Our lack of incisive passing

Something that has been bothering me is the lack of incisive passing our team exhibits. I know we're still adjusting to LVG's system and that should improve but in the mean time, I just wanted to point out a few examples of specific incidents during our play that we should have done differently.

Example 1

Below is at around the 52nd minute against Spurs. We had just gotten the ball in our control after a corner against us and the Spurs players were running back towards their own goal.

In the picture below, Evans has the ball after a back pass from Young. 

You see Carrick wide open in the area gesturing to have the ball played to him so he can turn and start the attacking for us. Simple 10 yard pass from Evans to a wide open Carrick. Instead, Evans makes the pass to McNair and in the picture below, Carrick receives the ball from McNair instead. 

You can see in this picture above that now, there's two Spurs players closing in on Carrick now and Carrick's back is now completely facing our own goal which leaves him in a less desirable position to turn and start the attack. 

This was one more pass than was necessary to get it to Carrick. It may not seem much, but it left Carrick with less space and since it was a semi-counter attack opportunity, it undoubtedly means that our attacking players were marked tighter by the time Carrick received the ball.

Example 2

Below is the 65th minute away against Stoke and we're tied at 1-1. In the picture below, Mata has the ball and we're attacking their goal. There's a clear pass into the space where Rooney is running (Rooney is the one closest to the ref) which would leave him with a decent amount of space to either shoot with his right or slip RVP in on goal.

However, instead, Mata chooses to pass to sideways to Herrera, as you can see in the picture below. No doubt, that was the easier pass. In the picture above, it's clear that with the ball being at Mata's left foot, getting it to Rooney without having it intercepted by the Stoke player between Mata and Rooney would have required Mata to "lead" Rooney a bit, but that's what we paid 40 million for - a playmaker like Mata to make the difficult passes in the final third to create chances.

Now you can see that above, when Herrera has the ball, Mata, Rooney and RVP are all bunched up in the center and the space that was open for Rooney to run into is now occupied by a Stoke player. That leaves Herrera with open one good option which is to pass it out wide to Januzaj for Januzaj to cross it in. By the time Januzaj crosses it in, there's five Stoke players in the box defending the cross against Mata, Rooney and RVP and the chance of us scoring is quite slim by then.