor game today

I felt LVG rightly subbed off Mata as he was just misplacing passes today. This picture below is about three minutes into the game and the person receiving the ball is Mata. Mata receives the ball and immediately makes a huge back pass all the way to De Gea - it was clear that was his plan the entire time as I could see him shape his body for a long back pass even before he received the ball. 

You see Mata is somewhat tightly Marked but a 10 foot back pass just ahead of Carrick on the left should be relatively easy. He also has the option of first time passing it to our player on the left wing (the one at the top of the picture on the halfway line). Or just take a small tough backwards to give himself some space to turn. A lot of options but he picks the easiest one and when I saw this, I felt that it signified a lack of confidence. 

2) Di Maria shoots too much

I think Di Maria is a great player and I thought he played well today when he got into deeper positions and had the chance to dribble a bit. However, he tends to go for far too many impossible long shots that never even come close to being a goal. Below is 8 minutes in and Di Maria has the ball. Just look at this picture and see if shooting makes sense at all.

End result: his shot didn't even make it past the QPR center backs...

3) Why go wide?!

I know I talked about this extensively last post already but this particular incident really annoyed me. Rooney has the ball and you can see Falcao is about 20 feet in front of him with some space. Rooney also has quite a bit of time and he's already facing goal so he has the option to dribble and drive it forward as well. Instead, he goes wide all the way to Valencia (not in the picture). The pass was unsuccessful and you find out in the next instance that Valencia was even that wide open. 

4) Johnny Evans had some nice forward runs today

I wanted to give credit to Evans for having some good forward runs bringing the ball out of defense today. He used to be really great at this but recently haven't seen much of it so it was nice to see this. In the picture below, Evans has the ball and he starts dribbling.

He ends up here - he's the guy between the two QPR players close to the center of this picture. He ends up passing it to Valencia out wide, which was probably has best option.

Unfortunately (or predictably...), Valencia takes far too much time on the ball - I counted six touches and below is the screenshot of the QPR penalty area right after Valencia does his low cross-cum-shot thing. If you look at the picture above, you can count 7 QPR players and see that they're somewhat spread out but by the time Valencia tries something, they're all compact and in the box, as shown in the picture below.

Nice segway into the next point --->

5) Valencia's doesn't know how to throw the ball in properly

It's funny, I actually texted my friend a few months ago and told him that all of Valencia's throw ins are illegal and he finally gets punished for it today. To show it's not an isolated incident, here's one at 14 minutes and about 40 seconds into the game. Look at his right leg - it's raised and clearly he doesn't have both legs touching the ground when he throws the ball (that's a rule).

Below is the one 17-18 minutes in that he gets penalized for. I couldn't get a great picture as here you can see the ball is already released but looking at his body position, you can still tell there's no way his trailing leg was touching the ground. I wish I had GIFs.

Some people seem to think he was penalized to stepping too far forward or taking too long to throw it in but as you can see in the picture below, the ref even explains it, demonstrating that his trailing leg went off the ground.

Illegal throw ins seem to happen all the time in professional games and for some reason referees don't often call it even though it's the easiest call you can make. It's quite disturbing that Valencia doesn't know how to throw it in - dragging the trailing leg is a basic throw in skill that's taught early on and it becomes a habit.

Although this happens to other teams too, I partly blame the coaching staff. Evra made the same throw in mistake all the time and occasionally got punished for it as well but was never told to fix it by our coaching staff at that time. 

My hypothesis is that both players (Evra and Valencia) grew up as attacking players in very professionally organized clubs and they were trained with attacking skills only so never had to learn throw ins since they're a job for defenders generally. And when they became full/wing backs professionally, since referees rarely call it, it's overlooked and everyone forgets about it. I never saw Gary Neville make this mistake that Valencia and Evra are often guilty of.

I have a few more things I want to write about that I'll update with part 2 tomorrow - it takes a while to write these up and I'm tired :)

Manchester United vs Southampton

Obviously a terrible display today. The possession we have is just so useless and our players look like they think the point of the game is to avoid losing the ball rather than to beat our opponents via scoring a goal. Here's a few things I noticed today, read below for details.

1) Rooney in midfield just doesn't work

He's a great player who does provide a lot of energy in there and his passing range is good but his passing selection is awful. I blame of lot of our useless possession on him and I think if Herrera was in his place today, we would have created better chances (that aren't crosses from our fullbacks).

Example 1 - Rooney 5 minutes into the match

Below, Rooney receives the ball from Di Maria (who is just above him in the picture). You see Mata is unmarked on the right side of the picture and a pass to Mata would have been a simple turn.

Instead, you see in the below picture that Rooney dribbles it back about 10 yards and then turns. Even now, Mata is in a decent position to receive the ball and Rooney should be able to pick him out, although now it's a slightly tougher pass since the Southampton midfielders might intercept it.

End result, Rooney lays it out wide to Shaw for a cross with only RVP and Mata to receive it and you see there's at least five Southamptom players who can defend the cross (by the time Shaw gets the cross off).  

Example 2 - Rooney 17 minutes in

Below, Rooney has the ball in midfield and Carrick is just below him, running into an empty space right in the middle of the Southamptom midfielder triangle. The ball is already in Rooney's right foot and Rooney could have easily let it run a little and then passed it able 5 yards ahead of Carrick who is then facing goal and could have made something happen.

Instead, he passes it to our overlapping defender (which in this case is Blind) - the easiest pass possible, since it's just a 5 yard pass in the direction Rooney is already facing. As you can see, Blind is well defended and he's not going to be able to run the ball down the line and make something happen like Giggs might have done in the pass. 

End result: Blind has no choice but to check back and now he passes it back to Carrick who had to run back (you can tell he's further back by the center circle lines) to give Blind an option. If you look at our players on the right in the picture below, their backs are now to the goal but if you look in the above picture, there's something running forwards towards their goal. That means now Carrick has no through ball option to make. By picking the easiest pass possible and taking one every pass to get it to Carrick, Rooney let Southampton run back to defend and  killed our attacking runs. 

Example 3: Rooney 23 minutes in, bad pass to Valencia

Okay, this one might be a little harsh but it annoyed me. Rooney has the ball and as you can see, there really isn't a ton of options here. Looking at this picture, I think a short pass to Mata (bottom right) is the best bet but Wanyama has Mata decently marked. Carrick is right above Mata in the picture below and you can see there's a perfect triangle of Rooney-Mata-Carrick and there's a lot of potential to play some give and gos between Carrick and Mata if the ball gets to them. Rooney also has the option of dribbling it forward (diagonally to his right since the Southamptom player is closing in on him from his left), which would forced Wanyama or Schneiderlin to step up to mark Rooney which would leave either Carrick or Mata free.

End result: Rooney makes a quick long diagonal pass to Valencia (out of this picture). Even worse, the pass is bad and it goes out of bounds but in my opinion, making a bad pass every once in a while is acceptable but constantly choosing the wrong pass is not. 

2) RVP doesn't get the proper service

In the picture below, at 22 minutes in, Jones in the bottom left of the picture has the ball and RVP is at the corner of the penalty area pointing for the ball. He has plenty of space and we've seen what RVP can do with his left foot cutting in from the right side like that. The picture actually doesn't show it well but RVP is screaming for the ball here - he knows what a good opportunity this is.

It's a simple pass forward from Jones but instead, as you can see in the picture below, he inexplicably dribbles it forward 5 more yards and passes it to Rooney who you can see is very well marked. The only thing Rooney could do was run back to receive it and looking at the picture below, there's really not much we could have done at that point. Also, we have one forward offside now and the Southampton defenders are much closer to RVP than the above picture.

3) Rooney should be playing just off the striker or as a striker

In the picture below, Carrick makes a nice forward pass to RVP (just out of the picture on the right). RVP comes a little short and makes a one time pass to Rooney. 

 End result: Rooney receives the ball in a dangerous position, he actually starts dribbling it and draws three Southamptom players onto him and eventually passes it back to RVP who misses his shot. Not a great result but this was the quick attacking play with one touch passing and Rooney driving forward that we haven't seen for at least two seasons. 

4) Mata, despite looking dangerous, has some flaws and is guilty of the easy pass as well

Example 1:

In the below picture, Mata is in the top right and has the ball. He makes the easy pass to Valencia and Valencia crosses it in and nothing happened - there's four very organized Southampton defenders defending the cross against only two of our players.

He could have attempted to cut in the dribble, which is not asking a lot considering his technical ability and the fact that he's left footed. He wasn't that well marked and the Southamptom player marking him was facing towards the outside. Or he could have attempted a pass to Herrera who is central and running into plenty of space. 

Example 2: 

You see this over and over - Mata gets knocked off the ball so easily and loses possession for us. In this picture below, Mata is about to receive the ball and you see the Southampton player behind him coming. The picture doesn't show it well but Mata has a glance over his right shoulder and he knows that the Southampton player is coming. 

Inexplicably, Mata stops, and waits for the ball to come to him and tries to shield the ball. It was a complete disaster and the Southamptom player got the ball in a dangerous position and started a counterattack. Even worse, this was at 87 minutes and we were down 1 so we had no time to waste. 

It's more or less basic training to just step to the ball and make a quick one time pass back to the defender when you're this tightly marked. Mata is obviously no Drogba and he should not be attempting to shield the ball, especially in this dangerous position. I don't fault him for being physical small, I fault him for not having better presence of mind and quicker thinking and I think for a player of his supposed quality, he should have done better.