Swansea - Manchester United

Obviously not a good result but Swansea away was always going to be a difficult game so I wouldn't panic yet. They're a good team with a good manager and we were playing very far from home.

Last week, I mentioned at the end that I thought Blind would handle Gomis just fine but looks like I was wrong, unfortunately. Gomis was just too fast and strong for Blind and Smalling ended up have to cover for him.

Rooney with another terrible performance but I actually thought he showed improvement this week. I'll show some examples below but at least this week, he had a few chances that came from good runs off the shoulder of defenders. If he's making the right runs, which I thought he improved with this week, he'll eventually shake off this slow start and score. I just hope he continues to improve with his movement.

1) Another Mata defensive lapse

I'm seeing this every match I watch now and while it's far from being our biggest issue, I'm concerned that top teams with great left wingers/left backs will be able to exploit our right sided weakness due to Mata's poor defensive positioning.

Below, Mata is running back, doing a good job of tracking the overlapping Swansea player.

Except once again, he stops tracking him and turns around to look at the ball. There's absolutely no need to do this - what good is Mata doing when he's standing in this position? He's not close enough to the ball to challenge for it and he's too far from the runner. He should have continued his run and be in the red circled area.

The result: Darmian ends up having to cover for Mata but it's too late because now the Swansea player has tons of time to pick his cross. This was easily avoidable if Mata just stayed with the person he was marking.

2) Smalling mistake

Smalling has been fantastic so far so haven't needed to criticise him but being forced to help Blind with Gomis pulled him out of position several times.

Below is Smalling and Blind. This is obviously wrong, players should never be this close together. Blind was marking Gomis who was receiving a goal kick. This is Smalling's mistake - he goes over to get the header. The problem is, if he misses the header, a decent flick to the Swansea player in the middle (who'll make the run along the black arrow) would send him through on goal. Damian can't help much either because he's marking the player circled in black.

The result: Smalling dominates Gomis and gets the header. The result was fine and Smalling has gotten so good in the air - this reminded me of Vidic. That doesn't make the decision correct though and you never saw Vidic climbing over Ferdinand to get to a header. It's too much risk. Smalling needed to stay with the Swansea player in the middle.

3) Some improvement in Rooney's movement

Like I said above, I thought Rooney showed good improvement in his movement and he was making runs that strikers should this game. He's still rusty and slow but as long as his movement continues to improve, he'll start scoring. My annoyance is that it shouldn't take him four games just to sort out his movement - I expected a slow start but more like today's game in that his movement is fine but finishing and touch is bad.

Example 1: Here, Rooney is on the shoulder of the defender and looking for a ball to go over the top. 

Example 2: This one I loved. Rooney is right on the shoulder and right between the center backs with Herrera in the number 10 space looking to feed a through pass to him.

Example 3: Here, Rooney is once again in a good position which forces the center backs further back and gives Herrera room (the black circle area) to make a pass or shoot.

Example 4: Another one I enjoyed - Rooney making the forward run and Herrera slipping it in for him. We didn't see this when Januzaj or Memphis played in the hole but that was because Rooney never made those runs, not because Januaj or Memphis never made those passes.

4) Struggling to deal with Gomis

I'm a little concerned at how much Gomis troubled our defense. He's on form and he's a pretty good player but he's not a great striker...the problem is we'll be playing against teams with great strikers.

Look at this - Gomis is receiving a goal kick and we have four players surrounding him. That is an overreaction - all we needed was two players two most (Shaw and Smalling). Schweinstager should have been a little further back along the black arrow to intercept the possible pass and Schneiderlin was way out of position. He needed to be back along the black arrow line to intercept the pass to the red circled player (we still had Darmian and Blind further back but they were much further back at this very second).

5) Blind defensive header mistake

This is a very naive mistake and I think it's because Blind has the possession first mentality of a midfield player rather than a safety first mentality of a defender. He's defending a long ball and he should be heading it out wife towards the red arrow, except he heads it back towards the center along the blue arrow. 

Smalling managed to get to it first, fortunately. 

6) A bad one by Rooney

This mistake (or mistakes) led to Swansea's first goal and it's weird to me how I didn't hear any pundit mention it. This was the type of mistake that Di Maria would make last season over and over and people would slaughter him for it.

Look below, very promising position to attack - Rooney, circled in blue, has some space, he's in a good position and our players are sprinting forward.

Except Rooney makes the most obvious pass, pretty much straight to the Swansea player. Now our players have all just sprinted forward to support him - you can see they're still trying to stop their forward run when the Swansea player intercepts the ball.

Second mistake here, even worse the the first. The picture is blurry (sorry, when I pause the video it's always blurry) but you can see that Rooney is standing right there looking up at the sky with his hands together, being frustrated. Yes, it's frustrating but make up for it by sprinting back and chasing the ball down!

What's annoying is that Rooney is usually great about tracking back and that's the type of thing he's known for doing. Below is the result, Swansea equalized.

Two mistakes: 1) You can't lose the ball when your team is streaming forward to attack because then the team is very vulnerable to a counter attack 2) Chase the ball down when you lose it

With our high possession system, our full backs will be pushed up when we're attacking and that makes it that much more important to not lose the ball at these critical times. 

7) Awful ball watching

Look below - three of our players surrounding the Swansea player but all three of them are watching the dribbler who is well marked and not paying attention. Number 1 is Schneiderlin, 2 is Schweinsteiger and 3 is Shaw.

The result is below. I'd put the blame most on Schneiderlin - he's supposed to be our defensive midfielder and he's behind the Swansea player which means he can actually see him. Schweinsteiger should still have followed him and Shaw probably is the least to blame out of all three but he's in kind of a weird position. 

8) Bad back pass

Last season, I had a few posts that pointed out some bad back passes but as the season progressed, I didn't notice them anymore and I thought we fixed it. I think we did, until we started playing Blind who isn't really a center back at center back.

Below, Blind should be making the back pass along either of the blue arrows. On top of it, it's a volley back pass so it's already tough and it's going to be tough for Romero to control. If Romero misses it, the worst would be a corner kick.

Don't do this and pass it straight back at goal. This left Romero with a really awkward bouncing pass to control with Gomis running straight at him.

It's a simple fix, just work on it a little in training and stop doing it. A normal defender will rarely make this kind of mistake. 

Final thoughts

Very disappointed at the result but I'm still optimistic because I see improvement in Rooney who has been our weakest link. Our defense looked a little shaky but with our control style of possession, we're generally pretty good at stifling other teams anyways. 

Very disappointed that Hernandez is gone but what's done is done. 

International break next week so no game and no new post. I'm worried that the break will affect Rooney's improvement  but he should be playing striker with England so it might not affect him.

Thanks for reading and sorry about the late post! It took me literally 48 hours to download the match due to poor internet connection.