High pressing

Jesus Pogba ruined this when he came on last night.

Our players simply don't look fit enough to sustain even the most basic press for any length of time. How is that even possible?

I could forgive if they weren't quite able to implement it as we do it so infrequently it's not second nature but being too unfit?

I think Lukaku was the biggest factor. If you gonna press, it needs to start with the player up top. There were times he sprinted, but for somebody who just came on fresh, he was jogging a bit with no pressure on the opposition. Normally its infectious as we saw in first half. We had a group mentality of it with Herrera, Lingard, Rashford which also saw Martial and others do the same.

Of course fatigue meant it went down, but when we had the subs, we then had Pogba, Lukaku and Fellaini, and Fellaini probably pressed the most out of them which was easy to bypass.

Pressing cant be headless chicken style either. It needs to be done in a pack where you cut of avenues of the easy pass and force the opposition to try and take on a man or try a more difficult pass (which is normally longer).

The three subs changed all that. We went from being a dynamic team with speed and urgency to a heavy and cumbersome one. Rojo pressed more in midfield than Pogba and Fellaini combined. Lingard's press is on another level to Pogba's. Martial was surprising in how aggressive he was - I don't think we've seen that from him before. With a midfield of Pobga, Matic, Herrera and Fellaini, only Herrera was pressing, and he had played the full match.

I'm yet undecided on the Mourinho out camp, but he isn't helping himself with these subs. Clearly, Mata or Fred should have come on instead of Fellaini, and if we are chasing a goal, is Matic the right person to have out there? It is just so easy to pass the ball by Fellaini and Pogba - it's a joke.

Agree. I know his players aren't performing well but he is also making some basic mistakes. Fred and Perrera would have made huge differences.

Klopp changed it in a week. I still remember his first game and the difference was huge.

100%. After almost 2.5 years, we're still not a pressing team - odd occassion aside, it's fairly clear it's the managers instruction to do so. There's a minority who still might think it's the players though - which is unbelievable, in all honesty.

We have Herrera, Fred and Pereira, who can all play a high intensity pressing game in midfield, if we so needed players "who could". I mean if certain players still aren't doing it after over 2 years....surely it's a tactic.

If it's the players then... well it just goes to show that Mourinho has no impact as a coach, doesn't it? Being useless is still a sackable offense.

The way I see Mourinho's approach is to concede half and then be passive. No pressing what's so ever. It's just "hold your shape" and wait for them to make a bad pass...

Indeed. Either way it’s spun, still doesn’t bode well for the manager.

I'm not too sure that conditioning is the issue, I hope not. Not all players have the ability or the mindset to be able to take away the passing lanes and force errors.
Lukaku is definitely not a pressing style of forward and it's a mistake to try and use him that way.

Was Fred even in the panel.

Yesterday was the first time I can recall United even giving the semblance of a proper press. Herrera seemed to be the trigger when he went the four forward players went: unfortunately the rest seemed to suffer from delayed reactions, hence once Arsenal got through the first phase of the press they were off and running.

At least it was a start and got the crowd up for it...more time on the training ground needed!

You're assuming we actually train it. Actually I don't think it was all that different to other isolated games where we did press somewhat - Spurs this season, Swansea last season for example.

It was all three subs.

We can 'carry' one or two players who aren't quite as good at pressing, as long as they still do their part. With our starting line-up those players were Martial and Matic. Then we ended up with Matic, Lukaku, Fellaini and Pogba all in our front six, and it's no surprise that with every sub we made we were getting worse and worse at pressing.

In theory, it should be Martial and Pogba. They are our two best players, and both can be expected to press better if the team around them does so and is trying to play and stay on the front foot (as seen by Martial being much better against Arsenal than he normally is in that regard). Surround those two with the likes of Herrera, Fred, Pereira, Rashford, Sanchez and Lingard and there's no reason we can't play a high press consistently.

Agree. I don’t think a high pressing game is something that you need loads of time to work on. You need fit footballers for sure but closing down opponents isn’t exactly technical and, executed correctly, a team can retain its shape simply enough.

You only have to look at the other night the way the crowd reacted to that really intensive spell of pressing we did. Everything went up a notch and we were winning the ball back every time.