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.