1) Risky passes out wide don't work
It's only a minute in and we're passing it around nicely and then the ball gets to Rooney and he immediately blasts it out wide to Young, along the red dotted line.
Young here is marked by two players and even with a perfect pass, Young has a trap the difficult from a difficult long pass and somehow get pass two other players before he can create a chance. That's not worth a risky diagonal pass because the reward is so little. I barely care about the result of the pass but it wasn't even a good pass and Young was nowhere near to getting the ball.
If Rooney wanted to make a nice Hollywood long pass, he should have long passed it forward along the black line to RVP. It's a risky pass but if it does come off, RVP will directly have a shot.
Or a better choice here (and I think in more accordance with LVG's style), would be just a short pass to Smalling who passes it to Herrera (blue arrows) since Herrera is in some space.
My point is that the risk:reward ratio is too low when doing long diagonals when the winger is well marked. At best, it might result in a cross - save the risky long passes for central strikers and only do diagonal passes out wide if the winger is in plenty of space.
2) Why does LVG have Valencia marking Lescott?
I already touched upon this last week against Everton, 2nd point (2nd goal) with Valencia marking John Stones (a center back) but it's even worse this week. Lescott is a giant beast of a center back and very good aerially, so why is our former winger turned right back marking him for set pieces? It's not like Valencia has ever been good in the air.
Example 1:
This is from a West Brom corner, Valencia and Lescott marked with blue arrows.
Example 2:
Another corner, same thing. West Brom clearly have the height advantage - you see Rooney is marking Dawson and McNair is marking Olson and neither of those pairings are ideal either. But at least McNair is a center back and Rooney can be decent in the air.
The result: Lescott gets another free header.
LVG isn't really making Valencia look good by giving him such a big mismatch with these marking assignments. I noticed that Blind was marking Berahino and I felt they could have switched - Blind has played center back and is taller than Valencia. Berahino is a shorter and pacey forward and that would have been perfect for Valencia to mark.
Obviously, Tony Pulis realized this mismatch because they exploited it multiple times, going straight for Lescott off set pieces.
3) This is some terrible marking
Look at this defending off a West Brom throw in. Why do we have four players defending two West Brom players for a throw in, leaving the blue circled player completely open in a dangerous area?
It's hard to even tell whose fault it was since movement is more fluid than one picture but I think it's mostly Herrera being too deep (number 4). Fellaini (number 3) should be further up but I think he's covering for Valencia. Mata (number 1) probably shouldn't be standing that close as he doesn't really end up defending anyone. It's just a complete mess of defensive organization.
A few seconds later, the camera shows Smalling yelling at them for this mess.
4) Why doesn't Rooney just shoot?
As I mentioned above, risky passes out wide are no good but anytime you have the opportunity to get a decent shot on target, you should take it (unless there's someone in a very obviously better position). It's a very good risk:reward ratio - at best could lead to a goal, might lead to a corner, and at worst just lose possession.
We saw RVP having several nice shots coming from deep but I didn't see Rooney do it enough (there was one or two but he had many more opportunities).
Example 1:
Rooney is cutting in from our left, the ball is on his favored right foot. He should have dribbled it forward a little bit more along the red arrow and just shot. We saw him do these types of shots a few years ago when he played as a wide left forward occasionally and Thierry Henry used to be great at those.
Example 2:
Again, similar area but Rooney is already closer and more central. The ball is on Rooney's favored right. He immediately passes it to RVP along the blue arrow but RVP still has a bit to do because the ball is slightly behind him so he wasn't facing goal when he received the ball. Rooney was already in prime shooting position, he should have taken the shot.
We used to see him attempt these shots and he'd score from them, not sure why he isn't even thinking about them now.
5) Why doesn't Rooney just dribble?
Example 1:
We're counter attacking and Rooney has the ball, already dribbled forward a bit so he's on the move already. All he had to do was just continue dribbling forward along the red arrow. Instead, he swings it out wide to Mata. You can see that the result would even have been the same - the ball would have advanced forward about ten yards either way but dribbling ten yards forward into empty space is much easier than a long pass.
And here's the result. It's such a long pass that Lescott intercepts it before it reaches Mata. Opportunity lost.
Rooney has the ball and Herrera, circled in black had made a forward run and the West Brom player follows him. This opens up a giant gap in midfield for Rooney to run into along the red arrow and Rooney is facing that direction already. I'm not sure if you can tell this from the picture, but Rooney's body language is that he's looking for a nice pass.
He couldn't find anything so he just makes a back pass to Smalling eventually.
If he just held on to the ball and dribbled it forward, something might have opened up for him.
The thing is, shooting and dribbling are both things we know Rooney is pretty good at so I don't know why he doesn't do it anymore.
6) Let the midfielders do their job
Here's a little pet peeve I have.
Valencia has the ball here and he has an easy five foot pass to Herrera, circled in blue.
Instead, he opts for this ridiculous diagonal pass to Young. Valencia has a lot of good qualities (despite my critcisms) but long passing and playmaking isn't one of them.
You can see the result below, sorry for the blurry picture. Young is well marked before the ball even reaches him and we lose the ball.
There's a reason why we have Herrera in the team playing centrally and there's a reason why Valencia isn't playing central midfield. His job is to protect and run down the wing, not to play make centrally. He should have just given it to Herrera for Herrera to do something.
7) An example of how Valencia's pace and hard work saves him
These are two of his good qualities. Here, he's defending high up, against a West Brom counterattack. If he was smart, he'd stay back and left the West Brom player (Fletcher) come to him first.
Instead, he steps in/forward and Fletcher flicks the back over him and now he's a few feet behind Fletcher.
This works if you have Valencia's pace and power. The problem is, Valencia ended up running forwards and backwards needlessly - would have achieved the same result if he just stayed back a little.
Conclusion
I didn't even bother going into Di Maria's disastrous introduction. He's not dribbling, he loses the ball and he doesn't look motivated. You'll notice I haven't wrote about him at all and that's because all his mistakes are so obvious there's no point in talking about it.
Again, I really feel people are overreacting to our three losses. Our first one was a loss against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and I have to admit Chelsea are the better team anyways and they're at home with Mourinho at the helm. The next loss was against Everton and while the scoreline looked bad, Everton at home has always been a tough fixture for us. And now this one against West Brom is the worst loss but West Brom with Tony Pulis managing have been really difficult to break down for a lot of teams this season and I think we were just really unlucky with not scoring and their goal.
I think we'll be fine and we're still showing many positive things. I expect we'll recover from this and I trust LVG to help us contend for the title next year.
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