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.