Liverpool - Manchester United

Great result and great entertainment today, couldn't have asked for a better way to see Gerrard out in his last game against us. Fellaini once again dominating in the air and I'm glad to see LVG has found a formation that fits him. I do hope to see Januzaj get some playing time in soon, I thought he's been our best attacking winger.

Most of my notes are from the first half - I felt the second half was a little disrupted and sloppy. We were up 1-0 for the first part of the second half and up a man and I think we played very cautiously and sat back so our performance wasn't quite as good as in the first half.

I gotta say, I think Brendan Rogers is a really good manager and Liverpool are very fortunate to have him. He's shown that he can learn and adapt, his teams have a nice style and his man management seems decent.

1) LVG's style?

This isn't really a critique, more just pointing out that a period of play that I felt is pretty much the representation of LVG's style (or at least what he's shown at United so far).

Starting at 9:26, we have possession of the ball on the left (I think it's Phil Jones).

He makes a cross field pass to Valencia (after looking around to consider his options, that's why it took so long). Notice the time, 9:34.

Now it's 9:52, 26 seconds after we initially gain possession and after a series of passes, the ball just goes back to Phil Jones on the left again. We basically kept cycling the back along our back line while Liverpool players pressed our players.

Now it's 10:14 and the ball finally makes it to Herrera in the midfield, advancing into Liverpool's half. That's a full 48 seconds of passing it back and forth between our defenders (not entirely true as some of our midfield players did participate in the play but they played back passes straight back to our defenders)

In the previous picture (above), you see Herrera is being pressed quite aggressively and he ends up passing it back. At 10:40 (below), 26 seconds after Herrera has the ball above, Phil Jones now has the ball and he's basically at the same location Herrera was. The difference is, with all of our passing, we've managed to shift our defenders and deeper players forward - hence Jones has the ball and Blind is to his left and Carrick to his right. 

Basically, we spent close to 30 second and probably around 10-15 passes to keep possession while moving our attacking players forward step by step (or pass by pass).

End result, Herrera gets the ball and he chips a short cross to Fellaini who heads it across goal for Mata to run onto. Nothing happened but it was a good chance.

I counted the number of passes it took during this entire sequence - 32. 32 passes to cross the ball to Fellaini for him to get a head on it. 

Again, I'm not criticizing this as I think it's actually a very good tactic especially in the early stages of the game. It allows our players to get on the ball, it keeps us relatively safe, and it forces the opposition to chase after our passes, tiring them out. Our players handled Liverpool's aggressive pressing here perfectly. If we were losing and it's the 80th minute, it would probably only take about 2 passes to get the ball to Fellaini's head and thus the same result.

2) Blind ignoring the midfielder as a left back

This is definitely something LVG needs to go over with Blind if Blind is going to play (or deputize) there. I'm sure you remember how Blind completely destroyed Emre Can today but with all the time and space he created after destroying him, Blind should have done much better.

He chose to cross the ball (I think aiming at Fellaini) but it hit the first Liverpool player and didn't get to him). He could have easily just dragged it back to Herrera (circled in red) who is completely open while the other three United players in the box are well marked.

The exact same thing happened last week, I mentioned it in this post, point number 1.

This is something that's easily practiced in training - add the drag back to midfield as part of the crossing that's practiced during crossing drills.

3) More Valencia mistakes

Example 1:

Liverpool just got possession of the ball and they're dribbling down our left. Valencia is just completely out of position here. The Liverpool player he's "marking" is Sturridge and although Valencia is fast, he can't be giving a pacy player like Sturridge this kind of start on him if a cross comes in. He should be in the blue circled area. 

The Liverpool player does cross it and Sturridge beats him to it by a mile. Also, I'm not sure why Valencia is so central and didn't at least try to get closer to Sturridge. If he was in the blue circled area and he ran at the exact same speed, he would be exactly where the ball is right now.

Example 2:

Valencia here is defending against Coutinho in our right corner area. Notice how close he is to Coutinho. What you also don't see here is that Valencia sprinted into this position and depending on the referee, Coutinho probably could have just fell down and gotten a foul called as there was a slight shove from Valencia.

End result, Coutinho almost get's past Valencia. He does a back flick and tries to spin past Valencia but is unable to. However, the ball does go behind Valencia and as a defender, you never want the other player to get the ball behind you in a dangerous area.

Fortunately for me, 30 seconds earlier, Carrick was in the exact same position defending against Lallana and he shows a much better way to defend there. He stands just slightly farther away from Lallana which gives him time to react if Lallana tries any tricks or tries to spin past him. It also ensures that a Lallana can't go down to the slightest touch since it's obvious Carrick isn't close enough to shove him over.

End result, Carrick forces him into the corner where he rockets it off Mata (leg seen in bottom right of picture) for a throw in. Technically, the result is even worse than with Valencia above since we still don't have possession here while Valencia ended up getting possession. However, in Valencia's case, the ball goes closer to the goal while in Carrick's case, it goes farther. It's just a much smarter way to defend.

4) Why is Falcao so far back?

I'm not sure who's at fault here but I suspect it's more Di Maria's fault than Falcao. I think that Di Maria got lazy and stayed forward and Falcao ran back to the receive the ball and fill the space that Di Maria was supposed to be in. They shouldn't be in the position that the picture below shows - it should be the opposite with Falcao up and Di Maria receiving the ball deep on the left. I also don't think LVG intended for this to happen as well.

Conclusion

Let's keep winning and nab second place from Man City. Thanks for reading!

Manchester United - Tottenham

Great game yesterday, best I've seen us play this season!  I really liked the players we played with and how we used them - I felt we had a good mix of skill and physicality and everyone had great movement and interchanging of positions. The first half was so good and so entertaining that I barely had any gripes to jot down :)

1) The effect of playing with a tall man

You guys can tell I think very highly of Fellaini but sometimes, playing with a tall player like him can alter the decision making of teammates. With someone like him in your team, it pretty much becomes automatic to just look for him whenever you're crossing or taking a corner. 

You see here below, Blind has the ball on the left. I circled the three possible options he had (left out Rooney because I felt he's a little too well marked). I think Herrera would have easily been the best option - he has a yard of space and the pass to him is an easy straightforward short pass. 

Instead, Blind crosses it to Fellaini. Fellaini is marked by three players in this instance while Mata and Herrera only have one player on them and it's the same player. Fellaini is absolutely dominant in the air but to go for him far post with a long cross when there's two better options available doesn't make sense.

Result doesn't really matter here but one of the Tottenham players marking Fellaini (Danny Rose) intercepted the cross.

Another thing I wanted to point out is that Blind is left footed (although decent with his right) so Herrera is an even better option since it's much easier to just make a short pass with his right than having to loft a cross in to Fellaini with his off foot. 

2) Defensive issues - overcrowding

We kept a clean sheet and we looked pretty solid in defense with Smalling playing quite well and being a decent threat dribbling it out of defense. However, there's still some issues with our defensive coordination as a team.

Example 1:

Tottenham has the ball and they're attacking here. Why are all four of our players bunched up in such a close position when the Tottenham players are more spread out and there's no one for them to mark?

I think this is a mistake by Smalling and he's too aggressive here. He's the one I marked with a red star. Here, he actually sprints forward from defense to close the Tottenham players down but why does he need to do that when there's already three other United players there ready to close them down? It exposes our back line and now Valencia has to move centrally to cover for him.

Additionally, I circled Blind who I also felt was too aggressive and made a mistake in pressing/closing down. He's pretty darn far from the the Tottenham player who is about to receive the ball here but he chooses to sprint and try to intercept the ball.

As you see below, he's a fraction too late and Dembele turns into tons of space. Now Jones, who I circled in blue, has to cover for Blind and leave the Tottenham player he was marking (and Valencia isn't in a good position to cover for that player if there's a through ball). 

Instead of going for the interception, all Blind had to do was check his run forward and Dembele would have turned and immediately been met by Blind defending him. 

In the picture above, you can see that we have a lot of players defending but all of them are behind the ball and out of position.

Example 2:

79th minute here, they're battling for the ball in the middle. You see there's three United players close to the ball and three Tottenham players, that's perfectly well matched, no new to get another player to help defend especially since we're at the center circle.

You see Fellaini here starts running towards the ball the help. Rooney also starts to come as well.

The problem with that is that it pulls them out of position and leaves their man free. The ball gets to the Spurs player who drives it forward along the black arrow - the place that Fellaini vacated to needlessly help. 

We've been struggling with this for a while - for some reason our players like to "over help" when there's a someone trying to dribble around. They need to trust their teammates and maybe working on some one on one defending rather than relying on pure numbers and crowding to deal with a dribbler. Otherwise, it leaves massive gaps in other places of the field for the opposition to exploit (for example, Nacho Monreal's goal against us from the Oxlade-Chamberlain dribble, see point #2 in this post).

3) Van Gaal still likes to sneak in the back 5 formation

We sat back and pressed a little less during the second half. That's perfectly fine since we're up 3-0 and it's less demanding physically and may avoid injuries. However, I still think we were too defensive and LVG continues to switch to a 5 at the back formation when we need to defend a lead and I think it's confusing for our players and we never look too solid playing 5 at the back. I already mentioned it in our game against Sunderland (the 6th point). 

I circled the 5 in blue, the 4 midfielders in red and Rooney in black. It's a clear 5-4-1 formation and you can see Ashley Young in the bottom right of the picture shifting to left back. The weird thing is, Young isn't even marking anyone - there's no Tottenham player close to him

4) Smalling's missed header

Smalling had and has been playing really well but I still noticed some errors that puts him a level or two beyond top center backs like Ferdinand and Vidic. Below, he's trying to head the ball away from a long goal kick and he completely misjudges the flight of the ball. The ball goes above his head - he completely missed it here but he had plenty of time and wasn't under a lot of pressure (for a defensive header).

It wasn't a big deal since Jones had him covered but you never saw Ferdinand or Vidic misjudge the flight of the ball so badly that they completely missed it. It didn't look like it was a windy day so it should have been a relatively straight forward defensive header.

5) Sloppy back line

This occurs just after we defend a corner and Harry Kane has the ball. There's a few seconds as Harry Kane dribbles it a little before he crosses.

Look at our defensive line - it's a sloppy diagonal mess. If our entire team lined up perfectly just on the edge of the penalty area (and we had time to do that), Adebayor would have been offside. Instead, our weird diagonal line played him onside. The Tottenham players are also farther back - it's not like they're on our shoulders so there's no reason not to push the line up and make it straight.

Conclusion

Well, I got the short entry I was hoping for, barely had anything to write down in the first half :) I try to avoid writing about the good things we do since this is a critical blog. Thanks for reading!

Manchester United - Arsenal

Sorry I was late with updating this, but better late than never! Great game in terms of entertainment but just not great result.

1) The details of having an actual full back

On the first point of my last post against Sunderland, I mentioned that we kept losing possession due to bad throw ins towards the middle. The three examples I gave in that post were throw ins by Rojo, Valencia, and Smalling. Notice something? None of them are actual full backs and full backs are actually trained to throw the ball since it's more or less their duty.

20 minutes in, I notice that Shaw has a throw in. You see that he has an okay option if he wants to throw it to Herrera centrally but throwing the ball centrally in your own half is almost never a good idea (unless there's absolutely no one around)! 

Instead, he throws it hard down the line and you know what? We lost possession, but it was to their defenders and they still had plenty of work to do to get the ball within attacking range of our goal.

2) Who's to blame for the first goal against us?

It's pretty crazy how many our of players screwed up to lead to the first goal against us and there's a lot of our players who could have done better but I think Valencia is the main culprit with Di Maria as the more obvious scapegoat.

The goal happened at exactly 25:00 and here's 30 seconds before during Arsenal's build up. I circled Valencia who is doing doing a high press on the Arsenal player which is fine, he's still in position. 

Except now, 6 seconds later, he's still following the Arsenal player and follows him right into central midfield. Aggressive high pressing is fine, but don't let the other team drag you out of position. If you look at the picture above, you see we have numbers in central mid with Fellaini, Blind and Herrera all their. Valencia should have backed off once the Arsenal player started heading centrally with one of the central midfielders to cover.

If you look at our defensive line here, due to Valencia being out of position, we have a back three with Blind covering for them but we were playing a back four. No disciplined defense would let a simple dribble into midfield trick them into losing shape like this.   

Now here's the results of Valencia being out of position. I circled him and you see him jogging back into his right back position which Smalling is covering currently.

Two seconds later, Valencia makes his mistake even worse. The ball is played out wide and since Smalling was covering for Valencia, he has to go wide to mark the Arsenal player. Valencia for some reason is still jogging into our right back territory but he should have turned around to cover the gap that Smalling left (to cover for Valencia in the first place). He should have ran along the blue arrowed line to since at this moment, Smalling is right back and we need someone covering center back. 

Now Ozil spreads the ball out wide to the Ox on our left and in the picture below, the Ox manages to split both Shaw and Blind (the blue starred players) by dribbling it down the red arrow. Both Shaw and Blind dived in but they didn't need to. All one of them had to do was follow the Ox - he wasn't doing to shoot from that position so there was no need for a last ditch tackle. It's not a huge mistake but I think if Carrick was in Blind's position, he would have done better.  

Lastly, the obvious mistake leading to the actual goal is Di Maria just hanging out with Nacho waiting to pounce. I drew a red dotted line along our defensive line - you see that on the left, Ashley Young is aligned with our defensive line while Di Maria is a few yards ahead of it. I also think Smalling is a little out of position here - he should have been one yard further back since Rojo was about a yard further back so he was playing the Arsenal player onside anyways.

I don't think the goal would have happened if Valencia wasn't so crazy out of position in the first place but our entire team should have responded better. 

3) I think Fellani is really good and helps keep possession even in very tight spaces

He gets a bad reputation for being big and clumsy and being the guy who just lump the ball to but I see over and over his ability to keep the ball even though he's being pressured in a small space. His chest control really is something amazing but it's also what he does with passing after that's great.

Example 1:

I circled the ball in red - it's from a throw in from Shaw. Look at how closely he's marked and how high the ball is in the air. Two Arsenal players about 5 feet from him and the ball hasn't even reached him yet. He manages to take it on his chest and pass it back to Shaw, keeping possession. 

Example 2:

Just look at this - it's a long diagonal cross from the right, Fellaini closely marked by two players and result again is, he manages to keep possession. He's not even in the good position right now to receive the ball since it's actually curling away from him. He manages to get a perfect chest cushion into his feet, I have no idea how. It's one of those things I can't even fantasize and pretend I can do.

Example 3:

Another ridiculous one where he's being marked tightly and receiving a really long cross from out left from Ashley Young. You see there's two other Arsenal players getting ready to close him down as well. Again, he manages to cushion it perfectly and get it back to Carrick, If he cushioned it slightly too far left, right, or backwards, the Arsenal players who have gotten to it.

Example 4:

This was off a long goal kick from De Gea. 

You see between the above picture and the below picture that Fellaini didn't have to move at all. As soon as the ball was in the air, he knew exactly where to stand so he could take it on his chest. That's something Ferdinand was really good at - he never had to jump because he just stood exactly where the ball would land on his head (versus Vidic who would do these amazing leaps and basically fly over every one else to get to the ball). 

And you see in the picture below Fellaini takes it perfectly on his chest too with the Arsenal player hassling him. Again, keeps possession and continues the attack.

I think Fellaini deserves a lot more appreciation for his touch. People go crazy over Berbatov and his touch but no one seems to appreciate Fellaini taking a ball on his best from a 50 yard pass and it bounces like two inches off his chest even though there's someone jostling with him for the ball. 

3) Di Maria makes some awful decisions even attacking wise

He's honestly been quite disappointing so far, only a few good games. If we wanted an inconsistent player who can be amazing on his day but often makes bad decisions, we could have just retained Nani this season. 

Below, Di Maria has the ball on the right with some decent space and time - that's one of the best positions a left footed dribbler can receive the ball in. Right now, he can either cut in and keep dribbling with his left like Messi and Robben love to do, or just skin the Arsenal player but knocking it diagonally down the line and towards goal. There's so much space for him to do that too and he's relatively pacey. He can also pass it to Herrera who is open.

Instead, he reverses it back to an overlapping Valencia but much to early for him and Valencia isn't even remotely going to be able to reach the ball. 

I was talking about Valencia being out of position earlier but now, Valencia is going to be completely caught out and it's not his fault. The overlapping run was necessary but you can't lose the ball as a right winger when your right back just sprinted forward thirty yards to overlap. There's no way Valencia can get back into position and Di Maria isn't exactly in a good position to cover for him either.

This kind of stuff never happened with Beckham and Neville. It doesn't even happen to Shaw and Young - Di Maria is completely at fault here and not only did he waste a good attacking opportunity, he gave Arsenal a perfect counter attacking opportunity since Valencia is now out of position. 

4) More Valencia mistakes

I like Valencia as a hard working squad member, but we really need a proper full back, not a super athlete who just goes charging around every where with no thought process.

Example 1:

There's some mistakes made in midfield that leads to Valencia having to mark two Arsenal players here. The red arrow is to show the direction the ball is moving towards. There's two choices Valencia can make here: 1) jump forward and try to intercept the ball with a header 2) Back off slightly so he can be prepared to defend against either Arsenal player. 

He picks the first choice which is a complete gamble. If he does get the ball, it's great. But if he misses it (and he had the positional disadvantage to get the ball here, not even 50/50 chance), then he's jumped forward and the two Arsenal players he was marking are both completely unmarked and one of them has the ball.

End result - he misses it and Rojo now has to cover the entire right side against two on rushing Arsenal players.  

There was absolutely no need for Valencia to leap forward like that. Maybe if he was a slow defender like Mertesacker, then it may make sense since backing off means the Arsenal player will just blow by him in a dribble. Valencia is easily one of the fastest and strongest players on the pitch and since they're at the half way line, there's plenty of space and time for him to defend a dribbler. 

Example 2:

This is the back pass mistake that led to Arsenal's second goal. The execution of the back pass was obviously bad but I think it could have been avoided if Valencia learned him to aim his back passes. In my last post, I had already mentioned that Valencia needs to be aiming away from goal when he makes a back pass so that if it bounces over De Gea's foot, it won't lead to a goal.

Here, you see the ball is in the air when Valencia makes the pass - he has to volley it. He aims it right at De Gea in the center of the goal which means he needs to weight the pass perfectly. If he aimed it just right of our goal, he has a lot more room to make a mistake - he can hit it much harder and doesn't have to perfectly weight it since if he messes up the pass, the worst that could happen is a corner. 

Making a volleyed back pass is very difficult to execute and he shouldn't really be faulted for messing up the pass but rather be faulted for not knowing how to make a safe back pass in the first place. It's all in the training and preparation.

Example 3:

This is a very simple and unnecessary attacking mistake. We're attacking on the right side and Valencia is chasing a long ball down the right. The Arsenal defender has positional advantage and Valencia can't get in front of him. His best choice here is to keep up the pressure, stay close to the Arsenal player. The Arsenal player is already sprinting back towards his own goal with a bouncing ball - the only thing he can really do is put it out for either a corner or a throw in. 

Instead, Valencia swipes for the ball blindly through the Arsenal player's legs and a foul is called. We could have had a throw in or corner in a dangerous area here. 

Example 4:

Here's one that shows his flaws even as a one on one defender. The ball here is coming from a long cross from our left side. It's going over Sanchez's head and Sanchez is running away from goal. Valencia is more or less perfectly positioned here and there's no way Arsenal should be creating anything from this. Sanchez is really good but he is very disadvantaged here.

Valencia manages to allow Sanchez to take down the ball, turn around and face goal and start dribbling. And then worst of all, he makes yet another dumb foul and Arsenal get a free kick on the edge of the penalty area. 

Example 5:

The thing with Valencia is that he's a great athlete but he has no understanding of the game. He's always half a second behind the play so he has to use his athleticism to react - basically the opposite of Paul Scholes or Carrick who aren't fast but don't need to be because they can sense what's going to happen already. Here's a good sequence that shows this.

Arsenal player dribbling down our right side and Valencia was coming from centrally so he's running out wide to get into position. So far it's okay, but if the defender cuts back in, with Valencia's body facing completely out wide, there's no way he can turn in time to continue marking the Arsenal player.

One second later, they're further to our right. I think Valencia should be standing in the blue circled area instead to force the Arsenal player down the line. The Arsenal player is right footed so cutting in is the preferable choice and he's going to be very uncomfortable going down the line with his left with very little chance of crossing it well. 

The Arsenal player likely senses that Valencia is slightly out of position. Instead of cutting it, the Arsenal player passes it forward and the forward Arsenal player plays it back to him. The blue arrows indicate this. Now Valencia is out of position and he's behind the Arsenal player who will receive the ball in a great position. 

End result is De Gea ends up making an amazing save to keep us in the match. 

5) No options for Blind

This was in the 53rd minute after Carrick came on for Herrera. Herrera has some of the best movement I've seen and he's always running around to give options to the player with the ball. Blind has the ball below and Carrick is the player circled in blue. If it was Herrera, Herrera would have ran to the red circled area so Blind can make a forward pass so him to create something. Instead, the only options Blind has here is a sideways pass - this is way we can look so impotent when we attack sometimes.

I think in this case if Carrick was in the Blind's place and Blind was in Carrick's place, Blind would have been in the red circled area too. Carrick, especially now that he's older, is probably the better deep lying play maker while Blind offers better movement so it just makes sense to switch their places. 

Conclusion

Thanks for reading! Lets hope we get a good result this weekend!