Just to be clear, I don't hate Mata. I know I seem to have focused on him a bit but that's because he does make obvious mistakes over and over. I would really like to see him play as our no. 10 so he can focus more on attacking and creating chances, which are his strengths. Right now, I think it's a little better because Herrera and Mata are kind of rotating positions so Herrera is able to cover the right wing area for Mata and in that aspect, I think Mata works fine on the right.
1) Turn around Rojo
I thought Rojo put in a great defensive performance yesterday but he still needs to work a bit more on the LVG possession philosophy. Below, you can see that he doesn't have anybody in front to pass the ball to, which is a pretty common thing playing at full back.
He forces a pass to Rooney and we lose possession here. All Rojo had to do was stop and make a back pass to Smalling.
There's no reason to make a high risk pass like this which more or less has no reward. Rojo is still coming into the team and learning and I think he'll get much better at making the right choice with more time under LVG.
2) Schweinsteiger in no man's land
I've noticed Schweinsteiger has had a few instances in the last few games where he drifts forward too much and loses his man in the midfield. Here's one instance below.
Here, he's caught in two minds - should he go forward and mark the City player ahead of him or stay back and mark the City midfielder behind him? He kind of stays in the middle between them.
In general, I don't see this as much with Carrick or Schneiderlin. That's okay, Schweinsteiger isn't defensive mid but I would hope that LVG isn't expecting him to be as good defensively as those two.
3) The epitome of Rooney's game nowadays
He receives the ball in a good position here. Quick pass to Herrera and then just run forward for Herrera's return pass, that's what I would do.
Look at how much space he needed - his turning radius is ridiculous. Looking at the lines on the pitch, he needed an entire 6 yards or 18 feet to just control the ball and turn around.
Just looked at Herrera in the picture and see how frustrated he is.
4) Fellaini needs support
Here, Fellaini (circled in black) is about to head a long cross. Look at how much he has to deal with - there's two City players marking him.
Rooney (circled in blue) needs to be further forward, not jogging/standing next to a City player. He should be in the red circled area to receive a knockdown from Fellaini.
Fellaini has done his job here and Rooney has not done his job. Fellaini got his head onto the ball and occupied two Manchester City players - that's as much as anybody can be expected to do. It wasn't much to ask Rooney to just run a few steps forward so he can actually head it to someone.
Final thoughts
I was really impressed by Valencia. He's still a little too aggressive at the wrong times but his positioning has improved and he's making good forward runs again. He was a major target for my criticism last season but I don't have much complaint about his play this season. I'm a big fan of Darmian but Darmian's one weakness is that he doesn't have too much pace and I really like that we have a pacy option in Valencia and an intelligent defender in Darmian as our two options.
I don't even know what to say about Rooney anymore - it's not just a run of bad form as he doesn't look remotely like his old self now. It's annoying that we're putting Martial, our best striker, out wide when Martial is the one striker who can actually score goals.
Thanks for reading and see you next week against Crystal Palace!
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