He mainly focuses on the need to have a “Fernandinho” style player to hold. He doesn say it can’t work, just that it requires really good players which will likely cost a lot of money.
It’s not a buzzword it’s something that we need to work on.
Agreed.
The question Gullitt is posing in that clip is about having certain players designated to help control the defensive transition when you lose the ball in a highline setup where you have numerous players committed in the opponent's half. He then mentions a player like Fernandinho at City who is positioned to help contain and control situations when the space gets larger upon losing the ball. And he also mentions that Lasse Schone was someone that provided that option for Ajax.
And ten Hag's response to that is very simple and he clearly mentions that the rest defense is a important aspect in his approach but what his team does on the ball is even more important because the primary aim is to dominate the game on the ball. He goes on to mention how Guardiola himself has been sucker-punched on the counter numerous times. When he was Bayern coach and Real Madrid destroyed them on the counter, and several times against Solskjaer who came out on top by exposing the rest defense vulnerabilities out of possession which existed in Guardiola's team. Hence Guardiola had to rethink things and brought in players like Akanji and Ake to control the wide spaces in the backline due to their physical and athletic qualities. Fergie himself was done multiple times in Europe in the 90s when he went gung-ho in his quest to win the champinons league. And we did win the champions league, but the subsequent years saw us come a cropper against teams who took advantage of the spaces we left behind in defensive transition.
What we're seeing right now is ten Hag still attempting to instil a more proactive approach by not going full-out high press but going the hybrid route where he doesn't fully commit to the press hence the fullbacks don't always backup the high press. So the game against Liverpool was another example where in certain phases we go man to man when applying the press hence people think we have no midfield because in a bygone era it was normal to drop off instead of attempting to force mistakes higher up the pitch. And to be honest with you, those tactics worked because the alternative was to sit off and play a more passive/reactive game rather than attempt to disrupt Liverpool higher up the pitch. That then turned the game into a end to end game at times, and that suited us because Liverpool as a collective unit are better than us in possession as things stand.
When Solskjaer was the manager he utilised Fred and McTominay infront of Lindelof and Maguire. So eventhough Fred and McTominay weren't the best on the ball, their energy and ground coverage meant that the likes of Maguire and Lindelof weren't exposed in the channels in 1v1s. So when ten Hag arrived he broke that partnership up in midfield and we did well in his first season, but not signing Amadou Onana and Todibo who are large space compactors/ground eaters out of possession due to Maguire and Mctominay refusing to leave, meant our out of possession game is still weak in comparison to out rivals. The injuries to key men for large periods of the season has made it worse, but we just don't have players in defense and midfield who can eat up ground and dominate ground duels.
I've been saying for years that we should sign players who will help us control/contain transitions out of possession. Players who have the pace and power to compliment the more technical players in possession to create a system of play where we don't over burden our more technical players in possession where they're being asked to do things that expose their weaknesses out of possession.
Like I've said numerous times, we need two CBs and at least one midfielder who will be specialists in helping us control the defensive transitions when we turn over possession with a high volume of players committed into the opponent's half. We don't have those players and the potential to improve significantly is absolutely there for this team if we bring in the right profiles imo. The foundation of our team is weak from a physical and athletic level hence teams like Brentford can utilise their superior physicality and out-duel us in our own half hence pinning us back in our box and bombarding our box with a high volume of Brentford players and crosses.
He can say what he likes, the reality is very different.