I don't mind the slow build-up as long as the team creates chances but half or most of the time we pass it forward then to Valencia and if Valencia can't beat his man back pass it and try again. While not as boring and dreadful as it was under LVG it can be very infuriating. It also doesn't help that some of the players can't string a few passes together without losing the ball or ruin our build-up of play. It's only once we are down a goal we seem to spark a new life, start playing aggressive and taking chances.
I’m tired of watching this slow build up style
- Thread starter Josep Dowling
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
Is Van Gaal fault, really.
Lingard, Rashford, Martial, Mata, Herrera, Smalling, Valencia, Shaw, Jones, ROjo ship them all out and we can play beautiful football.
They been coached to death.
Lingard, Rashford, Martial, Mata, Herrera, Smalling, Valencia, Shaw, Jones, ROjo ship them all out and we can play beautiful football.
They been coached to death.
We don't have a Centre back who can confidently carry the ball forward,someone who can quickly transition from phase 1 to phase 2...Jones and Smalling aren't good passers of the ball,Bailly isn't great either but his ability as a defender probably more than makes up for whatever flaws he may have in his game.Rojo and Blind are good passers,but they aren't good enough to play as a CB....
So unless we sign a top class ball playing CB,we will struggle to quickly make the transition from defence to attack.I would keep Jones,Bailly and Rojo and sign a world class Centre back who can carry the ball forward.I think we should sell Smalling and Blind(Jose anyway doesn't play him).....
Ron Atkinson always said on champions league itv, United always play better with tempo. It was true 20 years ago and it’s true today.
God Valencia is the worst at killing an attack. We go on a counter, and the ball finds its way out to him and he just stops, fakes right, (which to the surprise of no one) and then passes backwards. would rather Young be right back and give Shaw left back.
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I'm with you but make sure you whisper any negative talk of Valencia, some on here will have you believe he is the best right back in the league. Also off topic, why is he captain exactly?
Young and Shaw would definitely be more exciting and direct for me. I fear our lack of right sided forward screws us more though, no one looks comfortable out there or provides any width so then it does get left to Valencia only.
I can only repeat myself but this is down to playing two CBs, especially Smalling who can't see and play the opening pass for a quick attack. There is a reason why almost every great team these days has CBs who are actually good footballers not just athletes like we have. Even Bailly, Rojo and Lindelöff, while being stronger at the ball than the chuckle brothers don't really seem to have mastered the art of playing a forward opening pass or building up play from the back when the possibility is there do so.
The advantage of having CBs who can actually do that is you can commit more players forward without being affraid that the next aimless hoof ball will just come bouncing back and you will become victim to a counter attack.
My word. We need a defense who can actually start a fast attack and not pass it left and right a couple of times and wait until either Matic, Pogba or now even Sanchez drops deep enough to start a build up play.
Rather than making another thread I thought i'd put it in here.
I was analysing the Newcastle game due to @Raees posts regarding the formation and noticed that we had very little touches in Newcastles box on the right side. Image can be seen below:
Thought that was pretty interesting given my continued conquest in the previous 5 seasons for us to sign a proper right winger. So I thought i'd go back a little bit and check the last few fixtures and see what I could dig up. Below are the last 5 home and away games in the Premier League, i've colour coded the touches to make it a bit easier to see the distribution.
Surely this makes us pretty easy to defend against as the opposition know that the majority of the time we have the ball in their penalty area its going to be on the left side? Is this a mere coincidence or a genuine problem?
TLDR:
We need a ruddy right winger!
I was analysing the Newcastle game due to @Raees posts regarding the formation and noticed that we had very little touches in Newcastles box on the right side. Image can be seen below:
Thought that was pretty interesting given my continued conquest in the previous 5 seasons for us to sign a proper right winger. So I thought i'd go back a little bit and check the last few fixtures and see what I could dig up. Below are the last 5 home and away games in the Premier League, i've colour coded the touches to make it a bit easier to see the distribution.
- On average we have 49.0% of our touches on the left, 27.2% in the middle and 23.8% on the right.
- In Away fixtures we seem to have significantly more touches on the left than on the right side. Note that Tottenham away was the first game Sanchez played for us Away from home.
- In Home fixtures we're a little bit more even and yet the two games where we had more touches on the left side were both games we dropped points in.
- In games we dropped points in, every single fixture had the left side with more touches and all except Tottenham had the second most touches in the middle.
Surely this makes us pretty easy to defend against as the opposition know that the majority of the time we have the ball in their penalty area its going to be on the left side? Is this a mere coincidence or a genuine problem?
TLDR:
We need a ruddy right winger!
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Very intricate stats in the post above and I agree with most of the analysis. I'd actually like us to play Lukaku from the right, even in 4-3-3, because he is the only quick left-footed attacker we have in our team basically. Sanchez and one of Martial/Rashford can take the central and left space of the attack and interchange as much as they like. It could bring more balance and consistency to the team attacking-wise and we could also use the cut-back crosses to the back post for Lukaku when coming into the box from the right side - it was kind of similar with Fellaini and I believe Lukaku can be more clinical from that position.
I'm not sure what people expect with the 3 managers we've hired since Sir Alex went. All 3 are proponents of slow build up play and what we have right now is slow build up play, defending, pragmatic and nullifying the other team rather than being exciting and adventurous. We've not hired a manager of the quick attacking type of football, and i'd be surprised if we will for a long time to be honest, no matter what happens with Mourinho I can only see this board approaching the likes of Ancelotti instead of younger more exciting coaches that we would get a quicker style of football from. It's quite frankly annoying because this football is awful on the eyes, boring, passive and just bland, there's really no joy in it, I long for the days when Manchester United returns to what it does best, great, fast, attacking football.
I think that one of the contributors to this slow build up play is simply the quality of our passing. Quite often our passes find our player but it requires either the receiver to track back and receive the pass or to stop their run and gather the pass. For a counter attacking team, excellent passing is essential and this is something where I think we are lacking. This is also not going to show up in the passing stats as well because quite often the pass finds the recipient but in a way that slows down the attack.
Some interesting analysis but yeah it basically all boils down to us badly needing a right winger. And to be honest we have needed one for years now since LVG sold Nani and converted Valencia to a RB.
Our attacking play is too easy to defend against because it all comes down the left or through the middle. We just can't stretch teams in tight games.
It's no wonder we struggle to create good chances with slow build up. Attack quickly and the defence struggles with positioning, which we've seen our own defence suffer from when an average team quickly counters us a good few times.
The reason for that is that we neither use outside wingers nor have a decent playmaker like Erikson for example.
We have only left wingers who cut inside and for this tactic to work we need an attacking LB who can cross precisely.
Well, back to our team squad we lack the right winger, we lack the left footed LB and we don’t have a decent playmaker.
this why other team find it so easily to stop our tactic by focusing on the left wing.
Also one of the points we should be aware of is that we lack the holding midfielder who can hold the ball and play forward, previously we gave this role to Pogba but now teams acknowledges his potentials and narrow spaces at him and Matic doesn’t help to play this role either, other teams now use the CB to do that like Ramos at Madrid, Hummels at Munich and Pique at Barca etc.
That’s why we use long balls to Lukaku who plays as the striker who hold the ball and wait for the team to get forward.
One of the missing tactics that Mourinho used to do at Chelsea was decentralization of the players he had Hazard, Willian and Costa who can play anywhere.
Whereas at Manchester this tactic is not efficient as Martial can only perfect left side and plays best as an outside winger while sanchez can do this part easily lukaku somehow on the right side of the pitch.
We have only left wingers who cut inside and for this tactic to work we need an attacking LB who can cross precisely.
Well, back to our team squad we lack the right winger, we lack the left footed LB and we don’t have a decent playmaker.
this why other team find it so easily to stop our tactic by focusing on the left wing.
Also one of the points we should be aware of is that we lack the holding midfielder who can hold the ball and play forward, previously we gave this role to Pogba but now teams acknowledges his potentials and narrow spaces at him and Matic doesn’t help to play this role either, other teams now use the CB to do that like Ramos at Madrid, Hummels at Munich and Pique at Barca etc.
That’s why we use long balls to Lukaku who plays as the striker who hold the ball and wait for the team to get forward.
One of the missing tactics that Mourinho used to do at Chelsea was decentralization of the players he had Hazard, Willian and Costa who can play anywhere.
Whereas at Manchester this tactic is not efficient as Martial can only perfect left side and plays best as an outside winger while sanchez can do this part easily lukaku somehow on the right side of the pitch.
We need to play faster guys, slow football is so boring. I hated Barcelona and Spain.
But there ain't even minor resemblance in our football of Barcelona or Spain playing style. While they used to be boring from time to time, they would dominate possession in percentages almost double those of their opponents and many of their boring passes where actually in opposition half.
It isn't our playing style. If it was, redcafe would be much, much happier place. We wouldn't be seeing calls for Jose's head more and more often.
This club lacks general philosophy, it isn't only down to the manager, but a right manager can help set it up.
One of the leading European clubs, and if we aren't that at the moment, we used to be couple of years ago, should have the same philosophy, regardless of who the manager is.
Juventus, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Manchester United, PSG, Manchester City and Bayern Munich seem to be the most recent elite group of continental clubs. Everyone there has their philosophy, and mostly they are attacking ones. Everyone except for us.
While great managers do find their way to mash things up even in these clubs, no matter who leads them, they will always to some extent be loyal to a certain type of football.
I would understand we are doing great on counters but we suck at it too with decision making, sloppy passing and poor finishing. The key to all this is pressing and Mourinho looks like he doesn't care about that. All top teams know how to press, we are just clueless.
I blame this on the apparent death of the classic winger like David Beckham. The main function of a winger is actually to cross very well, not to dribble or to run, we just need someone who can receive the ball at any wing and put it in Lukaku's head with accuracy.
Moyeseh, is that you?
I dislike that we don't press as a team and turnover the ball in dangerous situations
Or if we do it's rare
Lingard pressing arsenals defence led to his goal cos we won the ball high up the pitch
I also dislike how our front players don't or can't interchange effectively. They are all so static making it easy to mark them and predictable to what they will do with the ball
Or if we do it's rare
Lingard pressing arsenals defence led to his goal cos we won the ball high up the pitch
I also dislike how our front players don't or can't interchange effectively. They are all so static making it easy to mark them and predictable to what they will do with the ball
It is probably not a coincidence that our build up /attacking pace has been slow over the last 3 managers since the common factor is that we are still playing virtually the same full backs and central players in Smalling, Jones, Valencia and Young. Could that be the reason, just a thought.
Barcelona or Spain didn't played slow football, don't know why it is so difficult for fans in England to understand football is not only about pace and running with no purpose.
If you watch this, even just the first ten minutes, you get an idea of why this current team struggles, and you get an idea of how little it has to do with supposed negative tactics, or people not being in their exact right position on the pitch etc.
It's pretty much an example of how you'd expect a good Mourinho United team to play...direct and quick on the ball. We're giving Fulham space and time on the ball but then as soon as we win it back we're looking to pick holes. Every pass is direct and every decision is instant..the front players are more concerned with running to where the space is than worrying about who is in what exact position...they worry about that when we lose the ball. We're a million miles from this at the moment.
This isn't tactics, it's the players being alive and alert and having a level of intensity and hunger you just never see from this United side. This is a bg part of the reason why we get trashed whenever we play a team with good players who are willing to play with this intensity. It wouldn't change if we had three, four in the middle. We're simply a gear or two below and so will always end up chasing shadows.
Teams like City, Liverpool, Spurs etc. may not have Ronaldo, Tevez etc. but they do play with this kind of intensity. Every week.
We need midfielders and fullback to bombard forward often. If looses ball, let the center backs deal with it and worse come to worse let them one on one with our keeper. Thats United way. Our attack are slow because players stick to their position under possession, there is only one runner at any given time. Its more of tactics rather than players. I fully believe if we got Sanches, Ronaldo, Bale as front three we still play slow like this. Albeit some wonder goals now and then.
Spot on. The intensity is unusual for a Mourinho's team.
Borrowing LVG's word, our attackers are not horny enough.When did he say this!?
That's absolutely brilliant!
I watched 10 minutes of that game. Im sure it wasnt our best performance that season but still that is the best piece of United football i've seen in few years. None of Moyes, The Idiot or Mou got us play at such pace and intensity.
People like @haram are telling us that this is all part of well thought out Mourinho plans, where Mata is used that way on the right.
Watching that you can see the foundations are there, we relied on fullbacks for width, didn’t play through the middle as much and the CB’s mostly played sideways passing.
The difference between us then and us now is one touch passing and movement off and on the ball.
It looked like we were coached to take a one touch pass, and if we couldn’t then you’d have to move forward with the ball to find someone in space. At the same time the players in front of the player with the ball are all moving in various positions to open up space behind them.
We don’t do any of that currently, which is what causes us to be slow and lethargic.
Edit - some of Rio’s passing was terrible
Wes Brown and Evra were pivotal to us building up play from the back.
We need better FB’s, I’m sure we play better when Shaw is in the side over Young, but we also need to upgrade on Valencia.
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Wingers play in defence, strikers and no 10 play play on the flanks, left wingers play on the right and attacking midfielders are expected to play in a deeper role. No wonder why it takes us ages to do anything of note.
We struggle with doing the high press due to type of player. Lukaku Matic Mata Pogba Carrick Fellaini are physically not able to press they are not mobile enough and Mata/Carrick aside are all big powerful players.
That doesn’t mean it’s a disaster as we can retreat and hold and be hard to break down.
My problem with this United team is the number of players that we don’t commit forward. On counter attacks we generally have 2 or 3 get forward into the box. Liverpool City commit 5-6 and flood the box.
I’d imagine Jose will allow more players to commit when he trusts the team more.
Well it is part of the plan. Just the plan seems to be a bit shite.
I agree and this is also why he doesn't want to have to play 2 holding midfield players to "release Pogba". If you play with only 3 forwards they need to be outstanding, highly productive and consistent players. United don't have that.
But isn't it up to the manager and his staff through training to get them to play at a higher intensity? We have seen that when we do let the ball move faster we play so much better, and tend to get results.
I'm really hoping that the reason we don't commit a lot of men forward and hence look out of ideas with the ball is because Jose doesn't trust our defenders individually, neither does he thing we have a solid partner to Matic in midfield.
The Sevilla game is a good example of that, it was really frustrating to watch Valencia make very few forward runs.
I'm afraid this season is going to be more of the same to grind out results, let's see how our attack performs when we have a better back 4 and a solid partner for Matic.
Maybe then we can attack with 5/6 men, and not look as disjointed as we do now.
The Sevilla game is a good example of that, it was really frustrating to watch Valencia make very few forward runs.
I'm afraid this season is going to be more of the same to grind out results, let's see how our attack performs when we have a better back 4 and a solid partner for Matic.
Maybe then we can attack with 5/6 men, and not look as disjointed as we do now.
First 10 minutes of that game looks like we're in the last 10 minutes and trailing a goal behind.
Agree with a general point.
That tempo and movement is very good. That's what miss. Urgency in the play.
Just look at our CM there. The first 10 mins of this game already show a huge difference to what our midfield does now. Hargreaves and Anderson both pressing hard and with great intensity. They are not just holding their position at every cost. Anderson btw.
Looks like we are ten times fitter than we are now. Or that our players enjoyed playing football that much more.
The thing is this is how we should be playing now. We have pacey, skillful front players, a midfield that is rarely set up as if it's there to dictate possession in a game, but that's capable of playing through teams, and a manager who likes his team to sit back and pounce when they win possession.Watching that you can see the foundations are there, we relied on fullbacks for width, didn’t play through the middle as much and the CB’s mostly played sideways passing.
The difference between us then and us now is one touch passing and movement off and on the ball.
It looked like we were coached to take a one touch pass, and if we couldn’t then you’d have to move forward with the ball to find someone in space. At the same time the players in front of the player with the ball are all moving in various positions to open up space behind them.
We don’t do any of that currently, which is what causes us to be slow and lethargic.
Edit - some of Rio’s passing was terrible
Wes Brown and Evra were pivotal to us building up play from the back.
We need better FB’s, I’m sure we play better when Shaw is in the side over Young, but we also need to upgrade on Valencia.
Instead we don't really play like anything. We sit back as if we're going to counter, but then drop so deep that we can't. When we do win the ball there is absolutely no urgency at all except for when the urgency is to hoof it to no one.
The only time I've seen us play like in the video above even remotely recently was for the first 15 minutes against Arsenal, and even then, it was workking really well and we just, for no reason, stopped doing it. It's as if our players get immediately knackered if they play with the correct level of intensity for more than 2 minutes.
I don't really think it's to do with the quality of any particular player. I mean, Wes Brown? We used to play O'Shea or a 500 year old Gary Neville at fullback and still do it. Some of the play in that video above is actually really bad quality wise, but every player is switched on. There's no aimless hoofs, no dithering around, no taking 7 touches of the ball and then only the 8th touch has any point to it. No ignoring people in space to go backwards or to try and walk through an opposition defender (and it isn't just Pogba who does this).
The only players I see who ever tries to play like this at the moment are Lukaku, who seems to be the one who gets the most stick, and Sanchez, who at the moment sticks out like a sore thumb because he's trying to do things at 3 times the tempo of the rest of the team.