Manchester United - Sunderland

Good solid win this week, expected nothing less considering it's Sunderland. Nice to see us at the top of the table and playing well but I would be careful as we have difficult fixtures coming up and Sunderland are one of the worst teams in the league right now.

I was pretty impressed with Valencia. He didn't have too much to do defensively but he looked a little more comfortable playing right back and he managed to create some good chances when he went forward. Martial continues to impress, although I'm a little worried how reliant we seem on a 19 year old.

1) Blind positioning mistake

Below, you can see Blind is concentrating too much on looking at the ball in midfield and he lets the Sunderland player get behind him at a bad time - the Sunderland midfielder with the ball is about to make a pass. 

This is the result, Sunderland player ends up getting a shot on goal with Blind falling on the ground.

It's extremely important for Blind to maintain good position due to his lack of strength and speed. Players like Smalling and Jones might be able to get away with minor positioning mistakes like this because they're fast enough to catch up to the player but as you can see, Blind cannot so he has to be extra vigilant.

2) Pass and move

Glad to see Rooney score although once again Rooney wasn't particularly influential in this game and while his goal was good positioning, Martial did most of the work for the goal.

Below, Rooney has the ball in the good position and makes a decent pass (personally, I would have preferred if he had backheeled it to Smalling who's running in centrally but not the worst choice).

This is the next moment - Rooney is still pretty much exactly where he was when he made the pass! Look at our other two players Smalling and Mata. Both of them have continued their forward runs while Rooney never followed up his pass with an attacking run. 

He should have followed his pass with a run towards the red circled area. Martial was out wide and even if he had got on to the ball, he wouldn't have had a good angle for a shot on goal. Rooney needed to run forward so Martial could have the option of cutting it back to him.

3) Mata loses the ball in a dangerous area

I'm very happy to see Mata scoring two goals for us. He has great sense for finding space and making the right runs in the final third. However, I feel he's lacking too much in the midfield and defensively and I'd rather have him play as a second striker to suit his strengths and minimize his weakness.

Below, he has the ball. We just got the ball back after a failed Sunderland attack. We're clearly not a counter attacking team anymore so that's why you can see some many of our players are standing area behind Mata.

Mata dribbles it forward - that's fine. He's getting closed down though, so he has three options: 1) dribble it past the oncoming players 2) turn around and make an easy back pass 3) just kick it forward long and hope for the best

Except he takes too long and gets caught on the ball and loses it. Awful area to lose possession. Fortunately, the referee called this a foul so we got away with it. We got away with it this time but Mata should have made a decision and gotten rid of the ball before getting closed down like this.  

4) Rooney's decline

Below, we're streaming forward on a semi-counterattack (not full, our team doesn't do full counter attacks, you can see we only have three people forward versus their six players back). 

Rooney only has one real option here - he should continue dribbling it forward along the red arrow, beating his defender with strength and pace to likely get a shot on goal. The problem he, he either doesn't have the confidence to do so or physically isn't able to do that anymore. 

Instead, he takes an option awful and tries to force a pass to Martial along the blue arrow. You can see that it's just not possible to get the ball to Martial at this moment. Of course, the cross never gets to Martial.

The Sunderland player isn't even that close to Rooney and Rooney already gets rid of the ball, picking an awful option. It's sad to see Rooney utterly panicking like this - he used to humiliate defenders in this situation.

5) Compare Rooney to Martial

I was really impressed by Martial on this play.

On this breakaway, John O'Shea (Sunderland) has to defend against Martial and Memphis himself. At this moment, O'Shea is expecting a pass to Memphis as you can see by the direction O'Shea is facing. Martial realizes this and dribbles it forward along the blue arrow.

Now, O'Shea turns around because he realizes Martial is going to dribble forward behind him. Martial is too smart and the exact moment that O'Shea turns around, he passes it to Memphis along the blue arrow. 

That's the difference between Rooney above and Martial here. Rooney forced a pass while Martial continued dribble and waited for the perfect timing before passing.

That's extra impressive considering that Martial is only 19 and a new player to the team. It would have been very easy for Martial to just immediately pass the ball to Memphis and let Memphis take care of it. He would never get blamed and people would call him unselfish. However, he made the more mature choice to delay the pass until the perfect opportunity and that's what impressed me the most.

6) The weekly Mata loses his fullback post

I hate that I have to keep pointing this out but I always do because it's such a glaring mistake every week.

You can see here that Mata is already standing in the wrong position. He's just a few yards too far forward - he's not doing anything by standing where he is. This has nothing to do with his lack of strength or pace.

Now the pass comes and you can see he's not going to be able to defend it. He doesn't have the pace to keep up with the fullback. If he was several yards further back, in the red circled area above, he would have defended the pass.

The result: shot on goal, Valencia can't cover Mata in time.

7) Awful cross field pass

I've been trying to limit my Rooney posts by ignoring some of his regular mistakes but this one was awful and I have to point it out. I swear I don't hate him - I'm a massive fan of every player on our team but I just think Rooney is now a weak link in our team despite how good of a captain he appears to be.

Below, Rooney has the ball and the game is almost over. His best option here is to just make an easy back pass to De Gea. His second best option is to just boot it forward along the other solid black line.

I don't even understand how he even thought of this ridiculous option that he chose. Instead of the obvious pass, he makes a crazy cross pitch pass to Valencia along the dotted black line.

The result is below. We keep possession but you see it's kind of dangerous and Valencia had to do a lot to control the long pass while the Sunderland player was closing him down.

It's not so much the result that matters here. It's that it's a pretty basic footballing knowledge that you shouldn't make cross field passes in your own half. Every one knows that - it's too risky and there's no benefit to it. I don't understand how LVG will let Rooney get away with a pass like this when even a 10 year old player who get yelled at by a coach for it. 

Final thoughts

Can't wait for the game against Arsenal next week. Martial has made such a big difference to our team and I really enjoy watching him play. I'm a little worried about Sanchez - I think he's playing mostly on the left and drifting centrally (not too sure about this) and I'm not sure Valencia and Mata can handle him. I'd love to be wrong though :)

Thanks for reading!