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.

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.