Chelsea - Manchester United

It's always disappointing to lose but like LVG, I thought we played well. Just the fact that we forced Chelsea to play so defensively at Stamford Bridge shows how much we have improved as a team. It's unfortunate that Carrick and Blind weren't available as I still don't think Rooney is good in midfield and Falcao is honestly not good enough. 

I thought our entire defense played really well (including Valencia) - it definitely helps to have so much possession. Very glad to see Shaw back, he just needs to stay fit.

1) Herrera vs Rooney

Herrera definitely made a couple of bad mistakes that almost led to Chelsea goals but here, I just want to compare his mindset versus Rooney when they're playing in midfield. 

Here, Rooney receives the ball from Valencia and he's already facing forward. I circled two possible options. He can pass to Fellaini, circled in blue. Or he can dribble it a little to his left along the dotted red line and then pass it forward to Mata along the dotted red line. Neither are particularly tough.






















Instead, he immediately turns around and makes a back pass to Smalling. He didn't really do anything wrong here - he kept possession and now Smalling, who has a better view of the field (since he's further back), can pick out a pass. It's also only 6 minutes in and it can be nice to just keep the ball for the bit to settle into the game first.






















Now compare that to Herrera, circled in blue, just a few moments later (from Smalling's pass). He's not facing forward so he has to take the time to turn first (he has plenty of time here).

He turns and now he looks for options to pass to. As you can see, there aren't too many options forward. He has Fellaini to his left and Young to his far left but passing it either one of them doesn't accomplish much since they're relatively well marked. 

So he dribbles to his right a little but nothing comes up and now he turns around and makes a back pass.

Like Rooney, he also kept possession, but the difference is that he looked for forward options first, dribbled around a little to see if he could create something, and then only made a back pass when he found nothing. Rooney immediately went for the back pass even though he had options, didn't even try or think about them. 

Also keep in mind that Herrera is technically supposed to be furthest back in midfield and Rooney is supposed to be the creator in that midfield pairing. 

When I watch Rooney play in midfield, I always feel that he rarely does anything wrong and he's following LVG's instructions perfectly but doesn't put in that extra effort to excel. When I watch Herrera play, he's always asking for the ball even in tight situations and always looking to create something.

2) Smalling has improved so much

Smalling has really impressed me this season, ever since he stupidly got sent off for a rash challenge. What's impressed me the most is that he looks a lot more intelligent as a defender nowadays - I feel he's the only one of our center backs who really think about defending as opposed to relying on pure grit and determination. He's starting to remind me a little of Ferdinand.

This is one of the rare times where I point out positive stuff :)

Example 1:

Chelsea send a ball forward and Smalling (circled in blue) and Hazard are both going for it and they're both about the same distance. 

Since the ball was rolling forward towards Smalling and they were both the same distance, Smalling clearly had the advantage and he gets to the ball first. 

He circles around the ball and shields it and eventually passes it back to De Gea to keep possession for us. 

That's smart defending that I appreciate. I guarantee you if Jones was in that situation, he would have went in for a crunching tackle that would look really cool but he might get injured in the process or just give Chelsea possession.

Example 2:

Here, McNair cleared the ball straight up in the air. You can't see the ball in this picture yet but you see Smalling and a Chelsea player looking up in the sky to get it. It's somewhere above the red arrow.

It's still not visible yet (the clearance went very high). Now, you see Smalling has moved while the Chelsea player hasn't. Basically, Smalling already knows exactly where the ball will fall and he moves to that exact place so he can claim the position.

And now, you can finally see the ball (circled in red) and you see it goes straight to Smalling.

That's the kind of defensive heading anticipation that I saw from Rio Ferdinand a lot. He knew exactly where a long ball would fall to and would just stand here long before the ball gets to him so the opposition player couldn't get it without pushing him out of the way. And now I'm seeing this in Smalling as well.

There's obviously more than 2 examples of Smalling playing well but I just felt these two examples were noteworthy. 

3) Wrong choices

I've said this before but our players often end up automatically passing it to Fellaini no matter what. I understand that, Fellaini will keep possession and usually make a decent pass pretty much no matter what position he's in (that's why he's so good, see my post here, third point).

Example 1:

Here, Mata has the ball and has a ton of space. That's a pretty great position to be in against a Chelsea side that's very disciplined, especially for an attacking midfielder like Mata. I circled Falcao as he's a decent option to pass to. However, I think the best option for Mata was to just shoot. It's a little far away but the ball is already on his left foot, it's already rolling forward and he has so much space. He's scored goals like these before.

Instead, he passes it out wide to Fellaini. By the time the ball even gets to Fellaini, he's closed down by three Chelsea players and he can only pass it back to Young for Young to cross it in. But now look at how many Chelsea players are defending the possible cross compared to only Mata and Falcao running into the box.  

Example 2:

Just a few moments later, we end up getting in that same exact situation again but with Rooney!

Now Rooney is right footed and from this angle and distance, I don't think shooting would have been a good idea (like it was for Mata). But all he had to do was make a simple through pass for Falcao to run onto along the red arrow.

Instead, like Mata, he crosses it out wide to Fellaini. I circled the ball in red - look how much harder the pass was and how difficult of a situation it puts Fellaini in, compared to just a simple forward pass to Falcao.

4) I've lost hope for Falcao

I was so excited to have him on our team at the beginning of the season. Now, instead of hoping that he'll do something amazing and bang in a few goals against Chelsea, I just hold my breathe and hope that when the ball gets to Falcao, it doesn't bounce away.

Example 1:

Just look at this. The ball is played to Falcao more or less on the ground (it bobbles a little, can't tell from this picture) and he has no one around him.

Somehow, the ball hits his foot and it bounces straight up into the air. Because of that heavy touch, now the Chelsea players are closer to him and also, he can't do anything but just head the ball back to our players. 

Any decent striker who gets the ball in that position with space like that would have turned and looked to shoot or create something. Just compare this to Fellaini who cushions and traps the ball in much tighter spaces. 

Example 2:

LVG said in the post match conference that Terry fouled Falcao and that was the reason we lost the ball there. I agree, it was obviously a foul but you know what, uncalled fouls happen all the time and you have to expect it. 

Falcao either could have been stronger for the goal or he could have been smarter but he was neither. 

You see this is a little bit before Falcao/Terry reaches the ball. You can see that Terry is very tight on Falcao already, so Falcao knows he has pressure behind him. Why is Falcao leaning back and waiting for the ball to get to him? Why didn't he just run to the ball and make a simple back pass to Rooney along the blue arrow? Running to the ball and not waiting for it to come to you is a VERY basic training principle that kids learn at a very young age.

Okay, so now he waited for the ball and the ball gets to him. Sorry for the blurry picture - Terry clearly has an elbow on Falcao's head. What you should also see is that Falcao has his right foot on top of the ball. Why does he put his foot on top of the ball? That's not a stable position at all and makes him very easy to knock over. If he had both feet on the ground upon receiving the ball, he would have been much more stable and even with a foul, might have been able to remain standing or at least shield the ball better.

And you know what? If he was going to fall because Terry was fouling him, he should have fell down on top of the ball or just grabbed the ball with his hands. It's cynical but it's smart - it forces the referee to either acknowledge the foul or stop play to call a handball (and if the referee doesn't stop play, well, you're on lying on or holding onto the ball with your hands, can't lose it then). 

Fellaini did this several times during the game. It's a little shady but it stops counter attacks and the difference between someone who wants to win and someone who complains because something unfair happened.

Example 3:

Shaw throws the ball in along the dotted red line to Falcao. It's a good throw and the ball is going straight to Falcao's chest. Falcao is in a pretty stable position and the Chelsea defender behind him can't intercept it.

Except Falcao is much too weak here, he lets himself get pushed forward, he loses his position and we lose the ball. It might have been a tiny foul from the Chelsea defender (I think it's Cahill) but it wasn't much and Falcao 100% should have been able to take the ball on the chest in that position. He's not a small guy like Mata but he lets himself get absolutely bullied by defenders. 

Example 4:

I'm just sticking this one here but Falcao isn't the only one to blame here, it's partly our style of playing as well.

We're doing a goal and we get the ball from a Chelsea corner, it's a perfect counter attacking opportunity. Mata (the player with the ball here) looks up and the only person in front of him is Ashley Young (first, gotta appreciate how hard Young works). Where's Falcao? He's not even in this frame! He's still pretty much in our own penalty area when he should be already in the area that I labeled Falcao. 

If he's going to be our lone striker and we're down a goal, we have to expect him to be sprinting forward in situations like these. A few seconds later, Falcao comes into view and he's just jogging, not even trying to get forward. I understand why Rooney might have stayed back - you can't have midfielders just busting forward at every opportunity, but there's absolutely no reason why our only striker isn't the first player forward.

I didn't even bother showing his missed chances here and some other bad touches. If Wilson played like Falcao played, we would say he had a bad game and Wilson is only a youngster with no experience. 

Conclusion

I'm still very pleased at the way we played. I really hope Blind/Carrick comes back so we have put Rooney up front again - solves the problems of Rooney being bad in midfield and Falcao being a bad striker. I really hope Young and Mata keep their starting places as I don't think Di Maria played well at all coming on and he hasn't shown enough to take Young's spot. 

Thanks for reading!

Manchester United - Manchester City

Great match this weekend, a win over City scoring 4 goals, really a big turn around compared to earlier in the season when we could barely score! Again I was really impressed by Fellaini - basically any time one of our players doesn't know where to pass the ball, all they have to do is kick it somewhere within his vicinity and he magically cushions it on his chest. 

We really do have a good balance in our team right now - Young/Mata have a lot of pressure on them as they're keeping Di Maria and Januzaj out of the team but they're playing so well and fit so well with our team balance I don't see Di Maria taking a starting position over either of them. 

Looking over my notes, I didn't really have much to criticize after the 60th minute. We were up 2-1 at that point and mostly just keeping possession and after being up 4-1, nothing really mattered. One problem I noticed is that when Di Maria and Falcao gets subbed on, the balance of our team and our team chemistry seems to get thrown off. 

Most of my points will be on our defense which I thought was awful today. I'm not sure why Jones started over Rojo (could be a lot of reasons, maybe Rojo had a little cold, impossible to know). I promised myself when I was taking notes that I would omit anything I saw from Valencia - I'm only going to make one point about him briefly because otherwise I can spend 3 hours writing about his mistakes every single game.

1) Valencia still doesn't know how to throw the ball

Just getting Valencia out of the way before I move on.

Example 1:You see his back foot in the air? This one he actually got lucky and it was still touching the ground when he released the ball but if he was throwing with proper form, his foot should be touching the ground still (since he should be dragging the toe against the turf).





















Example 2:

He throws it back to our center back (Smalling) in our own half instead of just going forward along the blue arrow. You can't tell from this picture but the ball is bouncing and it's not easy for Smalling to deal with it. 



This is the end result, pretty stressful situation and we didn't even keep possession. 





Example 3:

This is from the same throw in as the picture above. I can't believe that from a simple throw in, I can find two things that are obviously wrong.

You see he's still touching the ball even though it's already way past his head - that's an illegal throw in (even the commentator on NBC mentioned it). You can find a source here, it says "delivers the ball from behind and over his head." This is not behind his head. This isn't a rare rule or anything - referees will call this often and a professional player in charge of throwing the ball in should know this.

2) Jones makes too many careless mistakes

Example 1

Jones has the ball here and he has two options to his left - either forward to Ashley Young or back to Blind. He has time and space and is under no real pressure here.



Except for some reason, he continues dribbling the ball towards Young (instead of passing it to him immediately) and this is the end result.  




















Example 2:

Jones has the ball here after a simple back pass from Blind. 

This is the result, we lose the ball (but get it back a few seconds later fortunately). I think he panics here and takes a really heavy touch because he senses a City playing closing him down behind him but you see by the picture above that he had a lot of space and a lot of options.

Example 3:

Jones is circled in blue. The easy pass here is just a simple 5 foot pass to Carrick who is open. 

Instead, he passes it back to De Gea and the pass is a little too soft and it's a little too close for comfort. At this point, De Gea has no time to pick out a pass and he boots it long and we lose possession. 

Example 4:

Just look at this below picture - we're not in any danger at all. The City player is surrounded, we have a bunch of players back, Aguero (bottom left) is even offside. Jones, circled in blue, ends up doing the only thing that could have created danger for us - he fouled the City player.

It wasn't an accidental foul or a dive - it was just a blatant one for no reason.

The good side of Jones

Sometimes I feel a little bad for continuously criticizing players since I'm a fan of all of team and the entire team but that's the point of this blog. Can't improve if you don't recognize your mistakes.

Below here is Jones (circled in blue) at his best. City are counter attacking and you see the City player (Milner) is much closer to the ball. Jones rushes forward and makes a perfect clean tackle to intercept the pass and completely stop the counter attack. He's fantastic in these type of situations - the do or die situations where if you don't get the ball, the opposition will score.

3) The back line is (still) a mess

Gary Neville probably has a squeaky ass from watching our mess of a back line. It's never organized and we have players dropping back unnecessarily and playing opposition players onside all the time. It's not surprising given that both our left and right backs aren't really fullbacks and playing a flat line can be very uncomfortable to players who aren't used to it because it means leaving the opposition unmarked (and offside if done right).

Example 1:

Blind is playing the City player onside (I think it's Aguero here). If Blind was further forward, along the red line, that immediately takes out one passing option for the City player. I also circled Yaya Toure in blue here because with Blind this far back, the City player can just dink the ball over the top for Yaya Toure to run onto (via the blue arrow) and Toure doesn't have to worry about being offside so he can just sprint forward. You don't want someone with the pace and power of Toure running onto the ball this way, even if it is Smalling and he has nice pace and power as well. We got lucky here as the City player passed it  out wide.

Example 2:

This again is a defensive line miscommunication. Smalling (circled in blue) steps up to play the City player offside here but Blind (circled in red), doesn't step up and plays the City player onside. De Gea ends up rushing forward to clear the ball here. 

I'm not sure that Smalling should have stepped up - I think he stepped up a little late but as a full back, Blind should be looking at his center back and stepping up with him. The center back leads the defensive line here and the full back shouldn't be lagging behind. It's not like Blind was able to cover for Smalling be staying back here as he's on the wrong side of the City player that he's playing onside. 

Example 3:

City are counter attacking him and Blind is sprinting back to cover his man (Aguero). The problem here is that he continues his sprint back behind our center backs. The black dotted line shows our defensive line according to our center backs and you see Blind is behind it thus ruining the line (I know it's not a very straight line but you get the point). 

All Blind had to do here was to stop running as soon as he reached our defensive line and it would have forced Aguero to stop running as well. 

I also circled Smalling here in blue because you can see he immediately realizes that Blind is about to ruin their line and you see he already turned back to retreat and cover for every one. That was a really good read on the situation and required very fast thinking, great job Smalling. 

There's a lot more examples of our back line not being disciplined. It might seem like Blind is the only weak link since he's the subject of my examples but a lot of them were due to Valencia - just remember that I promised not to write more about Valencia :) My guess is that Blind doesn't feel comfortable playing the offside trap/high line because he's probably the slowest defender out of the four on the pitch.

4) One fault of Carrick

Just know that I'm one of Carrick's biggest fans and the Scholes/Carrick midfield pairing was one of my favorites, so much class there. He's definitely not perfect and I just noticed a situation during this game where one of his major weaknesses was shown.

Here, Carrick receives the ball and he basically stays rooted to the spot. He immediately starts searching for a pass but you can see here that he doesn't have a lot of easy options. Instead, he should have dribbled the ball forward somewhere along the red arrow as there was a big gap in that middle space for him to dribble into. It would have opened up options for him and pulled City players out of position.

This was something that I remember Roy Keane was really good at doing. Darren Fletcher at his best was also pretty good at doing this. Herrera is also good at exploiting gaps by dribbling into them. Even when he was younger, Carrick just lacked the forward drive and mobility that a complete central midfielder needs, hence why he's much better as a deep lying playmaker. 

5) Some Rooney mistakes/faults

Remember all those posts about Rooney's mistakes when he was playing in midfield? I think he's doing a great job as a striker for us but again, he's not perfect. He lacks a certain creativity and trickiness that players like Mata has and often tends to go for the most obvious pass. 

Here, he makes the obvious pass out wide to Valencia along the blue arrow but the better pass that would have resulted in a high chance of scoring would have been a reverse pass to Fellaini along the red arrow. The black arrow shows the direction Fellaini and Valencia are running - Fellaini is running towards the opposition goal and a pass to him would likely have resulted in Fellaini shooting at goal while Valencia is running straight forward it would likely result in a cross. 

The thing is, Rooney is perfectly capable and has the awareness of making that reverse pass to Fellaini. Here's Mata's goal below - it's a very similar situation as Rooney is facing right but in this case, there's no one there this time so he's forced to reverse it to Mata who ends up scoring. 

Another mistake

Rooney has matured a lot and he's turning out to be a great captain but he squandered an opportunity here by arguing with the referee. He was fouled and instead of getting on with it and running forward, he had a few words with the referee first.

This is when he gets fouled and he's on the ground, notice the time says 51:01.

Here, he just stops arguing with the referee and starts focusing back on the game. He realizes that Mata is about to get the ball. Look at the referee's body language versus Rooney's - the referee is ready to sprint forward because he realizes that we're about to attack while Rooney isn't ready to sprint forward yet. 

Mata now has the ball and the problem is that he has no one in front of him to pass to now. If Rooney wasn't arguing with the referee (who likely just waited to play advantage for the foul on Rooney), he would have been in the blue circled area for Mata to make a through pass to. 

Notice how City's left back is lagging behind? That gap between the left back and City's center backs is the perfect area for a striker to exploit. That's only about 5-10 yards further forward than Rooney is in this picture and Rooney could have easily covered that distance in the time he spent arguing.

 Conclusion

Thanks for reading, great weekend this week! I think our midfield and attack is very good but our defense needs a lot of work. I really want Shaw to come back and we really need a proper right back (or Rafael to start playing and not get injured). Things are looking good for us, lets keep up this great form!

Aston Villa - Manchester United

Ah, finally back to the Premier League! I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of international friendlies, just seems like a waste of time and puts additional stress on the players and there's always a chance of them returning injured.

Great performance today, looks like LVG's philosophy is finally getting through and our team chemistry looks good. We're still a work in progress but as long as there's progress, I'm happy.

1) Does Blind/LVG read this blog?

Just joking but Herrera's first goal was extra special for me because I spent two previous posts writing about him being in that spot and not getting the pass from Blind. The Liverpool game, second point ("Blind ignoring the midfielder as a left back") and the Tottenham game, first point ("The effect of playing with a tall man").

I circled Blind and Herrera. You see Herrera is wide open for a pass and instead of forcing a cross, Blind ends up making a short pass to Herrera who shoots it in.

Here's the two pictures from the two previous posts showing the exact same scenario but Blind opts to cross it instead.

This goal that Herrera scored has been at least 2-3 weeks in the making and although it was Herrera's brilliance, I have to give credit to LVG and the backroom staff as they clearly saw this through video analysis and fixed it.

2) Again, Valencia is the weak link

I actually think Valencia did a pretty good job and played well today but as our team plays better, I have less to criticize and I find that most of the things I notice end up being Valencia's mistakes.

Example 1:

Aston Villa sends a long pass forward and Valencia is dealing with it. It's kind of at an awkward height for him as it's bouncing but the ideal area for him is to just kick it somewhat hard into the giant blue circled area. If he kicks it too soft, Smalling will deal with it and if he kicks it too hard, De Gea will deal with it. There's no one near the blue circled area so there's a lot of room for error.

Instead, he goes for this ridiculous flick pass behind Smalling and you see in the picture below, Smalling has to turn around and chase it. Nothing really happened from it but you can see the Aston Villa player was close enough to the ball to cause some discomfort. 

You never want to cause an uncomfortable situation or go for a risky flick pass, especially one that's directed back to the center of the pitch. 

Example 2:

Here, the Aston Villa player is dribbling it forward down our right side and Valencia is defending him. In Valencia's position, he has two choices 1) make a perfect slide tackle and get the ball cleanly 2) don't step in and force/keep him out wide and block the cross or the cut back.

Valencia isn't a natural defender and he has plenty of pace and strength so that second option is easily the best one. However, not only does he not pick the second option, he instead goes for the "in-between" option - he makes a half hearted tackle because he's too scared to give away a penalty and the Aston Villa skips past him easily. 

I hate picking on Valencia as I think he's a great professional and a great person to have on the team but he just keeps making awkward mistakes that stick out to me. Also, if you look at the rest of the picture, our entire defense is a mess. That's my next point.

3) Defensive mess

Rojo is probably our best center back but both him and Jones are athletic based players who tend to defend with athleticism and instinct rather than with intelligence. They both tend to make rash decisions (obviously Jones much more so). 

Rojo and Jones are circled in blue and Valencia and Blind are circled in red in the below picture. Do you see something wrong with that? Fullbacks having to go central to cover for center backs being out of position is just awful. In a standard back four, the fullbacks should be slightly ahead of the center backs as they have more attacking duties and technically, the players they're marking at the opposition wingers who are in midfield as opposed to the opposition strikers. They simply shouldn't be in this position shown below.

The way this happened was that Rojo was too aggressive trying to get a defensive header over Benteke (who's probably at least 20lbs heavier and has a few inches on Rojo) and missed the header. Benteke flicked it forward and then Jones rushed forward to attempt a tackle on the Aston Villa player who was dribbling it forward instead of just defending him. 

Remember Vidic? First, he wouldn't miss a defensive header - if he was going for it, no one was stopping him. And second, if somehow he did, Ferdinand would be there to cover for him instead of foolishly rushing forward and getting dribbled past. 

4) Still too clustered, spread out!

From what I've read, I'm fairly certain that this isn't an intentional thing as LVG seems to like to use all the space available on the pitch. I think it's just an ongoing tactical discipline issue that we're working on. I've mentioned this several times before (here's one example, the second point from Tottenham game "defensive issues, overcrowding").

You see below, Blind is chasing the ball and Herrera is right next to him with Rooney standing there watching, only 5 feet from Fellaini. At this point, neither team really has control of the ball so our team should be prepared for anything. You can also see that Carrick (top left of the picture) has dropped back to cover for Blind. Herrera and Rooney should both be at the position of where I drew the blue arrow instead. That way, if we get the ball, then Blind has plenty of options to play a pass to (Herrera would be wide open in the center of midfield). If we don't get the ball, then Herrera would be able to intercept or at least block any pass that goes towards the Aston Villa players on the left lower side of the picture.

End result, Aston Villa gets the ball and the Aston Villa player has a ton of space on our right side due to Herrera being out of position and our players have to sprint and scramble back.

It's not only just smarter positioning - if Herrera was properly positioned, it would have saved him a lot of running. I think that's the kind of positioning he was referring to in his interview when he said LVG didn't play him due to tactical disciplinary reasons.

5) The switch to (almost) 5 man defense again

Again, this is a recurring "problem" as I've mentioned it multiple times. I put "problem" in quotations as I'm don't really think it's a bad tactic especially since we're up a goal but our team never really plays well with a 5 man back line and it seems to invite pressure on us and nullify any attacking threat we have.

This is a moment at the 50th to 51st minute and we have firm possession of the ball. It's the second half and we're up a goal. That's Carrick that I circled in red. You notice that he's pretty much the deepest player here and there's no one occupying the blue circled area that he left  open by dropping so deep. 

This is during the 26th minute of the first half. That's Rojo circled in red with the ball as the deepest outfield player. Carrick, circled in blue is in the center area that he wasn't in in the above picture.

This was clearly a tactical change by LVG and not Carrick just drifting deeper. I personally don't like it but it's not a terrible thing to play a little deeper and more cautiously after going up 1-0.

Conclusion

I'm still undecided about Rojo and I think he might look good only compared to our other center backs who are worse (although Smalling has been really good). With him and Jones, it's just too much brainless aggression - with Smalling as his partner to cover for him, he looks okay. Vidic was an aggressive center back who would rush out and fly over attackers to get a defensive header but that was okay because he almost always got the ball. Rojo tends to do the same thing but he misses the ball quite a bit and it leaves him out of position. I didn't write too much on it this post, maybe save that for a future post but it's just something I've noticed when I watch him play.

Thanks for reading, I'm glad the Premier League is back on again after the international break!