Manchester United - Sunderland

Happy we won but the same issues with our team still exist and doesn't look to be improving. Also, despite his nice touch leading to our penalty, Falcao's touch is the worst I've seen. I don't understand why the ball just bounces off him even when it's a nice easy pass to his feet.

1) Continued bad throw ins

I talked about this in the Burnley game (point number 3) already and it still continues and we keep losing possession in dangerous spots because of it.

Example 1: ~5 minutes in, Rojo is in our own half and is throwing the ball in. Look at where he throws it - he throws it straight towards the middle to Ashley Young who is being closed down by two players. We lose possession here and Sunderland makes a decent attack from it.

Example 2: During the sixth minute, Valencia has a throw in in our own half and again, he throws it toward center to Rooney who is being pressed by a Sunderland player. This one is slightly better because it's at least diagonally going forward but as you see in both pictures, our players are running back towards our own goal to retrieve it. Again, we lose the ball and Sunderland creates a dangerous chance from it.

Example 3: At 10 minutes, Smalling has a throw in right at our own corner. He makes a long throw in to De Gea and you can see the Sunderland player closing him down. Remember that a throw in bounces instead of rolls so it takes a little bit of time to trap it. You see Valencia down the line here? Why didn't he just throw it to him? In this case, De Gea does well and we do manage to keep possession but there's no way De Gea would have been happy about being put in that kind of situation.

The correct solution in all three cases above is to just throw it down the line as far as possible. It's harder to retain possession this way but it ensures that you won't lose the ball in your own half and at the very least moves the ball farther away from your own goal. This isn't some expert knowledge here, it's just standard throw in tactics. 

2) We lost the ball to one Sunderland player pressing us

12 minutes in, and we have possession with blind and our back four passing the ball. I circled the one Sunderland player who pressures the ball.

You see it's only the circled player moving - the other two Sunderland players are close to our players but sort of just standing around.  

The end result here is that Smalling lose his composure and ending up just booting it up the field. LVG's tactics are clearly to build up from the back and to keep possession but if you look at the first picture, we have six players (including De Gea) compared to their three and with only one of them actively pressing, we somehow manage to lose possession? That's just awful.

3) Bad back passes

Every once in a while, you'll see a video of a goalie completely missing the ball from a routine back pass that bobbled leading to an own goal and the goalie ends up looking like an idiot. It always gets me because the fault usually isn't with the goalie - the person making the back pass should be aiming it just wide of the goal to minimize the chance of that happening. The pitch can't be completely perfect and there's always a chance the ball will hit a small bump and make the keeper miss the ball.

I had two examples but I think I wrote down the wrong time so only have one to show here but this occurred several times in this match.

14 minutes in, Valencia makes a back pass in a difficult situation, perfectly okay. I drew a blue arrow along the line that Valencia should be aiming for the pass. You see De Gea is facing that way and can easily reach the ball if it's aimed along the blue line. 

Except that Valencia aims it straight for De Gea, thus, right at our own goal. What this picture doesn't show is that it was a pretty fast pass that bounced a few times. It didn't lead to anything and it rarely does but it's just a small detail to address during training that minimizes the chance of an own goal. 

4) Out swinging corners?

In this post here, point number 2, I posted that I like our in swinging corners. For some reason we decided to switch to out swinging ones. I haven't seen this with our team for the entire season so it's a new thing. It's not wrong and plenty of teams do it but I don't like them as much and I'll show you why below.

Example 1:

21st minute, Ashley Young takes a corner on the right side. Since he's right footed and he curls the ball, it has to be an out swinger. I circled the ball in red and the the blue line is the approximate ball path. You see here that the corner is bad and it's over hit since it's over everyone's head.

It misses everyone and the result is Blind (I think) ends up with the ball far away from goal and he's facing our own goal with the Sunderland player pressing him. He passes it back to Evans who passes it back to De Gea. Evans was booed for this but there was no choice because the Sunderland players were closing him down. 

Example 2:

27th minute, Ashley Young takes the corner again and this time it's better and it looks like we'll get a head on the ball. 

Unfortunately, none of our players get to it (which is okay, corners are hard to head) and once again it goes to Blind out on the far left who is once again running towards our own goal (since the ball is going towards it) with the Sunderland player pressing him. He passes it back to Evans to passes it back to De Gea and Evans gets booed again.

That's the problem with out swingers. If no one gets a head to it, it ends up going towards our own goal with the opposition players running towards it. Additionally, to defend it, the Sunderland players don't even have to head it - all they have to do is make sure none of our players get a head to it. With an in swinger, they have to head it or the goalie at least has to catch or punch it since if no one touches it, it might go into the goal. 

Example 3:

Here's an example of a successful corner where we did manage to get a head on it. Once again, it's Ashley Young taking it from the right and Smalling gets a decent header on it. But look how far away from goal he is and look at the Sunderland keeper - he's completely un-hassled with none of our players near him and he's in perfect position and stance to save the ball. It would take a lot to generate the power and then be accurate enough to beat a professional keeper from 12 yards away with a header. 

You can see in these examples that Ashley Young was a decent corner taker - one bad one and two good ones that went straight to our players but the result was one decent header that wasn't on goal and the other two ended up with the ball back to De Gea with Sunderland players rushing at it. 

5) We don't have a forward to lead the line

52 minutes in and we have a nice counter attack. Rooney has the ball and he's driving it forward. Falcao is in front of him but he's not in a good position at all. If Rooney passed it to Falcao, even if Falcao had a perfect first touch, he'd be immediately closed down by a few Sunderland players. 

Instead, Falcao should be a few yards forward, in the blue circled area so Rooney can make a through pass to him. It was the perfect occasional for a through pass - we're sprinting forward and there's plenty of room between the Sunderland back line and the keeper to run onto a pass.

Chicharito, Welbeck or Wilson would 100% have been in the blue circled area, right on the defender's shoulders and ready to pounce on a through ball.

6) 5-3-2 on defense?

This is 53 minutes in and the score is still 0 - 0 so I'm not sure why we're playing so defensively. You see our back line? It's a straight back line of 5 with Januzaj as the right wing back. The thing is, it doesn't make sense if you look at the picture because the back line of 5 is only defending against 3 forward players. And while Sunderland has three midfield players to our 3 (Herrera, Blind, Young from top to bottom).

This is the same picture and it's kind of crazy but I circled our players and drew arrows to where they should actually be, especially if we're playing a real 4-4-2. Valencia should be pushed further out right, Januzaj forward and tucked in and Herrera and Blind shifted to our left since Januzaj is now in Herrera's place. This doesn't give Sunderland any extra room in their attack and it gives us an extra person in midfield to deal with their midfielders who have the ball. It also gets Januzaj (our best dribbler an fastest attacker) closer to their goal for a counter attack if they lose possession

If we were leading the game and we wanted to sit back and counter attack, it would be okay to switch to a 5-3-2 defensively but I don't see why we're doing this a 0-0. 

7) Rojo showing desire

In point number 10 on this post, example 1, I asked why none of our players followed up on a shot to get a hopeful rebound off the keeper. 

Yesterday, I noticed that Rojo showed that desire and hunger we were missing, despite us being up 1-0 already. Blind takes a hopeful long shot and here, you see Rojo is immediately on the keeper hoping to poke it in if he spills it. Well done.

Thanks for reading everyone! I wish hope to see LVG address some of these issues :)

Swansea - Manchester United

I thought the performance was promising especially in the first half. I feel like under different circumstances, this is where we should have been several months ago - promising performances but bad result. At least Rooney is back up front!

1) McNair had trouble with Gomis on corners

Example 1: This is 4 minutes in. I labeled McNair and Gomis - it's clear that LVG has him marking Gomis. I also put an "F" above Fellaini to show that LVG has Fellaini standing in the middle to clear out anything that comes there.

 A few seconds later, you see Gomis beat's McNair in this near post header.

Example 2: This is 10 minutes in and in this close up here, you clearly see McNair is marking Gomis.

And in the next instance here, you see Gomis gets away from Mcnair with another free header. Fortunately, Gomis managed to miss the header but that's pretty poor man marking from McNair.

This may be hindsight but I'm not sure putting McNair on Gomis was a good idea. Gomis is a huge and athletic striker while McNair is only 19. I think having Fellaini or Blind man mark him would have better a better choice. In this second example, the Gomis header was off a second ball which drew Fellaini away from the center, hence why Fellaini wasn't in the center to defend here.

2) Herrera's movement

Here's my odd one where I offer praise as opposed to critique. Herrera's movement is his best quality and he always makes runs to give our players extra options on the ball. Blind is good at this too but you don't see this from Rooney when he plays in midfield. Here's just one example:

11 minutes in, Herrera has the ball and he passes it to McNair which is running forward.

McNair dribbles it forward a little and is well defended and fortunately, Herrera ran behind him and all he has to do to keep possession is a simple back pass instead of forcing a bad cross. I drew the red arrow to indicate the position that Herrera ran from.

Herrera looks inside (you can see in the above picture that he's already facing inside) and passes it back to Blind. In the picture below, you see that Herrera is sprinting towards the center to offer Blind an option. In this case, Herrera is well marked so Blind passes it elsewhere but Herrera's movement forces the Swansea player to follow him rather than press Blind, thus giving him time on the ball to pass.

3) No option for Di Maria

This one bugged me when I was watching it live. 32 minutes in and we're counter attacking with Di Maria dribbling down the left wing - pretty much the ideal situation. Except now look at the picture below - Di Maria has absolutely no options to cross to right now. He has just the perfect space for a cross and since he's left footed, he can do a first time cross. He also is too wide to cut in (plus he's too left footed for that) so a cross right now would have been perfect. 

Rooney is marked by two Swansea defenders, RVP is behind ADM and Fellaini is right next to a Swansea player. One of our players should have been in the blue circled area - the gap behind the two center backs and the full back area. Watching it live, I felt Rooney should have ran there RVP and Fellaini couldn't possibly get there in there (they were sprinting full out, can't magically make them faster). If Rooney was in the blue area, it's either a simple return pass to Di Maria to cross it in or a backheel to RVP or a turn a shoot - a lot of different options.

4) No one followed Shelvey

61 minutes in and RVP loses the ball in midfield to Shelvey. 

Shelvey passes it back, runs forward and no one tracks his run. Valencia for no reason decides to rush forward to press the Swansea player that Shelvey passed it back to even though he's miles away and from there, it's just a simple pass to get it forward to Shelvey who is in plenty of space. Now Jones is forced out wide to cover for Valencia's mistake and we're one defender down in the middle. 

You could put the blame on Blind for not covering Valencia as that is somewhat is job as the deep defensive midfielder but this was a really fast situation and there's no way Blind could have predicted that Valencia would randomly rush forward. RVP could have tracked Shelvey all the way back as he did lose the ball but that's not a striker's job. I felt this was entirely a Valencia mistake.

5) Fellaini should be standing at near post not far post for crosses

We saw Fabianski catching and punch a lot of our crosses in the game today and this is why. The picture below is 33 minutes in, Di Maria is about to cross the ball. Di Maria is left footed and the solid blue arrow shows the line the ball has to take for it to get to Fellaini. Fabianski can easily intercept the cross there unless it's floated absolutely perfectly.

If the person crossing the ball was right footed (ie Ashley Young), then standing far post is fine because the ball takes the dotted line and it avoids the keeper. 

Here's one at 35 minutes. Once again, Di Maria crossing to Fellaini who is at far post again. Neither of these two crosses were successful.

Here's one at 68 minutes with Valencia crossing to Fellaini who is far post again. This one is actually successful but that's because Valencia doesn't curl the ball when he crosses it - he hits it dead on with no curve so it takes a straight line to Fellaini instead of going closer to the keeper first. 

This is clearly a positioning thing that LVG worked on in training since Fellaini is far post every time. The idea is that Fellaini is at least 6 inches taller than Swansea's full backs so by standing far post, he can dominate the fullback in an aerial challenge. It's a valid tactic that works but it didn't work today - it might work against a keeper who is less aggressive coming out to get crosses but that's what scouting is for. Additionally, I felt that LVG should have had Fellaini at least mix up his positioning a little to make our crossing less one dimensional - he could can switched between near post flick on's and far post knock downs instead of sticking to one only. 

6) Di Mari's laziness

I actually missed the second Swansea goal live because I was jotting this down and unfortunately, we were punished for this.

72 minutes in, we lose the ball in the middle. I circled Di Maria in blue and our other midfielders in black (Fellaini, Blind, Herrera). We're playing a diamond (more or less) and Di Maria should be running back along the red arrow to maintain our shape and defensive formation. Our other midfielders are more or less in the right positions (Blind and Herrera switched). This is picture just shows how completely lopsided Di Maria made us.

You see a few moments later the Swansea player has taken it further forward and Di Maria is still lagging behind. Due to him lagging behind and not covering the right side, our three other midfielders have to shift further right to cover for Di Maria. That leaves Shelvey (circled in red) free on our left.

 And then this happened and we lost the match.

Unfortunately, stuff like this is the reason why LVG plays Rooney in the midfield and kept Di Maria further up. As much as I hate Rooney in the midfield, Rooney would never have let this happen if he was in Di Maria's position.

Conclusion

Ok, lets hope we build on this loss and get a win against Sunderland next week. I hope that despite our defensive frailties, we keep this formation and we keep Rooney up front next week. We should use this loss to learn how to improve our defensive shape rather than just playing really defensively. 

Preston - Manchester United

Sorry, no analysis for this game, was at work. Stay tuned for our game against Swansea this Saturday!

Manchester United - Burnley

I thought our performance was quite bad but at least we won. I initially was going to write a point about Falcao's bad hold up play and him losing the ball in easy positions but it ended up happening so many times that I decided there's no need to show pictures of him losing the ball as anyone can see that. Looking at my game notes, I marked down that he lose the ball 5 times in positions where he should have retained it.

Also, Rooney seems to be regressing as a midfielder and he's almost taking his sideways passing to an extreme. I'll try to avoid referring to him too much as I feel it would just be repetitive because every week that he plays in center mid, he fails to perform adequately. 

1) Falcao's predatory instincts are lacking

This is seven minutes in and Januzaj makes a great right down the right side - you see three Burnley plays defending him. At about this point, I looked at Falcao and I was just screaming for him to run forward. Once he sees Januzaj dribbling in that position, he should already by in the blue circled area and not lagging behind - there is no way Januzaj is going to be able to get the ball to him in his current position. If he was in the blue circled area, all Januzaj has to do is fizz a low cross right behind the defenders for Falcao to pounce on.

End result: that is exactly what happens and Falcao is about 2-3 yards from the ball.  

It's been established by LVG that Falcao plays as the most forward striker with RVP floating around behind him and Falcao needs to start playing off the defender's backs so he can finish chances like these. Wilson or Hernandez would 100% have been in the blue circled area. 

2) Wrong choice of passing

19 minutes in here, Rooney has the ball in center mid with plenty of time and space. This is a counter attack and we have quite a few players making runs and as you see, the Burnley defenders are out of position. There's only one Burnley player defending against Di Maria and Falcao (with the other closest one a few yards back). 

A pass over the top along the blue dotted line to Falcao and Falcao would be through on goal one on one with the keeper but Rooney instead passes it over the top to Di Maria who is out wide. That means instead of Falcao being one on one with the keeper immediately, now Di Maria has to either dribble it closer or cross, which is one more step and thus slower than if the ball was passed to Falcao.

Also, you'll notice here that this time Falcao is playing on the defender's back so give him credit for that at least.

3) Bad throw ins

LVG likes to play a high possession game so why don't they just spend five minutes working on throwing the ball and tactics associated with that so we don't lose the ball on the simple throw in? I've already talked about Valencia not even knowing how to throw the ball in point number 5 here. In these couple examples, Rojo does do a legal throw but loses possession by making a bad choice.

Example 1: 20 minutes in, Rojo throwing the ball in here. It get's intercepted by the Burnley player closest to him and we lose possession. 

Example 2: 35 minutes in, Rojo again. The blue lines indicate the direction that the Burnley players are moving and I circled the best option for him to throw to in red since there's no Burnley players heading towards him at all. This is also in our own half so not losing possession here is key. Rojo ends up throwing it to Blind (next to the ref) and you can see in the second picture what position it put Blind in. We end up losing the ball a little after this.

3) Standing still ball watching

Example 1:

This is 45 minutes into the first half and we're counter attacking with Januzaj making another nice run down the right. RVP is close to him but Januzaj just got the ball - so far so good.

In the below one, you see where they end up now - RVP's position is okay for now because if he had run forward, he would get in Januzaj's way so he is right to stay back a little.

Except now, in the third picture, Januzaj has dribbled it further down the wing and he's now tightly marked by two defenders. RVP has barely moved - you can see in his body position that's he's basically jogging. The blue lines I drew are the two possible locations I think RVP should be running towards. The top line would be for Januzaj to make a short cross for him to run onto and the bottom blue line would be to help Januzaj so Januzaj can get out of trouble by making a short pass back to RVP. RVP has done neither and Januzaj doesn't really have any options.

If a player is being marked by two opposition players, it means that someone on our team is free and we have to be taking advantage of that. Also, if you notice again in the top left, Falcao isn't far up enough - he's not playing on the defender's backs and there's no way Januzaj can get the ball to him in his current position. Poor Januzaj, all that good work and no support.

Example 2:

60th minute, Rooney sells Rojo a little short with an awkward backpass the Burnley player is very close to defending. You see in the picture here that the ball is almost to Rojo already - by this time Rooney knows his pass was bad. Any player more or less immediately knows if they made a bad pass and Rooney should have ran down the red line area to give Rojo an easy pass because he already knows Rojo will be in a difficult situation. Instead, he stays completely, standing next to the Burnley player and Rojo can't even pass it back to him safely. 

Example 3:

This is 88 minutes in and we're winning 3-1. Evans (top right) had just passed the ball the Rojo and there is a Burnley player who is closing down on him. The blue circled areas are the areas I think our players (Rooney top left, Evans top right) should have run to in order to give Rojo quick passing options to get him out of trouble. Instead, both Rooney and Evans just stayed where they were and the only option Rojo had was a speculative long ball up to our striker. We're winning 3-1 at this point, there is no reason we should be pinging long balls up instead of playing short easy passes to keep possession.

4) Where are our strikers?

This is 49 minutes, second half. We just defended a corner and Januzaj once again made a new dribble down the right wing. So where is everyone? There's only Di Maria in the center but where are our strikers?

This is partly what LVG is saying when he says that Wilson provides the pace as a striker - RVP and Falcao are way behind in this instance and it's only Di Maria who can get that the field quickly enough. However, I really don't think this case, it's RVP and Falcao being too slow, I think it's them just not busting a gut to get forward after the corner. They're slow but there was more than enough time for them to get there (there were two other passes before Januzaj even got the ball).

Also, you might remember that I talked about Falcao and RVP being on the post while defending corners here. That does mean they start farther back but it also means they don't even have to move around to defend and all they have to do afterwards is run forward.

5) No options on freekick

53 minutes in, we're leading 2 to 1 and we get a nice freekick just beyond the center line in Burnley's half. I circled the two players that our freekick taker has options to pass to and drew a blue line to the three players that weren't available. You see here that actually the entire Burnley outfield players (can count all 10) is in this picture so why is the rest of our team hanging so far back out of the picture? There's nothing to defend. 

I really have no explanation for this. I don't understand why we wouldn't push up and have one of our defenders take this freekick so the rest of the team can go forward to put pressure on Burnley.

6) The importance of Blind and/or Carrick

71st minute in and Burnley are making a counter attack. The blue dotted line is where you would expect the Burnley player to pass it since the Burnley striker is running into that pass. Rooney is about a yard off of that line - he should be in the red circled area. 

This might seem a little harsh and obviously Rooney only played there due to Blind and Carrick being injured but when Blind or Carrick are playing, they don't make small positioning mistakes like this (especially Carrick, he's the master of these type of interceptions). It's not necessarily noticeable because if Rooney had been standing in the red circled area, the Burnley player wouldn't have been able to pass it forward and the counter attack would have been immediately stopped because he would need to make a back or side pass instead. 

Conclusion

Thanks for all of the good feedback and nice comments everyone!