Manchester United - Tottenham

Welcome back to the new season everyone!

Pretty happy with our transfers over the summer, finally got a proper right back and Darmian looked so solid today. Romero looked a little nervous but we kept a clean sheet and he had some decent distribution with his feet and good saves. I thought Depay looked pretty good considering it was his first game in the English league. Young continues to perform well and Smalling has done enough to convince me that he's a good defender.

Just reminding everyone that my analysis here isn't comprehensive and I treat it more like how a coach might go over video replays with players to point out their individual mistakes. I also try to stay away from pointing out the good things since there's not much point to it as we know we have quality players and a quality club :)

1) Small mistake by Darmian

I was very happy with Darmian today and this isn't a huge mistake but I would still expect LVG or the club staff to mention it when they go over the match afterwards.

Below, Kane has the ball and you see Smalling and Blind are the furthest ones back, nothing too dangerous yet.



Eriksen makes a run forward and Smalling and Blind step up to play him offside. However, Darmian screws it up by not stepping up and it almost led to a goal. There's absolutely no need for Darmian to try to mark Eriksen as Darmian is behind Eriksen already and there's no way for him to mark him properly from behind. 

2) Mata has no defensive instinct

Mata has pretty good work rate but the problem is, he often runs to the wrong place when he's tracking back and it doesn't end up contributing to our defense at all.

Spurs are attacking here and Kane has the ball. Darmian is closing him down to mark him. It's not a comfortable position right now but at this moment, Darmian prevents Kane from going to Kane's right so Kane can only go to his left. Mata, circled in red, should be running along the red arrowed line to mark Chadli's run.

Except for some reason, Mata runs in the other direction. There's absolutely no reason for Mata to run centrally as even if Kane had someone went to his right, there's no way Mata can defend him from that far behind. Now Chadli is completely unmarked in the box and Mata is no where near him.

This is obviously a very easy thing to spot when we're watching it on TV but that's what defensive instinct is. Mata shouldn't need to think about all this - it should occur to him naturally to run wide to get Chadli's run, especially since he's playing right wing/wide forward. Ashley Young has good instinct, Darmian clearly does, but players like Valencia and Mata do not.

3) Disappointed with Rooney today, he's all over the pitch

I was looking forward to seeing Rooney play as a pure striker again but he seems to drift all over the place, leaving him out of place when we have opportunities to score. 

Example 1:

Here, Memphis has the ball in a good position and he's dribbling towards the Spur's goal. Rooney, circled in red, has to be running forward but instead, he runs back to receive the ball.

If he's going to play as a forward, he needs to be on the center back's shoulders in situations like these. First, it'll give Memphis more space to dribble into and second, if he was on their shoulder, it would have been have relatively simple through pass for Memphis to make to Rooney.

So after Rooney comes short, he gives it back to Memphis and he just stands there. He has to pass and move! You can't just stand still after a pass like this. Look at how impossible of a situation this leaves Memphis - there's almost no options for him to actually create something and he would have to dribble past 4 or 5 players to do anything. If Rooney actually ran forward, he'd take one or two of the Tottenham players with him and that would allow Memphis to dribble it forward more and maybe even get a long range shot off.

Example 2:

I think this one is partly an LVG style thing. He seems to prefer our forwards to sit back a little and allow the opposition team's center backs a bit of space. I noticed that Memphis and Rooney didn't really press the center backs much and I would think that's with LVG's instructions.

In this case, I was urging Rooney, circled in blue, to go forward to press the Spurs center back - we were allowing him to be too comfortable bringing it out like that.

And a few moments later, Carrick makes a nice interception and we counter attack. If Rooney wasn't so far back initially, he would be at around the blue circled area (the Spur's center back is offscreen to the right so Rooney would still be onside). Carrick could have slid a through back to him or he would have had more space to run into. Missed opportunity.

The next moment, Memphis has the ball and I circled Rooney in blue. Yet again, Rooney should be further forward, at either of the spots the blue arrows are pointing to. If he was at either of those spots, Memphis could have created a goal scoring chance with a nice through ball to Rooney. 

These two positions are golden positions for a player playing in the hole like Memphis was. I'm worried that Rooney's lack of forward runs is going to limit Memphis's potential to succeed as one, it cuts down on his opportunities to make assists and two, it decreases the space he has to dribble into since Rooney drops back and allows the opposition center backs to come forward to mark Memphis. 

Example 3:

We're counter attacking here, Rooney drops deep to flick it into Herrera's path. That's perfect, good choice of dropping back. However, I'd expect Rooney to turn around and immediately starting sprint forward, something like along the blue dotted line since we're counterattacking and he's our only forward.

Instead, he jogs back another few yards and slowly turns around, and now Herrera is in front of him with no one to pass to.

We make a few nice passes and we get it to Schweinstager out wide. Except Rooney is still all the way back there (circled in blue)! Instead, Rooney should be in either of the blue circled areas and that would give Schweinstager an option to do an early cross/through ball to create a chance. Instead, Schweinstager has absolutely no options to pass to despite being in acres of space, what a waste of a good opportunity. 

Example 4:

This is definitely frustrating to players. Midfielders need to have strikers to pass to and they don't want their forwards playing so deep they're only a few yards away from them. It inhibits a midfielder's playmaking opportunities and it's uncomfortable to have another teammate be so close and leaving gaps of space to run into when it's not necessary for the forward to track back.

Here's Herrera gesturing for Rooney to go forward more. The ball is in the black scribbled area and Herrera wants him to put more pressure on the Spurs back line. 

Hard to tell from a picture but to me, it was a gesture of frustration and I chuckled a little watching it live. 

4) Let's hope Darmian stays fit

It was fantastic to have a proper right back today and when Valencia came it, we just looked so shaky on the right. Here's one example.

The Spurs player ends up making a really nice pass along the blue dotted line forward, but Valencia should have been in position to stop it. Why was Valencia standing so close to the other Spurs player when the other Spurs player is running away from goal? This is a minor positioning error of only around 5 feet or so - if Valencia was a little bit further left, in the red circled area, he would have prevented that gap for the pass and still be close enough to the other Spurs player to defend him if the ball goes to him. 

As a right back, Valencia has to be aware that there's someone behind him that is open and he needs to position himself to prevent that pass to him. Difference in 5 feet is the difference between a good right back and a former winger. 

Conclusion

Thanks for reading guys, I've been looking forward to the league starting all summer!