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.
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!
Thank you for another highly enjoyable article!
ReplyDeleteWhat is your general opinion of Carrick? Would you prefer him over Blind if everyone is fit?
Thanks for reading! I don't really have a strong opinion on Carrick vs Blind because overall, they're more or less at the same level currently. I think Carrick has better long passing and interceptions but Blind offers more mobility and movement. Otherwise, they're close enough where I'm fine with either of them starting over the other.
DeleteThanks for work
ReplyDelete