Crystal Palace - Manchester United

Really feels like the season is ending now but still a few more games to go! I thought we played pretty badly today but managed to squeeze out a good result which is always nice. Young is continuing with his good form and Fellaini once again shows his usefulness.

1) Shaw feels right at left back

Example 1:

For me, Blind playing at left back always feels a little odd and while he does a good job there, Shaw just feels more natural to me playing there, even though sometimes I find it hard to describe. 

Here's him with good awareness of holding the defensive line and being part of the back four unit. He knows Bolasie is making a run and he sees that the pass is going to be played to Bolasie and he starts running to mark him.

But he also knows that Smalling and Jones are holding their line so instead of following and marking Bolasie, he steps up and plays him offside. 

Compare that to this (from the match against City) where Blind is playing at left back: 

Very similar situation and Blind breaks down our defensive line. You even see that our centerback realizes he's broken it and he has to start running back to cover - in the pictures of Shaw today, you see that our centerbacks are relaxed.

2) Switch the play!

I often criticize Rooney for making first time diagonal passes but in this case, we needed someone to do that.

This would be better with a moving GIF but I don't know how to make those so I just uploaded a picture of every touch. Here, Valencia has the ball.

He passes it to Herrera who passes it back to him immediately. Notice that Blind is completely open.

Valencia passes it down the line to Mata (I think). Notice that Blind is still completely open. Also, notice that all three of them on the right are well marked by three Crystal Palace players. 

It goes back towards Valencia again and now we see Smalling coming back from up front to help out.

The ball gets to Smalling and he still tries to force a pass to our right wing (again, I think its Mata). 

Blind is open the entire time during this sequence! All they needed to do was to just turn and look left and they would have found space but instead, they tried to do it the hard way. If this was in a more dangerous position closer to the Crystal Palace goal, it might be worth doing something intricate but this was too far away and they should have taken advantage of Blind being completely open. It's general field awareness that players like Herrera need to develop (which Scholes was the master of - I would bet that at any given moment, Scholes would be able to tell you the position of every player on the pitch without looking).

Example 2:

This one isn't too Shaw specific but I think it just shows how well Shaw blends in and works with our center backs as a unit. Here, the ball goes over the top and that's Smalling, Jones and Shaw all defending their respective players. Jones is a little forward since he's the aggressive center back, Smalling is further back as a sweeper type and Shaw is marking is man.

The ball doesn't really fall right for us and it goes over Shaw. The important thing here is that our defenders are all still marking their players and tracking their runs.

Eventually, De Gea gathers it and you see that now, Jones is furthest back, Shaw is moved Central and Smalling is on the left. Despite this switch in position, all of them are still marking their respective players. 

It's kind of hard to show with just pictures but this sequence just stuck out to me because Jones, Smalling, and Shaw all knew exactly what to do and there was no confusion about where to run or who to mark. It was an example of perfectly fluid defending by a coordinated unit.

3) Blind's needs to work on his defensive covering

At the beginning/middle of the season, I didn't think there was a big difference between Carrick and Blind in the defensive midfield role, but now that I've seen more of Blind in that position, I realized Carrick is definitely the better player in the role. Blind still hasn't had too many games there so obviously he can still improve and he could still turn out to be excellent there.

Example 1: 

Just look at this - this is a Crystal Palace attack and their number 7 (Bolasie) is completely open. Shaw has rightly moved centrally to defend the player with the ball. 

A few seconds later, Blind and Fellaini (red arrows) finally come back to cover him - it was much too long and if the Crystal Palace player just did a back heel flick, it would have been an easy goal. Also notice that Fellaini is back but he's also playing much further up, almost as a striker for us and he's covering back here because Blind wasn't covering. 

I went back a few more seconds to look at their initial positions and I found Blind, circled in red. I have no idea why Blind is all the way there when we have so many other players there. Fellaini is there because this was from a Crystal Palace goal kick and he was there to help with a defensive header. Blind should have been in the red circled area and if he was, he would have been in a much better position to mark the Crystal Palace player.  

Example 2:

Here, Crystal Palace send a cross in and there's two Crystal Palace players on top of the box with no one marking them. That's the job of the pivot/defensive midfielder/deep playmaker and that was clearly Blind's role. The furthest midfielder we have back and the closest one to marking them is Fellaini (circled in blue) and Fellaini is playing much further forward. Blind (circled in red, Herrera is circled in black) should be right at the top of the 18 yard box even just going by position alone, even ignoring the two unmarked Crystal Palace players there.

Example 3:

Palace are attacking on the left with Bolasie dribbling the ball down the line and Smalling defending him. There's a Crystal Palace player making a run through the middle, circled in blue. I also circled Blind who I feel should already be a little closer to him. That's his job, to cover the midfield runners. This isn't too bad of a mistake yet.

Except now, Blind lets the runner continue without following him. Yes, we have a defender there to cover the cross in that area but when our defender is standing still and the opposition midfielder is running forward, it's extremely dangerous to let the defender take over because the midfielder gets a running start for a header. Blind should be tracking and following him all the way - going by a simple rule, defenders mark strikers and midfielders mark midfielders.

3) Fellaini works hard and has been playing more intelligently

This sequence stuck out to me because Fellaini not only worked hard but more importantly, he used his brains to defend here. 

Below, Fellaini had just made a bad pass and the ball gets to a Crystal Palace player (Bolasie) who dribbles it straight down the line at pace.

Fellaini sprints back to defend his dribble (which is expected of someone who just gave the ball away due to a bad pass). You see, Bolasie has him completely beaten for pace and it's very easy to just take the easy way out and clip his heel here and give away a foul. But there's no need to because Jones is there to cover and Fellaini knows that.

He basically just follows Bolasie until he runs into the corner and falls over by himself. That's perfect, composed and intelligent defending. You see players often give away dumb fouls because they just made a mistake and get frustrated but Fellaini avoids this trap.

4) Herrera gets drawn to the ball too easily

Herrera is great because he has great movement and he's always looking to run into space and receive to ball. The problem is that even defensively, he's always looking for the ball.

Example 1:

Below, he's circled in blue. You see that he's looking at the ball and he's running towards the ball. He's not thinking about where he should be and about the Crystal Palace player that's completely free (at the bottom of the picture).

And eventually, the ball gets to that Crystal Palace player and because Herrera was too deep from chasing the ball, he's given the Crystal Palace player much too space to work with.

Example 2:

Here, the Crystal Palace playing is getting his head onto a long ball. Herrera is at the top of the penalty area and he should be anticipating that the ball will go along the blue dotted line and be ready to or start running along the red arrowed line. He should know that there's a Crystal Palace player behind him making a run (Fellaini is defending him but is wrong sided so Herrera should still cover in front).

Except that Herrera is too slow because he's watching the ball and reacting to it as opposed to anticipating where the ball will go. The ball goes past him to the Crystal Palace player and Fellaini does some remarkable defending even though he's wrong sided.

That's already one mistake. Now, Fellaini has the Crystal Palace player contained and Herrera is looking/running towards the ball. The problem is that another Crystal Palace player is making a run (red arrow) and has gotten in front of Evans (an Evans mistake). Herrera has to have better awareness of someone running just a few feet from him but he's too focused on the ball.

The ball gets to the now open Crystal Palace player for an open shot about 12 yards from goal. Forunately, De Gea magic saved us once again.  

I think I've mentioned this lack of awareness a few times in the past, most memorably here (Everton), point number 6. This is something I'll be looking to see him improve next season or I can't see LVG continuing to start him over a midfielder who has better defensive awareness.

5) A neat trick

Just wanted to point out a neat trick players do to fool the ref. You see below, it looks like Smalling is grabbing/hugging the Crystal Palace player with his left arm, especially to the red. Except that it's actually the Crystal Palace player grabbing onto Smalling's left arm and holding it to make it look like Smalling is fouling him.

Not much you can do, it's a pretty convincing trick in real time and if Smalling tries to get his arm out, the player will just fall and it'll look like Smalling dragged him down. Try it next time you play ;)

Conclusion

I'm a little worried about the lack of defensive awareness/positioning Herrera and Blind are showing and it's Fellaini who seems to be there at the back covering even though he's supposed to be playing further forward than either of them. This is likely contributing largely to our decline in form since Carrick has been injured and why there's so many rumors of us looking for another midfielder still.

Let's hope for a Chelsea victory tomorrow to assure our place in the top 4 :)

Manchester United - West Brom

Another bad result but I really didn't think it was as bad as some people are suggesting. Their goal was off a lucky deflection, they didn't create too many clear cut chances, while we had some decent shots on goal, a lot of decent chances and a missed penalty. Big difference having RVP back as he provides so much more and can create a shot out of nothing. I thought Smalling looked really good again and he looks like he's turning into the defensive leader that we've needed - he just needs to stay fit.

1) Risky passes out wide don't work

It's only a minute in and we're passing it around nicely and then the ball gets to Rooney and he immediately blasts it out wide to Young, along the red dotted line.

Young here is marked by two players and even with a perfect pass, Young has a trap the difficult from a difficult long pass and somehow get pass two other players before he can create a chance. That's not worth a risky diagonal pass because the reward is so little. I barely care about the result of the pass but it wasn't even a good pass and Young was nowhere near to getting the ball.

If Rooney wanted to make a nice Hollywood long pass, he should have long passed it forward along the black line to RVP. It's a risky pass but if it does come off, RVP will directly have a shot. 

Or a better choice here (and I think in more accordance with LVG's style), would be just a short pass to Smalling who passes it to Herrera (blue arrows) since Herrera is in some space.

My point is that the risk:reward ratio is too low when doing long diagonals when the winger is well marked. At best, it might result in a cross - save the risky long passes for central strikers and only do diagonal passes out wide if the winger is in plenty of space. 

2) Why does LVG have Valencia marking Lescott?

I already touched upon this last week against Everton, 2nd point (2nd goal) with Valencia marking John Stones (a center back) but it's even worse this week. Lescott is a giant beast of a center back and very good aerially, so why is our former winger turned right back marking him for set pieces? It's not like Valencia has ever been good in the air.

Example 1:

This is from a West Brom corner, Valencia and Lescott marked with blue arrows.

This is the result. Valencia is on the ground and Lescott gets a free header which fortunately goes straight to De Gea. 

Example 2:

Another corner, same thing. West Brom clearly have the height advantage - you see Rooney is marking Dawson and McNair is marking Olson and neither of those pairings are ideal either. But at least McNair is a center back and Rooney can be decent in the air.

The result: Lescott gets another free header.

LVG isn't really making Valencia look good by giving him such a big mismatch with these marking assignments. I noticed that Blind was marking Berahino and I felt they could have switched - Blind has played center back and is taller than Valencia. Berahino is a shorter and pacey forward and that would have been perfect for Valencia to mark.

Obviously, Tony Pulis realized this mismatch because they exploited it multiple times, going straight for Lescott off set pieces.

3) This is some terrible marking

Look at this defending off a West Brom throw in. Why do we have four players defending two West Brom players for a throw in, leaving the blue circled player completely open in a dangerous area? 

It's hard to even tell whose fault it was since movement is more fluid than one picture but I think it's mostly Herrera being too deep (number 4). Fellaini (number 3) should be further up but I think he's covering for Valencia. Mata (number 1) probably shouldn't be standing that close as he doesn't really end up defending anyone. It's just a complete mess of defensive organization. 

A few seconds later, the camera shows Smalling yelling at them for this mess.

4) Why doesn't Rooney just shoot?

As I mentioned above, risky passes out wide are no good but anytime you have the opportunity to get a decent shot on target, you should take it (unless there's someone in a very obviously better position). It's a very good risk:reward ratio - at best could lead to a goal, might lead to a corner, and at worst just lose possession.

We saw RVP having several nice shots coming from deep but I didn't see Rooney do it enough (there was one or two but he had many more opportunities).

Example 1:

Rooney is cutting in from our left, the ball is on his favored right foot. He should have dribbled it forward a little bit more along the red arrow and just shot. We saw him do these types of shots a few years ago when he played as a wide left forward occasionally and Thierry Henry used to be great at those. 

Instead, Rooney opted for a pass out wide to Mata. It's not a bad play but I'd rather have one of our best strikers go for a shot in a dangerous area than have it go wide and hope for a good cross.

Example 2:

Again, similar area but Rooney is already closer and more central. The ball is on Rooney's favored right. He immediately passes it to RVP along the blue arrow but RVP still has a bit to do because the ball is slightly behind him so he wasn't facing goal when he received the ball. Rooney was already in prime shooting position, he should have taken the shot.

We used to see him attempt these shots and he'd score from them, not sure why he isn't even thinking about them now.

5) Why doesn't Rooney just dribble?

Example 1:

We're counter attacking and Rooney has the ball, already dribbled forward a bit so he's on the move already. All he had to do was just continue dribbling forward along the red arrow. Instead, he swings it out wide to Mata. You can see that the result would even have been the same - the ball would have advanced forward about ten yards either way but dribbling ten yards forward into empty space is much easier than a long pass.

And here's the result. It's such a long pass that Lescott intercepts it before it reaches Mata. Opportunity lost. 

Example 2:

Rooney has the ball and Herrera, circled in black had made a forward run and the West Brom player follows him. This opens up a giant gap in midfield for Rooney to run into along the red arrow and Rooney is facing that direction already. I'm not sure if you can tell this from the picture, but Rooney's body language is that he's looking for a nice pass.

He couldn't find anything so he just makes a back pass to Smalling eventually.  

If he just held on to the ball and dribbled it forward, something might have opened up for him. 

The thing is, shooting and dribbling are both things we know Rooney is pretty good at so I don't know why he doesn't do it anymore. 

6) Let the midfielders do their job

Here's a little pet peeve I have.

Valencia has the ball here and he has an easy five foot pass to Herrera, circled in blue.

Instead, he opts for this ridiculous diagonal pass to Young. Valencia has a lot of good qualities (despite my critcisms) but long passing and playmaking isn't one of them.   

You can see the result below, sorry for the blurry picture. Young is well marked before the ball even reaches him and we lose the ball.

There's a reason why we have Herrera in the team playing centrally and there's a reason why Valencia isn't playing central midfield. His job is to protect and run down the wing, not to play make centrally. He should have just given it to Herrera for Herrera to do something.

7) An example of how Valencia's pace and hard work saves him

These are two of his good qualities. Here, he's defending high up, against a West Brom counterattack. If he was smart, he'd stay back and left the West Brom player (Fletcher) come to him first.

Instead, he steps in/forward and Fletcher flicks the back over him and now he's a few feet behind Fletcher.

And you see in the next instance that by the time Fletcher controls the ball, Valencia is back to defend him again.  

This works if you have Valencia's pace and power. The problem is, Valencia ended up running forwards and backwards needlessly - would have achieved the same result if he just stayed back a little. 

Conclusion

I didn't even bother going into Di Maria's disastrous introduction. He's not dribbling, he loses the ball and he doesn't look motivated. You'll notice I haven't wrote about him at all and that's because all his mistakes are so obvious there's no point in talking about it. 

Again, I really feel people are overreacting to our three losses. Our first one was a loss against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and I have to admit Chelsea are the better team anyways and they're at home with Mourinho at the helm. The next loss was against Everton and while the scoreline looked bad, Everton at home has always been a tough fixture for us. And now this one against West Brom is the worst loss but West Brom with Tony Pulis managing have been really difficult to break down for a lot of teams this season and I think we were just really unlucky with not scoring and their goal. 

I think we'll be fine and we're still showing many positive things. I expect we'll recover from this and I trust LVG to help us contend for the title next year.

Everton - Manchester United

Terrible result but I don't think we really played all that badly. We just made some crucial mistakes and De Gea wasn't able to miraculously save us this time. Playing Everton at home was always a tough fixture and Martinez managed to exploit our weaknesses that we've had all season.

1) Are we trying to play it more centrally?

I obviously can't find examples but to me, I felt like the first half, we tried to play it through the middle and after half time, it looked like LVG instructed our players to play it out on the wings to our fullbacks more.

Example 1:

Here's Mata trying to make a through pass for Rooney except Rooney runs out wide instead. This screenshot is maybe half a second late since it shows Rooney already running but it's sufficient to show the breakdown in chemistry here. Mata expects Rooney to run more centrally since he's the main/sole striker and he's also someone who likes to make assists. By making the pass along the red arrow, if Rooney had run towards goal instead, if might have lead to a goal. However, Rooney runs wide to receive the ball which means that even if Mata had passed it wide to him, there are extra steps to creating the goal.

With Herrera and Mata, they both seem a little more direct and centrally oriented than Rooney. 

Example 2:

Here, Blind has the ball and he tries to force a pass centrally along the red arrow to Herrera. You can see it's a pretty tight pass and relatively high risk - it actually ended up being intercepted. If he did manage to get to Herrera, then Herrera is in a great position to do something.

Both the examples I made were actually bad passes by Mata and Blind, respectively. The point is that I could see them attempting the central/direct passes and it was a little more central/direct that I've seen us play. I'm not sure if it was because we were down by 1 already and attempting to create more, or if this was LVG's game plan from the start. I just know that in the second half we didn't attempt passes like these.

2) Valencia was at fault for all 3 goals

Unfortunately I have to mention him again since his mistakes influenced our game so much. He definitely wasn't the only person at fault but he made crucial mistakes in all three goals.

Goal 1:

Everton's first goal came as a result a counterattack off our corner, which means our central backs were pushed up front, with our full backs covering, which is a pretty standard set up. The ball goes high up in the air and Valencia is about to get a defensive header on it. You see he's in front of Lukaku and in a good position to head it (I know, it's hard to tell from one picture only). All he has to go here is head the ball as hard as he can towards Fellaini and the counter attack danger is diverted.

Instead, he makes a complete hash of the header, just look. It actually hits his right shoulder and he ends up in the position below and then you already know what happened. It wasn't a hard defensive header at all.

There were mistakes from Blind, Herrera, others late on and Everton got a pretty lucky bounce but if Valencia had just made this one easy header, the entire danger would have been cut out.

Goal 2:

This one was probably the most understandable mistake and honestly, it was a ridiculous header. Scoring from that kind of position off a corner is pretty darn hard.

Valencia is marking John Stones. You can see here that he's already not tight enough on him. 

Stones didn't make any trick runs and Valencia wasn't blocked off. It was just a simple sprint from the penalty spot to near post and you see that Valencia isn't remotely close enough to even put any pressure on Stones. If he was just a little closer, it might have been enough to put Stones off and make him miss. 

It's difficult to defend a near post run since the attacker will likely get to the ball first - as a defender, you can't let him get behind you so chances are, he will get to the ball first if you keep him in front of you. Valencia's job was to just put some pressure on him or give him a small nudge to throw off his header.

One thing I question though is why Valencia is marking the opposition center back. Valencia isn't too short but full backs rarely mark center backs as in general, center backs are much better in the air and taller. Valencia clearly isn't good in the air and that's acceptable as a full back so why did LVG have him mark Stones? 

Goal 3:

Well this one is just obvious, not going to bother saying much. Valencia just doesn't have that sense of danger that a defender needs to have. 

Something to note is that all three goals scored against us were not Smalling or McNair's fault. I thought Smalling and McNair had another solid game and they look like a good defensive partnership.

3) Rooney gets frustrated and then tries to do too much

I think most of us know this already but its kind of annoying when he's the only striker on our team and we have Mata/Herrera trying to create goals for him.

This is a few minutes after we go down by 2 goals. The players are crowded around and battling for the ball. Rooney is circled in red - why is he there? He has to be further up because if our players did get the ball, they need a striker to pass it to. 

I could tell watching the game that Rooney was frustrated and he wanted to run around but if we're down by two goals, I'd want my only striker to be furthest forward so we can actually score.

4) Shouldn't flick it mid

This was just a really risky play that had me wincing and I think its a good representation of what Herrera needs to work on. He receives the ball from behind him here and it's kind of an awkward position and he ends up doing a back heel flick along the red line.

That's just a really risky attempt that could easily have led to us losing the ball and Everton counter attacking. You can see our player is well marked and it's also easy to mess up a back flick pass slightly. This is something you can attempt near the opposition penalty area when you're attempting to score but doing this in midfield is too risky.

5) Smalling pointing?

Here's just something interesting I noticed but I haven't noticed before. Smalling was pointing to the ball often while preparing for a defensive header from a high ball.

Maybe he was just shielding his eyes from the sun but he did do it a couple times and I haven't noticed him doing it before. It could be a technique to help him position himself to head the ball that he's been working on with coaching - whatever it is, it works. No analysis here, just an observation.

6) Herrera not covering well

Herrera is really great at pressing the ball but I still think he makes a lot of naive mistakes due to his aggressive pressing nature. 

Here, Everton are counter attacking. Shaw should be and is stepping up forward somewhat along the red arrow to defend the Everton player dribbling, pretty normal. Herrera is defending the Everton player running forward - I circled him and the Everton player he is defending. This is a pretty normal situation during a counter attack with an attacking full back as the midfielder is supposed to cover for the full back if the full back has just pushed forward to attack.

Instead of sticking with defending his man, Herrera darts forward to pressure the Everton player that Shaw is already defending. This forces Shaw to go out wider to intercept the potential pass forward.

End result: the Everton dribbler splits Herrera and Shaw and gets here, dangerous situation.

Herrera doubling up on the Everton dribbler just created a gap between them for him to split. Shaw didn't need any help marking him and Herrera should have stuck to his man.

7) Falcao...

Example 1: 

Falcao receives the ball. He only has one person tight to him and he's behind him. Should be a simple trap and back pass (or turn/flick past the player and shoot it in to do something amazing...).

And promptly falls to the ground losing the ball. 

Example 2:

Receives a cross and he's at the top of the penalty area. 

Oops, bad touch, ball bobbles.

Ball ends up all the way out there (top right of the picture if you can't find it).

When a top striker receives the ball in that area, something should happen, not some awkward ball bouncing that our right fullback has to end up retrieving.

Example 3:

Falcao gets a pass out wide, he's well marked but he has a good position and should be able to retain the ball and make a back pass at least.

Still doing fine here.

Oops, lost the ball. I couldn't really come up with a good series of screenshots to show this, but basically Falcao panicked and tried a really/risky pass forward that didn't work at all.

Example 4:

Receives the ball in a somewhat dangerous position with Rooney ahead of him.

A second later, bad touch/awareness, loses the ball.

I hate to be so harsh with him and any of our players but he's losing the ball in good/easy positions so often. I can't imagine that our players feel comfortable passing the ball to him if there's such a high chance of him losing it immediately.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading! We are clearly a work in progress but I think a new right back and not having Falcao playing would help quite a bit. I just want to reiterate that I don't make these points with an agenda in mind. During the game, I just jot down the time stamp when I notice something odd/wrong and then I go back and write about it here afterwards.