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 :)