Everton - Manchester United

Terrible result but I don't think we really played all that badly. We just made some crucial mistakes and De Gea wasn't able to miraculously save us this time. Playing Everton at home was always a tough fixture and Martinez managed to exploit our weaknesses that we've had all season.

1) Are we trying to play it more centrally?

I obviously can't find examples but to me, I felt like the first half, we tried to play it through the middle and after half time, it looked like LVG instructed our players to play it out on the wings to our fullbacks more.

Example 1:

Here's Mata trying to make a through pass for Rooney except Rooney runs out wide instead. This screenshot is maybe half a second late since it shows Rooney already running but it's sufficient to show the breakdown in chemistry here. Mata expects Rooney to run more centrally since he's the main/sole striker and he's also someone who likes to make assists. By making the pass along the red arrow, if Rooney had run towards goal instead, if might have lead to a goal. However, Rooney runs wide to receive the ball which means that even if Mata had passed it wide to him, there are extra steps to creating the goal.

With Herrera and Mata, they both seem a little more direct and centrally oriented than Rooney. 

Example 2:

Here, Blind has the ball and he tries to force a pass centrally along the red arrow to Herrera. You can see it's a pretty tight pass and relatively high risk - it actually ended up being intercepted. If he did manage to get to Herrera, then Herrera is in a great position to do something.

Both the examples I made were actually bad passes by Mata and Blind, respectively. The point is that I could see them attempting the central/direct passes and it was a little more central/direct that I've seen us play. I'm not sure if it was because we were down by 1 already and attempting to create more, or if this was LVG's game plan from the start. I just know that in the second half we didn't attempt passes like these.

2) Valencia was at fault for all 3 goals

Unfortunately I have to mention him again since his mistakes influenced our game so much. He definitely wasn't the only person at fault but he made crucial mistakes in all three goals.

Goal 1:

Everton's first goal came as a result a counterattack off our corner, which means our central backs were pushed up front, with our full backs covering, which is a pretty standard set up. The ball goes high up in the air and Valencia is about to get a defensive header on it. You see he's in front of Lukaku and in a good position to head it (I know, it's hard to tell from one picture only). All he has to go here is head the ball as hard as he can towards Fellaini and the counter attack danger is diverted.

Instead, he makes a complete hash of the header, just look. It actually hits his right shoulder and he ends up in the position below and then you already know what happened. It wasn't a hard defensive header at all.

There were mistakes from Blind, Herrera, others late on and Everton got a pretty lucky bounce but if Valencia had just made this one easy header, the entire danger would have been cut out.

Goal 2:

This one was probably the most understandable mistake and honestly, it was a ridiculous header. Scoring from that kind of position off a corner is pretty darn hard.

Valencia is marking John Stones. You can see here that he's already not tight enough on him. 

Stones didn't make any trick runs and Valencia wasn't blocked off. It was just a simple sprint from the penalty spot to near post and you see that Valencia isn't remotely close enough to even put any pressure on Stones. If he was just a little closer, it might have been enough to put Stones off and make him miss. 

It's difficult to defend a near post run since the attacker will likely get to the ball first - as a defender, you can't let him get behind you so chances are, he will get to the ball first if you keep him in front of you. Valencia's job was to just put some pressure on him or give him a small nudge to throw off his header.

One thing I question though is why Valencia is marking the opposition center back. Valencia isn't too short but full backs rarely mark center backs as in general, center backs are much better in the air and taller. Valencia clearly isn't good in the air and that's acceptable as a full back so why did LVG have him mark Stones? 

Goal 3:

Well this one is just obvious, not going to bother saying much. Valencia just doesn't have that sense of danger that a defender needs to have. 

Something to note is that all three goals scored against us were not Smalling or McNair's fault. I thought Smalling and McNair had another solid game and they look like a good defensive partnership.

3) Rooney gets frustrated and then tries to do too much

I think most of us know this already but its kind of annoying when he's the only striker on our team and we have Mata/Herrera trying to create goals for him.

This is a few minutes after we go down by 2 goals. The players are crowded around and battling for the ball. Rooney is circled in red - why is he there? He has to be further up because if our players did get the ball, they need a striker to pass it to. 

I could tell watching the game that Rooney was frustrated and he wanted to run around but if we're down by two goals, I'd want my only striker to be furthest forward so we can actually score.

4) Shouldn't flick it mid

This was just a really risky play that had me wincing and I think its a good representation of what Herrera needs to work on. He receives the ball from behind him here and it's kind of an awkward position and he ends up doing a back heel flick along the red line.

That's just a really risky attempt that could easily have led to us losing the ball and Everton counter attacking. You can see our player is well marked and it's also easy to mess up a back flick pass slightly. This is something you can attempt near the opposition penalty area when you're attempting to score but doing this in midfield is too risky.

5) Smalling pointing?

Here's just something interesting I noticed but I haven't noticed before. Smalling was pointing to the ball often while preparing for a defensive header from a high ball.

Maybe he was just shielding his eyes from the sun but he did do it a couple times and I haven't noticed him doing it before. It could be a technique to help him position himself to head the ball that he's been working on with coaching - whatever it is, it works. No analysis here, just an observation.

6) Herrera not covering well

Herrera is really great at pressing the ball but I still think he makes a lot of naive mistakes due to his aggressive pressing nature. 

Here, Everton are counter attacking. Shaw should be and is stepping up forward somewhat along the red arrow to defend the Everton player dribbling, pretty normal. Herrera is defending the Everton player running forward - I circled him and the Everton player he is defending. This is a pretty normal situation during a counter attack with an attacking full back as the midfielder is supposed to cover for the full back if the full back has just pushed forward to attack.

Instead of sticking with defending his man, Herrera darts forward to pressure the Everton player that Shaw is already defending. This forces Shaw to go out wider to intercept the potential pass forward.

End result: the Everton dribbler splits Herrera and Shaw and gets here, dangerous situation.

Herrera doubling up on the Everton dribbler just created a gap between them for him to split. Shaw didn't need any help marking him and Herrera should have stuck to his man.

7) Falcao...

Example 1: 

Falcao receives the ball. He only has one person tight to him and he's behind him. Should be a simple trap and back pass (or turn/flick past the player and shoot it in to do something amazing...).

And promptly falls to the ground losing the ball. 

Example 2:

Receives a cross and he's at the top of the penalty area. 

Oops, bad touch, ball bobbles.

Ball ends up all the way out there (top right of the picture if you can't find it).

When a top striker receives the ball in that area, something should happen, not some awkward ball bouncing that our right fullback has to end up retrieving.

Example 3:

Falcao gets a pass out wide, he's well marked but he has a good position and should be able to retain the ball and make a back pass at least.

Still doing fine here.

Oops, lost the ball. I couldn't really come up with a good series of screenshots to show this, but basically Falcao panicked and tried a really/risky pass forward that didn't work at all.

Example 4:

Receives the ball in a somewhat dangerous position with Rooney ahead of him.

A second later, bad touch/awareness, loses the ball.

I hate to be so harsh with him and any of our players but he's losing the ball in good/easy positions so often. I can't imagine that our players feel comfortable passing the ball to him if there's such a high chance of him losing it immediately.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading! We are clearly a work in progress but I think a new right back and not having Falcao playing would help quite a bit. I just want to reiterate that I don't make these points with an agenda in mind. During the game, I just jot down the time stamp when I notice something odd/wrong and then I go back and write about it here afterwards. 

Chelsea - Manchester United

It's always disappointing to lose but like LVG, I thought we played well. Just the fact that we forced Chelsea to play so defensively at Stamford Bridge shows how much we have improved as a team. It's unfortunate that Carrick and Blind weren't available as I still don't think Rooney is good in midfield and Falcao is honestly not good enough. 

I thought our entire defense played really well (including Valencia) - it definitely helps to have so much possession. Very glad to see Shaw back, he just needs to stay fit.

1) Herrera vs Rooney

Herrera definitely made a couple of bad mistakes that almost led to Chelsea goals but here, I just want to compare his mindset versus Rooney when they're playing in midfield. 

Here, Rooney receives the ball from Valencia and he's already facing forward. I circled two possible options. He can pass to Fellaini, circled in blue. Or he can dribble it a little to his left along the dotted red line and then pass it forward to Mata along the dotted red line. Neither are particularly tough.






















Instead, he immediately turns around and makes a back pass to Smalling. He didn't really do anything wrong here - he kept possession and now Smalling, who has a better view of the field (since he's further back), can pick out a pass. It's also only 6 minutes in and it can be nice to just keep the ball for the bit to settle into the game first.






















Now compare that to Herrera, circled in blue, just a few moments later (from Smalling's pass). He's not facing forward so he has to take the time to turn first (he has plenty of time here).

He turns and now he looks for options to pass to. As you can see, there aren't too many options forward. He has Fellaini to his left and Young to his far left but passing it either one of them doesn't accomplish much since they're relatively well marked. 

So he dribbles to his right a little but nothing comes up and now he turns around and makes a back pass.

Like Rooney, he also kept possession, but the difference is that he looked for forward options first, dribbled around a little to see if he could create something, and then only made a back pass when he found nothing. Rooney immediately went for the back pass even though he had options, didn't even try or think about them. 

Also keep in mind that Herrera is technically supposed to be furthest back in midfield and Rooney is supposed to be the creator in that midfield pairing. 

When I watch Rooney play in midfield, I always feel that he rarely does anything wrong and he's following LVG's instructions perfectly but doesn't put in that extra effort to excel. When I watch Herrera play, he's always asking for the ball even in tight situations and always looking to create something.

2) Smalling has improved so much

Smalling has really impressed me this season, ever since he stupidly got sent off for a rash challenge. What's impressed me the most is that he looks a lot more intelligent as a defender nowadays - I feel he's the only one of our center backs who really think about defending as opposed to relying on pure grit and determination. He's starting to remind me a little of Ferdinand.

This is one of the rare times where I point out positive stuff :)

Example 1:

Chelsea send a ball forward and Smalling (circled in blue) and Hazard are both going for it and they're both about the same distance. 

Since the ball was rolling forward towards Smalling and they were both the same distance, Smalling clearly had the advantage and he gets to the ball first. 

He circles around the ball and shields it and eventually passes it back to De Gea to keep possession for us. 

That's smart defending that I appreciate. I guarantee you if Jones was in that situation, he would have went in for a crunching tackle that would look really cool but he might get injured in the process or just give Chelsea possession.

Example 2:

Here, McNair cleared the ball straight up in the air. You can't see the ball in this picture yet but you see Smalling and a Chelsea player looking up in the sky to get it. It's somewhere above the red arrow.

It's still not visible yet (the clearance went very high). Now, you see Smalling has moved while the Chelsea player hasn't. Basically, Smalling already knows exactly where the ball will fall and he moves to that exact place so he can claim the position.

And now, you can finally see the ball (circled in red) and you see it goes straight to Smalling.

That's the kind of defensive heading anticipation that I saw from Rio Ferdinand a lot. He knew exactly where a long ball would fall to and would just stand here long before the ball gets to him so the opposition player couldn't get it without pushing him out of the way. And now I'm seeing this in Smalling as well.

There's obviously more than 2 examples of Smalling playing well but I just felt these two examples were noteworthy. 

3) Wrong choices

I've said this before but our players often end up automatically passing it to Fellaini no matter what. I understand that, Fellaini will keep possession and usually make a decent pass pretty much no matter what position he's in (that's why he's so good, see my post here, third point).

Example 1:

Here, Mata has the ball and has a ton of space. That's a pretty great position to be in against a Chelsea side that's very disciplined, especially for an attacking midfielder like Mata. I circled Falcao as he's a decent option to pass to. However, I think the best option for Mata was to just shoot. It's a little far away but the ball is already on his left foot, it's already rolling forward and he has so much space. He's scored goals like these before.

Instead, he passes it out wide to Fellaini. By the time the ball even gets to Fellaini, he's closed down by three Chelsea players and he can only pass it back to Young for Young to cross it in. But now look at how many Chelsea players are defending the possible cross compared to only Mata and Falcao running into the box.  

Example 2:

Just a few moments later, we end up getting in that same exact situation again but with Rooney!

Now Rooney is right footed and from this angle and distance, I don't think shooting would have been a good idea (like it was for Mata). But all he had to do was make a simple through pass for Falcao to run onto along the red arrow.

Instead, like Mata, he crosses it out wide to Fellaini. I circled the ball in red - look how much harder the pass was and how difficult of a situation it puts Fellaini in, compared to just a simple forward pass to Falcao.

4) I've lost hope for Falcao

I was so excited to have him on our team at the beginning of the season. Now, instead of hoping that he'll do something amazing and bang in a few goals against Chelsea, I just hold my breathe and hope that when the ball gets to Falcao, it doesn't bounce away.

Example 1:

Just look at this. The ball is played to Falcao more or less on the ground (it bobbles a little, can't tell from this picture) and he has no one around him.

Somehow, the ball hits his foot and it bounces straight up into the air. Because of that heavy touch, now the Chelsea players are closer to him and also, he can't do anything but just head the ball back to our players. 

Any decent striker who gets the ball in that position with space like that would have turned and looked to shoot or create something. Just compare this to Fellaini who cushions and traps the ball in much tighter spaces. 

Example 2:

LVG said in the post match conference that Terry fouled Falcao and that was the reason we lost the ball there. I agree, it was obviously a foul but you know what, uncalled fouls happen all the time and you have to expect it. 

Falcao either could have been stronger for the goal or he could have been smarter but he was neither. 

You see this is a little bit before Falcao/Terry reaches the ball. You can see that Terry is very tight on Falcao already, so Falcao knows he has pressure behind him. Why is Falcao leaning back and waiting for the ball to get to him? Why didn't he just run to the ball and make a simple back pass to Rooney along the blue arrow? Running to the ball and not waiting for it to come to you is a VERY basic training principle that kids learn at a very young age.

Okay, so now he waited for the ball and the ball gets to him. Sorry for the blurry picture - Terry clearly has an elbow on Falcao's head. What you should also see is that Falcao has his right foot on top of the ball. Why does he put his foot on top of the ball? That's not a stable position at all and makes him very easy to knock over. If he had both feet on the ground upon receiving the ball, he would have been much more stable and even with a foul, might have been able to remain standing or at least shield the ball better.

And you know what? If he was going to fall because Terry was fouling him, he should have fell down on top of the ball or just grabbed the ball with his hands. It's cynical but it's smart - it forces the referee to either acknowledge the foul or stop play to call a handball (and if the referee doesn't stop play, well, you're on lying on or holding onto the ball with your hands, can't lose it then). 

Fellaini did this several times during the game. It's a little shady but it stops counter attacks and the difference between someone who wants to win and someone who complains because something unfair happened.

Example 3:

Shaw throws the ball in along the dotted red line to Falcao. It's a good throw and the ball is going straight to Falcao's chest. Falcao is in a pretty stable position and the Chelsea defender behind him can't intercept it.

Except Falcao is much too weak here, he lets himself get pushed forward, he loses his position and we lose the ball. It might have been a tiny foul from the Chelsea defender (I think it's Cahill) but it wasn't much and Falcao 100% should have been able to take the ball on the chest in that position. He's not a small guy like Mata but he lets himself get absolutely bullied by defenders. 

Example 4:

I'm just sticking this one here but Falcao isn't the only one to blame here, it's partly our style of playing as well.

We're doing a goal and we get the ball from a Chelsea corner, it's a perfect counter attacking opportunity. Mata (the player with the ball here) looks up and the only person in front of him is Ashley Young (first, gotta appreciate how hard Young works). Where's Falcao? He's not even in this frame! He's still pretty much in our own penalty area when he should be already in the area that I labeled Falcao. 

If he's going to be our lone striker and we're down a goal, we have to expect him to be sprinting forward in situations like these. A few seconds later, Falcao comes into view and he's just jogging, not even trying to get forward. I understand why Rooney might have stayed back - you can't have midfielders just busting forward at every opportunity, but there's absolutely no reason why our only striker isn't the first player forward.

I didn't even bother showing his missed chances here and some other bad touches. If Wilson played like Falcao played, we would say he had a bad game and Wilson is only a youngster with no experience. 

Conclusion

I'm still very pleased at the way we played. I really hope Blind/Carrick comes back so we have put Rooney up front again - solves the problems of Rooney being bad in midfield and Falcao being a bad striker. I really hope Young and Mata keep their starting places as I don't think Di Maria played well at all coming on and he hasn't shown enough to take Young's spot. 

Thanks for reading!