Passing - Players or bad coaching

NoPace · Jan 17, 2020

This season, I'd go, relative to their positions:

Great - Pogba, Mata,
Very Good - Lindelof,
Pretty good - Williams, Fred
Meh - Shaw, Maguire, Martial, Rashford, James, Matic,
Not good - Tuanzebe, McTominay, Pereira, Greenwood
Bad - Wan-Bissaka, Young, Lingard

so yeah we need better passers of the ball. People will get mad about McTominay but he's a #8. Wan-Bissaka would be a not good but his 3 worst passes in a game tend to be shocking and he can't cross, though his dribbling and good sense of space mean he gives himself easier passers to make than basically anyone else we have, which is why isolating a skill/virtue is unsatisfying analytically anyways.

Bobcat · Jan 17, 2020

We are not that bad though. We are 6th in passes completed and 5th in goals scored in the league.

The problem imo is the lack of creativity from central areas. Dan James is a good passer and is leading our assist score in the league with 6, next is Rashford with 4 and then we have Martial/Pereira with 3. Mata has 2 despite barely playing in the league, the same with Pogba despite him only playing a handful of games

Had Pogba been fit all year and Mata been 5 years younger, much of this would be resolved. Of course you can drill attacking patterns, but if it were that simple then any good coach would have their team look like prime Barca. Its not by chance that Pogba have been our assist king the last couple of years. 9 in the league last year, 10 in 17/18 and. In 16/17 Pogba only had 4 assists and was beat by Rooney, Zlatan, Martial and Herrera. 3/4 of those players are no longer here. Meanwhile players like KdB, Silva and Eriksen have gotten 12-18 PL assists in the same period.

Great passers are very hard to come by and right now we have none. We have some good ones, but with Pogba injured no world class ones. I dont know about Bruno, the leap from Portugal to the PL is a big one, but hopefully he can go some ways to rectify this

passing-wind · Jan 17, 2020

Coaching there are certified passers in the team who are useless mostly in possession: Fred ( just watch his games for Shaktar), Pogba and Mata are competent at distributing the ball. But our movement as a team hampers there capabilities.

RK · Jan 17, 2020

Neither. It's mainly a confidence thing.

Sky1981 · Jan 17, 2020

Take more than ability to pass, any EPL level footballers would have no problem passing 5-10-15 yards in training.

Doing so against an equal opponent who's looking out to stop you is another thing, you'd need more than passing ability alone, you need coaching, tactics, movement, and that's the hard part.

As pep says it : Moving the ball is easy, moving the opponent is the hard part.

meamth · Jan 17, 2020

Thing is none of us are qualified to identify the problem with our passing.

What credentials do caf has to criticize the coaching?

Do you spent years for the coaching badge?

elmo · Jan 17, 2020

Players lacking in confidence in the coach's tactic.

You can tell that the players can pass well when they've the confidence and it coincides with our best performances.

Make them play in an unfamiliar setup and they all look like they've never played with each other before and resort to short passes to nowhere.

Steven Seagull · Jan 17, 2020

70% coaching 30% players. The coaching is obviously none existent but have you seen the state of our rondo’s and other passing drills? Amateur level

Rish Sawhney · Jan 17, 2020

Partly both I think. On one hand Ole’s approach is hardly Pep levels of positional play but you can’t really expect Matic to sprint side to side to get open for the CBs.

jamesjimmybyrondean · Jan 17, 2020

To be fair, I think our players lack a bit of imagination and most of them have low footballing IQ - you can see the difference when Pereira plays and Mata plays AM. But that is when it is up to the coach to drill in a system were it makes it easier for them.

This is a perfect example of well drilled tactics by Marco Rose on his Monchengladbach team. You could argue that we have at least the same quality of players as them yet they play much better and more cohesive.

Most of their play you'd see that their players don't hold the ball for long and there is LOTS of movement and they don't need a Pogba to create chances because they move as a unit and know exactly what they want to do. You can just see the coaches fingerprints on how they play.

L1nk · Jan 17, 2020

It's a bit of both, but a lot of it is movement which is tactics, City are able to play the passing game they do because everytime a new player gets the ball, usually a minimum of 2 players make themselves available for a pass forwards or sidewards, a new player gets the ball here and almost nobody ever presents themselves as a passing option, look at the front three, they usually just stand on the line of the defense watching the midfield and we are left with a gaping hole in between, which usually means a long drilled ball along the floor to get to them, or a ball over the top, if it comes through the middle. If that doesn't happen, then it's usually that the midfield aren't presenting themselves to the defenders to play out from the back, hence why Maguire often takes an age on the ball, hence why we often punt it upfront in the hopes Rashford etc can outpace the defender, or we pass it side to side along the backline, usually ending up at a fullback and then to a winger along the side.

That's basically the jist of it, just seems to be total disconnect throughout Defense, Midfield and Attack on most occasions, as someone has pointed out above, usually our best play this season is when we've been quick, incisive and have had players available for passing so that we can actually move it about quick and use the strengths of our players. Doesn't help when we start moving the ball around at a snails pace either.

Di Maria's angel · Jan 17, 2020

Leftback99 said:
Mainly players. Our lack of quality in the 3 centre midfield positions being the main problem.

I think people also overrate other teams after seeing highlights rather than watching full games and scrutinising them in the same way. Wolves were poor in possession last night despite supposedly far better coaching, Sheff Utd have the 3rd lowest possession % in the league.

Why do we compare ourselves to two recently promoted teams? We have the resources available to be closer to Liverpool and City.

L1nk · Jan 17, 2020

Di Maria's angel said:
Why do we compare ourselves to two recently promoted teams? We have the resources available to be closer to Liverpool and City.

The resources yes, but in terms of coaching staff and people in the boardroom, we are far far closer to newly promoted teams

izec · Jan 17, 2020

Mainly coaching. Some players have the talent and overall were impressive before, but they get dragged down by our squad culture and lack of coaching pretty quickly. You get away with average here, so why bother, especially if everyone is doing it.

It has never been in place except for Louis. But our players didnt bother that much to improve and read the emails and all that. Our players are lazy and have never been challenged in a way. They are too comfortable at the moment and Ole isnt changing that in that sense. He may change things by transfers, but not in terms of positioning, passing and drills.

Leftback99 · Jan 17, 2020

Di Maria's angel said:
Why do we compare ourselves to two recently promoted teams? We have the resources available to be closer to Liverpool and City.

We've had the resources but we all know we've absolutely wasted it in the last few years.

It's not about the promoted sides it's anyone other than City and to a lesser extent Liverpool. They aren't all as great in possession as people make out when you watch them for 90 minutes.

Nickelodeon · Jan 17, 2020

JPRouve said:
Being good at something doesn't make you good at teaching it.

Which would've been true had the players been trying and continuously failing. Carrick was a terrific dictator of the tempo and being clever in releasing the ball or holding it a second longer. Our players are not even trying that and the constant 2 yard passes and especially when 3 players stand within 5 yards of each other and pass it to each other (Maguire, Shaw and Matic) is particularly annoying.

JPRouve · Jan 17, 2020

Nickelodeon said:
Which would've been true had the players been trying and continuously failing. Carrick was a terrific dictator of the tempo and being clever in releasing the ball or holding it a second longer. Our players are not even trying that and the constant 2 yard passes and especially when 3 players stand within 5 yards of each other and pass it to each other (Maguire, Shaw and Matic) is particularly annoying.

The point that I made is general and always true.

Mr. MUJAC · Jan 17, 2020

RedStarUnited said:
Apart from the first half vs City, every game I watch of United I end up complaining about how bad we are at passing the ball. Generally speaking these symptoms happen nearly every game;

Too many touches .- Players taking 3/4/5 touches only to make a pass they should have made with their second touch. Maguire is one of the biggest culprits of this.

Momentum Killing - This happens when we put together 3 or 4 passes and then on he 5th, the ball goes all the way back so we have to start again. What makes this bad is theres usually an open pass forward that gets ignored. A Jesse Lingard special.

Lacking Direction/Power - This is when a player who is on the ball makes a pass to a teammate that forces them to either change direction or wait for the ball because it's not in their path. I feel our players don't care how the receiver gets the ball as long as it gets there. This ties to the momentum killing point above. Luke Shaw loves this.

Now the question I have is, is this because the players are not good enough or because they are badly coached. Im leaning towards the coach because I have seen teams worse than us pass and move with much more purpose than us. Whats the Cafe opinion?

It has nothing to do with either competence or capability...it's not a coaching issue.

All these players come through an Academy system and coached exceptionally well HOW to pass a ball.

All the players who reach professional level CAN pass a football or they wouldn't make it.

A lot of problems with control, passing, number of touches and so on is doing all of these things under pressure or when your confidence is low.

As a manager you need to identify why confidence is low and why people are feeling under pressure and deal with that.

When you play in a team...your confidence is impacted by the confidence of others around you. A player might not make/take a pass if they think their colleague will make a mistake. It's one of the complexities of high performance team sports.

I think a lot of our players still lack confidence in each other...(you get that with lots of changes. or young players coming in) which causes inconsistency.

Elite sport is 99% in the head.

Resch · Jan 17, 2020

It is a coaching problem, because it is not enough to move to free passing lanes, you have to move as a team. Such movement has to be taught. At United most of the players wait, 2 or 3 are moving, enough for a counter attack, but the rest of the time United is easy to defend!

Dinghy · Jan 17, 2020

It's clearly the players. Some of them struggle even with the basics like receiving the ball under any kind of pressure and they've shown their lack of football intelligence and creativity for years under several managers. We're two or three players away (Fernandes/ Pogba and a RW) from looking like a really good team again.

Florida Man · Jan 17, 2020

meamth said:
Thing is none of us are qualified to identify the problem with our passing.

What credentials do caf has to criticize the coaching?

Do you spent years for the coaching badge?

By that logic, this forum shouldn't exist.

Lynty · Jan 17, 2020

Maguire won the ball high v Wolves , began one of his marauding runs, passed forward - thought about continuing, then decided to go back instead - despite Fred covering at the back. The attack lost momentum because an overload wasn't created.

I don't think we have poor passing. We have poor movement, which is a coaching problem, that stems from a lack of confidence in dealing with counter attacks.

Florida Man · Jan 17, 2020

Lynty said:
Maguire won the ball high v Wolves , began one of his marauding runs, passed forward - thought about continuing, then decided to go back instead - despite Fred covering at the back. The attack lost momentum because an overload wasn't created.

I don't think we have poor passing. We have poor movement, which is a coaching problem, that stems from a lack of confidence in dealing with counter attacks.

We do have poor movement but make no mistake, our passing is awful too. They're consistently inaccurate, under/over hit, and without a clear purpose many times. On top of that our ability to receive/control a ball especially in movement is piss poor. It's like we forgot how to do one touch passing that we used to see all the time. That's why we only ever seem to be dangerous on a counter where we outnumber their defenders. Otherwise, it's a choice of pass backs, long balls to the corner, or moving to the corner with little support and then putting in a non threatening cross. Rinse and repeat.

RedCurry · Jan 17, 2020

Coaching and manager’s priority. If we prioritize good passing then the players who aren’t good at passing won’t make the matchday squad. Our transfer targets would be based on their ability to pass the ball. When we’re linked with players who are great at shooting but also known to lose possession quite often, you know what the coach prioritizes.

Lynty · Jan 17, 2020

Florida Man said:
We do have poor movement but make no mistake, our passing is awful too. They're consistently inaccurate, under/over hit, and without a clear purpose many times. On top of that our ability to receive/control a ball especially in movement is piss poor. It's like we forgot how to do one touch passing that we used to see all the time. That's why we only ever seem to be dangerous on a counter where we outnumber their defenders. Otherwise, it's a choice of pass backs, long balls to the corner, or moving to the corner with little support and then putting in a non threatening cross. Rinse and repeat.

I honestly don't think our passing is that bad.

We have a few misplaced/over hit passes - but no more than most teams who aren't Liverpool/City/Barca

Florida Man · Jan 17, 2020

Lynty said:
I honestly don't think our passing is that bad.

We have a few misplaced/over hit passed - but no more than most teams who aren't Liverpool/City/Barca

Gotta be a matter of opinions then. I'm practically tearing out my hair watching our passing and off the ball movement.

Lynty · Jan 17, 2020

Florida Man said:
Gotta be a matter of opinions then. I'm practically tearing out my hair watching our passing and off the ball movement.

Ye only my opinion to be fair. I've watched a lot of other teams - Leicester for example - and aren't impressed at all by the passing. Their movement is just superior to ours and they create multiple overloads around the pitch.

Pass Success Percentages for perspective (randomly selected teams):

Manchester United 83.9%
Leicester 82.7%
Liverpool 84.4%
Sheffield 74.7%
Burnley 68.4%

Our movement is just poor unless we're countering. Which suggests we have no pre-planned passing/movement patterns

Eli Zee · Jan 17, 2020

JPRouve said:
Being good at something doesn't make you good at teaching it.

Yep. Just means he had someone good teaching him

Lynty · Jan 17, 2020

Lynty said:
Ye only my opinion to be fair. I've watched a lot of other teams - Leicester for example - and aren't impressed at all by the passing. Their movement is just superior to ours and they create multiple overloads around the pitch.

Pass Success Percentages for perspective (randomly selected teams):

Manchester United 83.9%
Leicester 82.7%
Liverpool 84.4%
Sheffield 74.7%
Burnley 68.4%

Our movement is just poor unless we're countering. Which suggests we have no pre-planned passing/movement patterns

Rose's Monchengladbach 80.7%
Naglesmann's Liepzig 83.2%

Out of interest

jem · Jan 17, 2020

RedStarUnited said:
Apart from the first half vs City, every game I watch of United I end up complaining about how bad we are at passing the ball. Generally speaking these symptoms happen nearly every game;

Too many touches .- Players taking 3/4/5 touches only to make a pass they should have made with their second touch. Maguire is one of the biggest culprits of this.

Momentum Killing - This happens when we put together 3 or 4 passes and then on he 5th, the ball goes all the way back so we have to start again. What makes this bad is theres usually an open pass forward that gets ignored. A Jesse Lingard special.

Lacking Direction/Power - This is when a player who is on the ball makes a pass to a teammate that forces them to either change direction or wait for the ball because it's not in their path. I feel our players don't care how the receiver gets the ball as long as it gets there. This ties to the momentum killing point above. Luke Shaw loves this.

Now the question I have is, is this because the players are not good enough or because they are badly coached. Im leaning towards the coach because I have seen teams worse than us pass and move with much more purpose than us. Whats the Cafe opinion?

This drives me crazy. The number of times a player has to break stride and almost reach back to receive a pass is mind-boggling. I'm not sure who the real culprits are, but it's definitely been a problem for a while now.

Lentwood · Jan 17, 2020

There's absolutely no way on this Earth you can coach players to 'pass better' once they get into their 20s as professional footballers.

What most posters will never appreciate is that it's all about levels. They don't understand just how fast the game is played at League Two level.....let alone Premier League level. It's all about the speed at which the player can receive the ball, turn and play a forward pass. ANY professional footballer can play raking 60 yard passes if given the time to do so and most PL standard players could hold their own in a top team solely by passing the ball backwards and sideways

The really good players who stand out at any level are the one's who receive the ball on the half-turn and move it forward at pace between the lines. When you're 'treading water' at the level you're playing, whatever it might be, you're mainly going to be passing the ball sideways, backwards or hoofing it clear....because your technique, vision, balance, speed of thought....isn't up to the speed that the game is being played at

I was never close to becoming a professional footballer but I was probably one of the best in my age group at school, I trained with a PL team for about 3/4 months when I was about 12, have dabbled with semi-pro football as I've got older etc....point is, I've played with some really, really technically good players who can knock the ball around for fun and seemingly put a pass on a sixpence/pick out the top corner every time at a decent level. A few lads I've played with have turned out the odd time for football league clubs/conference teams but the reason they never really made it as pro's is because they can't do all of that at the SPEED required. Give them time and they look untouchable, you wonder how they never made it. Put them into the hurly burly of an elite football match and they flounder like most of us mere mortals playing with our mates in Sunday League!!

El Zoido · Jan 17, 2020

Xaviesta said:
Your passing issues are all the more strange as Michael Carrick is on the coaching staff and he was a pretty passer of the ball.

It’s because it’s the players, not the coaching. There’s a reason Pep is only successful with certain players in certain teams, and the reason he binned off half the City squad and replaced them. You can’t just teach this stuff. Sure you can make some small improvements and advice. It’s easily evident in our team as you have some players looking for quick and decisive passes, and others (such as Matic) who want to grow old while in possession of the ball. They’re not being fed contradictory information, some players will never change.

el3mel · Jan 17, 2020

Lentwood said:
There's absolutely no way on this Earth you can coach players to 'pass better' once they get into their 20s as professional footballers.

What most posters will never appreciate is that it's all about levels. They don't understand just how fast the game is played at League Two level.....let alone Premier League level. It's all about the speed at which the player can receive the ball, turn and play a forward pass. ANY professional footballer can play raking 60 yard passes if given the time to do so and most PL standard players could hold their own in a top team solely by passing the ball backwards and sideways

The really good players who stand out at any level are the one's who receive the ball on the half-turn and move it forward at pace between the lines. When you're 'treading water' at the level you're playing, whatever it might be, you're mainly going to be passing the ball sideways, backwards or hoofing it clear....because your technique, vision, balance, speed of thought....isn't up to the speed that the game is being played at

I was never close to becoming a professional footballer but I was probably one of the best in my age group at school, I trained with a PL team for about 3/4 months when I was about 12, have dabbled with semi-pro football as I've got older etc....point is, I've played with some really, really technically good players who can knock the ball around for fun and seemingly put a pass on a sixpence/pick out the top corner every time at a decent level. A few lads I've played with have turned out the odd time for football league clubs/conference teams but the reason they never really made it as pro's is because they can't do all of that at the SPEED required. Give them time and they look untouchable, you wonder how they never made it. Put them into the hurly burly of an elite football match and they flounder like most of us mere mortals playing with our mates in Sunday League!!

You don't need to teach them to pass better. You can create a system and coach players to move into spaces so that they always have available passing options. Coaching at United is simply terrible in doing anything that covers for the deficiencies of the players ever since Fergie retired. There are teams with far less quality that looks to keep the ball and pass between each other better. Yes we have deficiencies, but coaching isn't helping improving them either.

Alabaster Codify7 · Jan 17, 2020

Both, as is the case with all of our problems. It's partly the fact we have a pretty poor squad and a lot of mediocre players, and partly the fact that our coaches are pretty underwhelming and somewhat old-fashioned in their approach.

Fosu-Mens · Jan 17, 2020

Efficient passing: Passing and receiving the ball consistently and correctly. How a player is doing it on an individual level. David Silva is a prime example.
Effective passing: How a team passes the ball around on the pitch. Movement, structure, intention etc. Manchester City is a prime example of this.
Difficult to be effective in passing as a team, without a majority of the individuals being efficient passers.

We did actually improve in passing under LVG, especially in regards to efficient passing. I assume that this was an area that was practised a lot during his reign, so coaching and training is an important factor in this.
Under Mourinho, both elements deteriorated (Just look at Tottenham now compared to how they efficient they passed under Pochettino) to the level where a majority of our first team players are way below the standard required to be an efficient passer and the collective understanding of how to pass effectively (out of defence, between lines etc) was non-existent.

We are not any better at this now compared to how we were under Mourinho, both regarding the player's ability to pass efficiently and the team's effectiveness at passing. The individual player's ability to pass efficiently is due to poor coaching/no focus on it for a number of years combined with a squad based on players that are not particularly good at handling the ball to begin with. It does not help when we have bought a number of players that are inefficient passers over the last couple of years: Fred, AWB, Maguire, James, Lukaku. Due to our team having a few efficient passers, we are also extremely ineffective in possession. But, even against teams that give us time on the ball and sit deep, we are unable to pass effectively, and this is down to poor coaching/management.

jamesjimmybyrondean · Jan 17, 2020

It's both the coaching system and the lack of confidence or consistency. There are lots of games were we are just static and allow the opponents to cover the space, no smart movement, we hold the ball for too long etc - that's the coach's problem.

Then you see us in games like Ole's first few games when he came, some matches against smaller oppositions and we look so confident and daring. That's the players with confidence. But I still blame Ole for this because I think if we had a well drilled system, even with the lack confidence the players can still at least put in a shift because they know the system well and all they have to do is follow it

To me Ole's tactics relies on the players ability and imagination because he's given some of them a bit of freedom which he shouldn't because most of these players lack imagination and have low footballing iq but this doesn't mean they are not good. Pereira, Fred and Rashford sometimes shouldn't be shooting anyhow but it seems Ole gave them freedom so they do that. Ole needs to understand that these players don't need freedom to express themselves. I think he gives them freedom because its what Ferguson did and maybe is the United way. But that only works when you have top plays with high footballing IQ and then such system becomes a joy to watch but we don't have players like that so a well drilled system is what they need.

Florida Man · Jan 17, 2020

Lynty said:
Ye only my opinion to be fair. I've watched a lot of other teams - Leicester for example - and aren't impressed at all by the passing. Their movement is just superior to ours and they create multiple overloads around the pitch.

Pass Success Percentages for perspective (randomly selected teams):

Manchester United 83.9%
Leicester 82.7%
Liverpool 84.4%
Sheffield 74.7%
Burnley 68.4%

Our movement is just poor unless we're countering. Which suggests we have no pre-planned passing/movement patterns

Would you say our sideways and backwards passing skew those stats? And I don't think these account for the amount of times a pass was successfully received only for the player to immediately lose the ball. Or the amount of times a successfully received pass was a bit behind or inaccurate and killed any chance of attack.

Lynty · Jan 17, 2020

Florida Man said:
Would you say our sideways and backwards passing skew those stats? And I don't think these account for the amount of times a pass was successfully received only for the player to immediately lose the ball. Or the amount of times a successfully received pass was a bit behind or inaccurate and killed any chance of attack.

Perhaps.

I see the same sort of mistakes with Leicester and Chelsea though. And they have better passers in midfield, albiet their better movement promotes harder passes.

Kappa123 · Jan 17, 2020

It's the coaching - we're clueless going forward. Even Messi would struggle to consistently create chances here, that's on our non-existant gameplan in the final third.

tjb · Jan 17, 2020

Bobcat said:
We are not that bad though. We are 6th in passes completed and 5th in goals scored in the league.

The problem imo is the lack of creativity from central areas. Dan James is a good passer and is leading our assist score in the league with 6, next is Rashford with 4 and then we have Martial/Pereira with 3. Mata has 2 despite barely playing in the league, the same with Pogba despite him only playing a handful of games

Had Pogba been fit all year and Mata been 5 years younger, much of this would be resolved. Of course you can drill attacking patterns, but if it were that simple then any good coach would have their team look like prime Barca. Its not by chance that Pogba have been our assist king the last couple of years. 9 in the league last year, 10 in 17/18 and. In 16/17 Pogba only had 4 assists and was beat by Rooney, Zlatan, Martial and Herrera. 3/4 of those players are no longer here. Meanwhile players like KdB, Silva and Eriksen have gotten 12-18 PL assists in the same period.

Great passers are very hard to come by and right now we have none. We have some good ones, but with Pogba injured no world class ones. I dont know about Bruno, the leap from Portugal to the PL is a big one, but hopefully he can go some ways to rectify this

We play at an uber slow tempo which comes as a result of not being confident in the pass and not finding the right options to pass the ball to. You are right, great passers are hard to come by, but we still have a lack of serviceable passers in key passing positions.

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