I know it can be difficult to know exactly how much the sending off changed our approach to this game but it struck me that Ole had tweaked the positions of our attackers, even before the red card.
It looked to me like Ole had asked the wide forwards to play much narrow, in contrast to recent weeks when he has gone on record as saying he has asked them to play wider. We have heard people talking about “underlapping runs from the full-backs” and “the Man City goal” but it seemed like we completely did away with that last night after going two games without scoring from open play.
It was noticeable in our first attacking action (pre-red). Shaw picked up the ball and drove forwards and Rashford made a very concentrated effort NOT to go outside of Shaw. We lost the ball and I thought “that looked different” and then again, a few seconds later we tried to work the ball forward down the right and we almost had three forwards in a line, playing like an old-school front three.
Then obviously when the lad got sent off, it became even more noticeable. Just look at the goals and look how many players we had in the box. Rashford’s goal is a good example. All three of our forwards are in the penalty area at the same time. It’s Geeewood who pulls it back to Rashford who is right in the centre of the goal and tucks it away nicely. Again, Rashford has had criticism for NOT getting into those positions, so I thought it interesting he ended up in a classic #9 position there.
This also appeared to have the added effect of giving AWB and Shaw the opportunity to cross the ball more. If they are making underlapping runs it can be hard to get them into proper crosses positions. Here, we saw that if you have bodies in the box and the delivery is a good one, you don’t have to try to be incredibly clever about where you cross from, as long as you don’t start getting tempted to chuck them in from TOO deep.
It would be interesting to see if one of the posters who like to analyse the games have any stats on average positions or heat-maps for our forwards? I could be totally wrong, it just looked to the eye that we had definitely asked the forwards to play narrower and be more present in the penalty area.
If Ole didn’t ask them to do this, I certainly feel he should! Football can all become very clever-clever at times but sometimes when you’re playing against a low-block, overwhelming the opposition with bodies and getting a lucky bounce can earn you the breakthrough you need. You won’t get that if you have one CF marshalled by three CBs and two good finishers stuck out wide with chalk on their boots!
Any thoughts? Anybody more skilled than me willing to do some analysis?
It looked to me like Ole had asked the wide forwards to play much narrow, in contrast to recent weeks when he has gone on record as saying he has asked them to play wider. We have heard people talking about “underlapping runs from the full-backs” and “the Man City goal” but it seemed like we completely did away with that last night after going two games without scoring from open play.
It was noticeable in our first attacking action (pre-red). Shaw picked up the ball and drove forwards and Rashford made a very concentrated effort NOT to go outside of Shaw. We lost the ball and I thought “that looked different” and then again, a few seconds later we tried to work the ball forward down the right and we almost had three forwards in a line, playing like an old-school front three.
Then obviously when the lad got sent off, it became even more noticeable. Just look at the goals and look how many players we had in the box. Rashford’s goal is a good example. All three of our forwards are in the penalty area at the same time. It’s Geeewood who pulls it back to Rashford who is right in the centre of the goal and tucks it away nicely. Again, Rashford has had criticism for NOT getting into those positions, so I thought it interesting he ended up in a classic #9 position there.
This also appeared to have the added effect of giving AWB and Shaw the opportunity to cross the ball more. If they are making underlapping runs it can be hard to get them into proper crosses positions. Here, we saw that if you have bodies in the box and the delivery is a good one, you don’t have to try to be incredibly clever about where you cross from, as long as you don’t start getting tempted to chuck them in from TOO deep.
It would be interesting to see if one of the posters who like to analyse the games have any stats on average positions or heat-maps for our forwards? I could be totally wrong, it just looked to the eye that we had definitely asked the forwards to play narrower and be more present in the penalty area.
If Ole didn’t ask them to do this, I certainly feel he should! Football can all become very clever-clever at times but sometimes when you’re playing against a low-block, overwhelming the opposition with bodies and getting a lucky bounce can earn you the breakthrough you need. You won’t get that if you have one CF marshalled by three CBs and two good finishers stuck out wide with chalk on their boots!
Any thoughts? Anybody more skilled than me willing to do some analysis?
