I'm not convinced its specifically coached and looks more like the players being up for it. I'm no expert though.Try do it better yourself. I thought we had a pressing philosophy?
How Do Utd Beat The High Press?
- Thread starter Inigo Montoya
- Start date
I don't think most people realise, that the high pressing team is actually trying to force you to hit the ball long. Getting a turnover in your own half is actually just the occasional bonus and a goal from it an even rarer bonus, but they're forcing you to hit it long so they can get a hold of the ball again.
No one is more vulnerable in playing style to the high press than Pogba! I can remember at least 4 occasions he has been dispossessed and a goal has resulted. I remember that happening to Scholes once in his entire United time.
We need to be more direct and I don't mean just play long balls, too often our players take a touch to steady themselves and it slows the play down and we are immediately under pressure. We should be more aggressive with the ball.
Should buy 2 ball playing CB's.
Are you surprised. It’s been the norm for the past 6 years. Buy new players then buy new players to replace the new players.Whilst inbetween praise how the new players are a lot better than the old players who were idiotic signings. I wonder how long until we need to buy a number 10 better than Bruno.
Don't agree. Pogba sometimes makes the wrong decision on the ball either due to lack of awareness or overconfidence. Otherwise he's excellent at using his body and technique to evade the press. There are other players who are more vulnerable, mainly the ones with poorer technique on the ball who can be forced into errors more easily.
Exactly. And it's not as if we are great at pressing and can afford to lose the ball cheaply.
Oles main focus now has to be on getting the ball into our front line quicker and more consistently. I fully believe we have one of the most dangerous attacks in the league but it’s noticeable how little we supply them in certain games. I don’t think it’s our attackers fault that we just don’t get the ball into them quick enough. This is partly why Martial comes under so much stick for having quiet games, when the reality is that he is dependent on his team mates getting the ball into the final third (this is the same for all strikers btw!).
This is the final tactical evolution for this team and that might yet still take afew additional signings, especially in defence and midfield so we can be more comfortable beating the press and getting direct balls to the front men. If we can generate 30 minute spells where we can camp the edge of the opposition box then with our firepower that will be enough to beat anyone. Against Chelsea we just couldn’t generate that spell.
It’s kind of shocking that we have a weapon like Greenwood in the team and yet we can’t craft even 1 big chance a game for him. That’s the key, give these guys opportunities and they are deadly.
This is the final tactical evolution for this team and that might yet still take afew additional signings, especially in defence and midfield so we can be more comfortable beating the press and getting direct balls to the front men. If we can generate 30 minute spells where we can camp the edge of the opposition box then with our firepower that will be enough to beat anyone. Against Chelsea we just couldn’t generate that spell.
It’s kind of shocking that we have a weapon like Greenwood in the team and yet we can’t craft even 1 big chance a game for him. That’s the key, give these guys opportunities and they are deadly.
Why can't we be both? Why can't we just adapt when it suits? We've seen many times teams becoming unstuck when dogmatically sticking to one system and not adapting when the opposition changes tactics
Nearly every time you lose possession at the edge of your box leads to a chance for the opposition. Kick and rush is not pretty. But it's sometimes something you can employ when playing it out the back is visibly not working. Doesn't have to be your default mode.
Also if teams see you're trying to play it out the back regardless of how well it works for you, they'll keep persisting even if they are not good at retaining possession themselves. Soton pressed us into mistakes when we could have cleared and counter pressed to retrieve the ball higher up the pitch. If we had done that, they'd have realise that pressing doesn't work on its primary aim (retrieving the ball high up the pitch) considering the effort it takes, and they would have eventually relented instead of being encouraged by what they saw.
What's shocking is when a weapon like Greenwood is hacked time and time again, and not afforded any protection, not even a yellow
Bring back LVG
The team sitting top of the league hit more long balls than anyone. No issue with being direct if you’re accurate and you play higher up the pitch. Our team plays too deep. We basically played a 5-2-1-2 yesterday and seemed surprised that we couldn’t get the ball out of our own defensive third.
Which is the point of the thread, how do you systematically beat the high press?
Veron,Rio...there's an endless list. Need to stop being so casual
Coming down to personnel.
Any good French players in Ligue 1 comfortable with the system?
I dont really understand why , when we have a fast Martial and Rashford, we cant just hoof the ball at least sometimes to threaten the space there.
They have the second amount of short passes in the league and are in the bottom half in long passes.
A high press has two risks: one is fatigue and the other is that you're open to counter attacks either through long balls or simply quick transitions. If the team pressing is getting undone on the counter/long ball they will quickly abandon. If they see you are playing long ball, they will persist for a while but eventually stop to conserve energy. If they see you are dawdling with the ball, making mistakes and surrendering possession near your box, they will pursue with even more vigour because they can sense a scoring chance coming from a mistake.
You assume football players are very intelligent. It’s far easier to build a cohesive team if the bases of play is always the same. Yes you can make tactically adjustments depending on certain games. But playing style should always be the same.
I'm unsure, if you had the likes of Matic/Bruno playing better balls into areas it often causes the opposition defenders to head it into space before we collect in a better area of the pitch. Sure, other players may well hoof it but I can see value in a longer ball into channels. We were playing it out on foot far too much that what we were comfortable with yesterday, and even vs Southampton.
Most technical players are comfortable with it, it's not special. But as I said in an other thread, I don't think that there is a player outside of PSG ready to make the step up, the promising players are all very young.
You try playing it out the back at first but if the players targeted are failing at maintaining possession and the ball is turned over with too high a frequency in your side of the pitch, I'd rather have that happen in the opposition half instead. You have a starting tactic but you tailor your approach to how the game is panning out with a clear and trained alternative.
Ultimately you sign more players across your backline that are highly comfortable with ball at feet, so you have to less and less of the latter.
Which is an emergency plan, not a winning strategy. What you are describing has nothing to do with beating the high press but is entirely about damage limitation. It's like suggesting to call the firefighters in a question about how to avoid a bushfire.
The problem is neither Rashford or James ran the channels. The first goal came from Aziplicueta crossing the ball, that was the 3rd CB, surely when a team plays 3 at the back and we went with 2 up top, you try exploit the gaps between CB and Wing back.
If James or Rashford made runs, all we had to do is find a semi decent ball over the top.
Exactly - this comes into how the team is drilled in my opinion. I found it bizzare seeing Dan James come short when we were trying top play out from the back. Rashford was doing similar but I think he was torn between the two, and is capable of bringing it from deep and dragging players up the pitch. In any case I hope we don't see a 3 at the back for a while. We dont have the players for it.
It depends how well trained you are at sending and retrieving long balls. A press does not only get undone by quick triangles and playing through it. Direct balls have the same effect if strikers can retrieve them. The more you train for that, the better the success rate you'll have (as with anything) and less inclined the opposition will be to press you. If your strikers are not Fellaini/Ibra-sized instead of aiming balls to their heads you get them to drop deep, create space and if the defenders follow them you aim diagonal balls behind the line of defence for them to chase against the CBs.
If you want to play possession then you can't have Dan James playing up top with Rashford. None of them have hold up play. It was a bizzare tactic we used. When the opposition is so high up, you play out from the back, you make 4 passes and then what? go back to the CB because there is no option up top.
We locked ourselves in our own half.
One thing that does surprise me: with James and Rashford as wide players we have genuinely scary pace out there. So where are the balls out to the FB, then up the line? I know it's a bit old school, but would certainly be an option and keep teams honest.
Other major issue is how far Fernandes has been playing away from the other 2 midfielders. If you watch City they'll have all 3 midfielders - and sometimes even Jesus - all within 20 yards of each other, able to ping it between themselves and get around it.
Fernandes seems to go on holiday when we're playing out from the back. I think it's like a vague Ronaldo tribute act (where the very fact Ronaldo didn't have any responsibility to defend meant that at lesat 2 and sometimes 3 opposition players had to be honest and stay with him) but it's dumb and needs to stop.
Also AWB...yeah. Like when we played Wes Brown at RB in Europe. Smart teams would just happily funnel the ball to him and giggle as he tried, erm, something progressive. (yes he played one cross in one final, rest of the time he was the liability in the team, from that perspective. Great defender though.)
Other major issue is how far Fernandes has been playing away from the other 2 midfielders. If you watch City they'll have all 3 midfielders - and sometimes even Jesus - all within 20 yards of each other, able to ping it between themselves and get around it.
Fernandes seems to go on holiday when we're playing out from the back. I think it's like a vague Ronaldo tribute act (where the very fact Ronaldo didn't have any responsibility to defend meant that at lesat 2 and sometimes 3 opposition players had to be honest and stay with him) but it's dumb and needs to stop.
Also AWB...yeah. Like when we played Wes Brown at RB in Europe. Smart teams would just happily funnel the ball to him and giggle as he tried, erm, something progressive. (yes he played one cross in one final, rest of the time he was the liability in the team, from that perspective. Great defender though.)
This is also a fair point, but it remains out of our control. Creating chances not so much!
Not according to the Premier League’s own website. I exaggerated saying the most mind you. They’re sitting 5th for long balls there with United bottom. We aren’t direct enough.
That’s a consequence of us playing too deep to accommodate slow centre backs.
My math were bad. We have a similar ratio though, 89.6% of their passes are short when 90.7% of our passes are short.
They get the ball up the pitch much quicker than United. That’s evident from just watching them. They also play higher up the pitch. I don’t want to make this a Liverpool v Man United thing or fall into this trap that copying Liverpool is the only way to success that many do but we are too slow in moving it forward and it’s made more difficult by sitting on top of our own box in possession.
Just sign ball playing CBs, that was the answer when everyone was pinning this problem on Smalling.
That's a different point, they do play faster but they use a similar proportion of short passes and are significantly more on the ball than we are, 59.6% against 54.6%.
Disagree. You're going long and leaving two against two or three. It's a tactic to influence the other team into not wanting to stay high an compress the pitch (aiding their press and squashing you back towards your own goal) or dropping back as a unit because the gap between midfield and defence is gaping that someone like bruno is always free. It's solely to affect them and "disincentivise" their high line or high press.
Again disagree. You don't lose the ball on the edge of your box, just twenty yards in front of it.
What are you talking about?