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!

Southampton - Manchester United

Wow, that was a crazy game with a crazy ending, was the type of game I imagined Liverpool would have been. 

Hope Shaw has a good and fast recovery, it sucks because he's such a young kid and having such a great season. We're going to miss him quite a bit. Martial is looking fantastic and I can't wait to watch him play more, feels great to have a proper striker play for us. 

1) Bad positioning, mostly by Martial

I actually missed the first goal against us because I was quickly writing down my criticism of Martial's bad defensive positioning. Unfortunately, his mistake indirectly led to the goal.

Here, the Southampton center back is bringing out the ball. Martial, circled in red, should be the one closing him down - he's our only center forward. Memphis, circled in blue, should be staying on the left. Additionally, for some reason, Schneiderlin, circled in black, got over excited and rushed forward to close down the Southampton players. You can see in this picture that he's in a really bad position - he's not close to another of the Southampton players.





















Instead, Memphis ends up running centrally to close down the Southampton player while Martial stays out wide. Except since he's running from out wide, he's more or less behind the Southampton player already and he's just chasing him from behind which is useless. The Southampton center back managed to dribble it all the way along the red arrow easily.

Now, below, I circled Schneiderlin in red. If he didn't initially run forward out of position, he would have been further back, around where the red arrow is pointing. He would have either been able to stop the run or intercept the following pass.

All this would have been avoided if Martial had just closed down the center back like a forward is supposed to. It's still a pretty bad mistake from Schneiderlin too and he should be more disciplined as he's an experienced player. 

2) Missing Shaw

I thought Rojo was okay considering it's his first time playing in a while and he's not really a left back either. However, he had so many bad passes forward and lost the ball so much for us, was definitely much better defensively.

This example below was so frustrating. This is right after Southampton's goal, at kick off. Look at the time, it's 13:34.



We're passing it really nicely around the pitch, basically looking for holes in their defense and testing them out - exactly how LVG wants us to play. Look at the time - it's 14:53. We've had the ball for over a minute and I counted 28 passes from us. Except now the ball gets to Rojo, who isn't really under a lot of pressure.

The result: awful long pass right to Southampton's keeper.

Very frustrating to have the entire team be passing well and then see your teammate just blast off a terrible pass for no reason.

3) Depay has to deal with a lot

Depay gets a lot of criticism for not doing enough but I think he's having a pretty decent season (of course, can always be better). The problem with him is that we play with a slow build up so by the time he gets the ball, the defense is ready to defend against him and he usually has to beat at least two or more players in order to make anything happen.

Just wanted to show this picture - look at how many defenders are concentrated on Depay. He actually manages to find the one gap/option he has and he passes the ball to Martial (blue arrow) for Martial to get a clean shot at goal.

Just the fact that he's attracting that many opposition players is more than enough. It's his responsibility to find a teammate to pass it to when something like this happens (which he does here) and it's his teammates' responsibility to run into an open space for him to pass to when this happens (which Martial does, can't say the same for Rooney). 

4) Bad concentration

This was such a bad play that I had to use the same picture twice (more or less) to show all the mistakes.

Here, Carrick and Smalling (blue arrows) have their arms raised, asking for a foul. Do you see the Southampton players stopping? No, they're sprinting and Carrick and Smalling should be focusing on the play, not on the referee. It's especially annoying because Carrick and Smalling are our senior players and our leaders so they should be the ones who never lose focus like this.

Another mistake here - I circled Schneiderlin and Carrick in red. Why are they so close to each other? They look like they're marking each other, as opposed to marking the Southampton players (that's Blind trying to defend against both of them by himself).





















This brings me to my next point. Below is more or less the same instance. Carrick (or Schneiderlin, doesn't matter since they're right next to each other), should have dropped back into the center back role once Blind came forward to mark the players on the ball. This would have allowed Smalling and Darmian to shift a little bit to our right so they can defend a long cross to far post.

5) Awful back pass

This just should not happen. A U16 player who get yelled at for this.

We're defending and we get the ball back, one of our players pass it forward to Rooney here. He has no one marking him, plenty of space. Also note the time - it's 46:10 and there's a minute of stoppage time, the ref is about to end the half. Rooney can just clear it out wide and the ref will likely whistle for the half. Or he can just turn around and dribble it forward (blue arrow). Neither of those options are hard.





















Instead, this happens - he kicks back a high pass in the air to our center backs. Just look at how dangerous this looks.

6) Great play by Schweinsteiger

This led to our third goal. I'm sure you've read the reports and seen the videos on how this was a perfect LVG style goal but I really wanted to point out one thing - that it was Schweinsteiger who made the difference.

Below, Schweinsteiger has the ball and he has two options. The first, the red arrow, is the easy pass out wide. If he makes that pass, it's a good decision and he won't ever get criticised for it. Instead, he takes the harder but better option and sneaks a pass along the blue arrow to Memphis which ultimately leads to Mata's goal. You can see it's a difficult pass and he didn't have to make it - he could have chose the easy route.

In my opinion, that's what LVG wants from our players. Instead of forcing an attack, we pass it around until we see a small opening and then we take advantage of it. The problem is that a lot of our players end up just passing it around and never taking advantage of the small openings that come up because they're afraid to lose the ball.

7) Space on the right again

This below is way too much space and time to allow a Southampton player to have in our half. You don't see Memphis with this kind of space. Schneiderlin, circled in red or Mata, circled in blue, should have been much closer to him. It doesn't particularly matter which one of them is closer, that depends on the context of the situation. It just matters that one of them is there.

I think the problem here is that LVG clearly tells Mata to drift centrally but when Mata drifts centrally, one of our central midfielders need drift to the right to cover the gap Mata leaves on the right.

8) Another Mata tracking mistake

I've shown this mistake in almost every single post this season and it worries me that I keep seeing this.

So far so good below. Mata is tracking his player. 

Here, Mata for some reason just stops running while the player he is tracking continues running. Can't see it in a picture, but its so weird that Mata stops running - it almost looks like he ran into an invisible wall. 

Here's the result, Mata has lost his man and now Smalling his to come out wide to cover for him. That leaves Blind alone in the center against a much taller and stronger player.

Final thoughts

I thought we played well for about 30-40 minutes and the rest of it was very poor, not very satisfied with our performance despite the win. Southampton had a lot of energy in the first half and we couldn't really handle them. It's a little annoying because it seems our players are content with just passing it around until we're a goal then and only then do they look to create something.

I also thought Valencia played very well. I'm not the biggest fan of him at right back but for this game, he did very well. Rooney is still looking very poor and pretty much had nothing to do with any of our goals. It's a little sad to see that we can buy a 19 year old striker and have him immediately start scoring in a position that Rooney still can't score in yet. 

Next week at home against Sunderland should be good, should be an easier game although it's a game that we can't lose.

Thanks for reading!

Manchester United - Liverpool

Good win and what an incredible goal by Martial! Looking forward to seeing what he can do.

Apart from the first ~15 minutes and maybe the last 10 minutes, the rest of the game was generally slow and boring. I was honestly very disappointed at the quality and pace of the game - for example, the Aston Villa Leicester game today was so much more fast paced and entertaining.

I thought this was Memphis's worst game by far - he kept losing the ball, seemed slow and didn't make up for losing the ball with nice dribbles. Fellani didn't score but he was threatening all game and needed the attentions of both Liverpool center backs which allowed our other attacking players more opportunities. 

1) Blind needs to dribble it forward

I'm really like the Blind - Smalling partnership so far and Blind has a great eye for a pass and he's generally a very intelligent defender. However, one thing I've noticed is that Blind is somewhat hesitant in dribbling and bringing the ball forward. Smalling, who has less technical and passing skill, tends to be the one making the forward dribbles.

Below, Blind has the ball and plenty of space ahead of him.

It's hard to tell in this picture but Carrick (ahead of him) is gesturing for him to dribble it forward more. However, at this point, he makes a pass out wide. That's absolutely fine and the pass was good but I'd like to see Blind dribble it forward another 5 yards. That would force one of the Liverpool players to come forward to mark him and thus open up space in the midfield for our midfielders to work it. 

If a defender can draw the opponent's midfield players forward, that opens up space. With our style of play, we end up getting very congested in the middle so I think it's important that our defenders learn to do this.

2) Mata gets drawn out

Again, seeing a little naivety from Mata that leaves Darmian with a difficult job on the right. 

Below, Mata sprints forward to close the Liverpool player down. Except the Liverpool player is obviously way closer to the ball and it just takes a decent touch for the Liverpool player to go past Mata who's sprinting forward. 

This is the result below. Darmian ends up with two players on our right to deal with and Mata is nowhere close to help him out. The second Liverpool player is the fullback about to overlap and it's the job of the right midfielder to track the opponent fullback when overlapping.

You can see from the above picture that Mata is completely out of position compared to the rest of our midfield. He should be in the red circled area (we're not exactly playing a straight 4-4-2 but it's close enough and for this purpose, he's definitely out of position).

3) Mata is behind the play

I really do like Mata but his defensive position triggers something in my brain. As I watched this sequence of play, it felt really awkward to me and looking at it again, it was basically because Mata was half a second behind the play defensively and was just a few yards out of position every time.

First, below, at 20:59, Mata should be tucked in a little more centrally, at the black circle. At his current position, he's not marking anyone and he's too wide to intercept or prevent the pass forward along the red arrow. The picture doesn't show it but there's a pass for the Liverpool player along the red arrow.
























Four seconds laer, he's once again a little out of position. He should be at the blue circled area because that prevents the pass that will along the Liverpool player to make an overlapping run. At his current position, he's not doing much and if the Liverpool player makes the pass to the blue circled area, he's out of position to mark the resulting overlappng run as well.

These are minor things but they made me feel very uncomfortable watching it and I imagine Darmian would feel the same as well. I think this weakness of ours is covered up because of how good Darmian is - I would not want to see Valencia have to deal with this.

4) Herrera back pass?

I love Herrera because he's such a positive and direct player but maybe LVG's style has changed his game. I thought he was okay for most of the game but wasn't particularly impressed wit him.

Below, Herrera has the ball and it's a mini counter-attack. He has at least three options 1) Short pass (blue arrow) to Schweinsteiger (or to Fellaini) 2) Long pass over the top to Memphis 3) dribble it into the empty space ahead of him along the black arrow.

Instead, he passes it backwards out wide to Darmian. 

Very frustrating. He had three great options in an good attacking opportunity and he picked a very safe option that ends up with him doing nothing, basically. It seems like with LVG's focus on possession first, our players would rather just pass it backwards to make the absolute safest play instead of trying to make something happen. 

Sometimes that's okay, but when you have three good options, I'm sure even LVG wouldn't have wanted him to pass it backwards like that.

5) No striker

I thought Fellaini did a great job up front on his job and the Liverpool center backs were legitimately panicking every time they had to deal with a long ball towards Fellaini. However, I think Fellaini doesn't work that well as a lone striker - first, because he isn't a real striker and second, because he's a much better team player than a lone player. He needs someone to knock the ball down to - he's not going to create a goal out of nowhere by himself consistently (see Martial's goal heh).

Here, Schweinsteiger has the ball and he realizes he has no options in front of him. Fellaini is too far back...he should be in the blue circled areas up front. 

This is the same problem with Rooney too, although I think Fellaini is currently doing a better job up front. It's only fair that I point it out when Fellaini is out of position.

6) Another Herrera mistake

I think there's a conflict between Herrera's natural style of play and what LVG wants of him and it's creating a little confusion and affecting his confidence.

Below, Herrera has the ball. The best option for him is to just dribble it forward along the black arrow since there's absolutely no one there.

Except he ends up making a terrible cross field pass along the blue arrow. And no, I didn't draw it wrong - he made the pass behind our player (Mata). 

This is the result - a nice counter attack for Liverpool. You can't make a curling cross field pass and have it end up short or this will happen. If you're going to miss the pass, make it it goes too long or doesn't curl enough.

Keep in mind Herrera is right footed. What is easier, dribbling it forwards 10 yards with no one there, or making a diagonal cross field pass with his off foot? Didn't make sense to me at all.

7) Doubling up on Benteke

We seem to double up on defenders but in my opinion, in unnecessary situations. Last week, I mentioned (see point #2) Smalling helping Blind with Gomis but it wasn't needed.

Here, Blind is sprinting to help Smalling with Benteke. I just don't think it's needed in this case. Benteke is facing backwards from goal and Smalling is more or less as fast and strong as Benteke. What is Benteke going to do in this situation? Spin around and somehow get past Smalling? 

Blind should be staying more central to mark the central Liverpool player who is somewhat unmarked. 

Final thoughts

This game didn't really have the feel of a Manchester United - Liverpool game. I thought it was much too calm and slow most of the time. You know what though? I don't care, as long as we keep winning. 

I think Memphis could use a rest and I expect LVG might play Young ahead of him for a few games. Nothing to worry about, he's young, he's been playing a lot and he's in a new country and a much better league. 

Really looking forward to seeing Martial play more. It'll be interesting to see what we'll line up with when Rooney comes back.

Remember, I don't do write ups for Champions League games. Thanks for reading and see you next week against Southampton!

Side note: if you're not aware of this already, please watch Mahrez play for Leicester. Easily the most exciting player in the league this season so far, he's been incredible.