when he 1st arrived everyone seemed to think was a good signing well majority of the café anyway. when he plays for Italy he looks a complete different player. actually thought Jose would turn him in to his defensive full back when he 1st arrived but clearly that aint worked out
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What I saw from the match is Gray (I think that's his name) was ghosting past Darmian like he wasn't there. I mean seriously....it was like we were playing with 10 men and our RB had been sent off and the manager told our other defenders not to be bother filling in the missing RB.
He may be a good player, but for the EPL, he just doesn't have what it takes.
To be honest Gray would ghost past almost any defender let alone Darmian. But you also have to consider the fact that Darmian was looking after two of the opposing players that is Gray and their left back. He is an entirely different player when he plays for Italy. The EPL has got nothing to do with players not being to play or not. When they play for their national teams they most of the time face players who are as good or most of the time better than the players in the EPL.
He's been a model-pro in the way he's conducted himself since being here but he's ill suited to the premier league, unfair to keep him and ruin his career over the sake a few million there's no benefit to keeping him on the books to play about 10 times this season especially when his physical deficiencies make him a liability.
I do not understand this physical deficiencies he has. Does he not have it when he plays for Italy? Surely he has faced and faces players who are as good as and if not better than players he faces or will face in the PL.
How is this my first time watching this?!
In all seriousness though on evaluating Darmian's performances: Before the season started I was one of the first to jump to his defence. Thought he had a fair bit of consistency about him, yeah he hasn't been great for us but I wouldn't have tarnished him with the awful brush by any means.
After Friday nights performance however I have a completely different view and what people were telling me showed to be 100% true.
He got ripped a new one by Demari Gray on the right side. Pretty much every time they had the ball down our right you new what the outcome was going to be - Darmian on his arse and the ball getting whipped in. I don't know if this was solely down to him alone, Mata didn't provide an awful amount of cover when it was needed so I still feel semi harsh in pointing the finger solely at him.
Going forward/finding a man with the ball he was just as bad. He struggled to do pretty much anything productive with the ball in the opposition half. It also showed how incompetent he is to be able to take on an opposing player. He seems so timid and unwilling to 'knock and run' (like you're traditional fullback would) it was unreal and left be truly baffled.
His stamina is wank, don't know if i've seen him make it through too many games without huffing and puffing by the 60-70th minute. The Premier League is way more physically demanding than Serie A.
I am not talking about the Serie A. When he plays for Italy he has always been good. His huffing and puffing is a different issue. The club needs to get him fit then. Any International player when he is match fit is able to play 90 mins. That said if you have Mata in front of you I think any fb including Valencia at times have struggled. Valencia's pace gets him out of trouble many times but I agree Damian does not have pace like Valencia has.
I've not seen enough of him fot Italy but I know it's the weakest international side they've had in a while, as for physical limitations I'd say he lacks pace strength and stamina. Would you ever want to play a high line with Darmian on the right against any pacey winger or forward attacking the space behind him, he also struggle to over an overlap for the same reason.
I don't believe he will face high quality as regularly in international football as he does in the premier league, in the World Cup qualifying groups Italy played Spain, Albainia, Israel, Macedonia and Liechtenstein. Then Sweeden in the knockout qualifier, other than Spain how many of the hem have top class wingers he will be in 1v1 duels with as opposed to the premiership or champions league.
I'd love to play LB vs us. You'd have nothing to do all game and could bomb forward as much as possible.
This is why we wont win the league - you can't play such a lopsided formation, although we have no real solutions to this.
The solution, in the absence of any proper right winger, is for Fred to learn to keep right so that he can cover Darmian's wing when possession turns over. Shouldn't be an issue with another midfielder playing deeper than him (Matic or Pereira) and given that Pogba already has a tendency to favour the left hand side of the pitch.
That's a tactical thing we do though.
Mata drifts inside (has done since the dawn of time and he wouldn't be doing that unless instructed). It was Mata and Freds job to help Darmian out. We basically ignore the right wing completely and tend to go through the middle or left.
Shaw - 81 passes, 99 touches
Darmian - 41 passes, 55 touches
Mata drifts inside (has done since the dawn of time and he wouldn't be doing that unless instructed). It was Mata and Freds job to help Darmian out. We basically ignore the right wing completely and tend to go through the middle or left.
Shaw - 81 passes, 99 touches
Darmian - 41 passes, 55 touches
That'd help in the defensive respects but defence isn't our main issue. Most would agree that our lack of right sided attacking options probably cost us the league last year and may do again this year.
Oh, agreed on that front. Although I'm not inherently opposed to wingers who prefer to drift inside. There's nothing necessarily wrong with an asymmetrical attack - one proper wide man and one 'wide AM'. But you should only do it with a player who naturally suits the role, not just because you have no right wingers but too many #10s, which is our situation.
I'd still rather have Mata/Lingard cutting in than some bargain basement solution like Shaqiri, though.
Shocking and disgusting and we still refused to buy a RW
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/a-fairly-long-analysis-of-our-attack-includes-pictures.436721/
That was an analysis I did last season. Same pattern against Leicester. It really is baffling why we constantly ignore the right wing, we only were ever linked to Willian which always looked like a fantasy signing. So why didn't we go for #2 on our list? It's frustrating as feck.
Having said all that, I don't think you can pin the blame on Mata. It's a tactical thing we do, in the thread above it was a combination of different players on the right wing, Mata, Martial and Rashford. We overload on the left as thats where Pogba/Sanchez are. It's always our RB that carries any kind of consistent attack down the right and when those choices are Valencia and Darmian things are looking bad.
That was an analysis I did last season. Same pattern against Leicester. It really is baffling why we constantly ignore the right wing, we only were ever linked to Willian which always looked like a fantasy signing. So why didn't we go for #2 on our list? It's frustrating as feck.
Having said all that, I don't think you can pin the blame on Mata. It's a tactical thing we do, in the thread above it was a combination of different players on the right wing, Mata, Martial and Rashford. We overload on the left as thats where Pogba/Sanchez are. It's always our RB that carries any kind of consistent attack down the right and when those choices are Valencia and Darmian things are looking bad.
I doubt anyone says we’d have gotten 100 points if we’d just bought Mahrez.
Fair point, lets hope Dalot offers more than Valencia and Darmian in both respects.
The players dictate the tactics in this case though. Mata isn't being told to cut inside because its Mourinho's preference, he's being told that because Mourinho knows he cannot go around the outside and onto his right foot. No CM will ever get out wide and stay there the way a winger does, so the right flank will always be exposed at multiple points during a game.
It's obvious watching the team the right back is pretty isolated, but that heat map illustrates just how bad it is. Valencia or Darmian, they can't push forward in that setup at the best of times, and oppositions will know if they break to come down our right side.
It relies on the RB to be good individually at crossing/taking on a man, none of those things Darmian is good at. Valencia has got progressively worse too.
Let's hope Dalot can achieve his potential and take use of the space.
Good post. I wonder if Fred will be deployed in a manner which allows Valencia or whomever the RB is more freedom to get forward as he can offer some protection. It's still very frustrating that we have failed to address our weakness at RW.
If Mata drifts inside than Fred should automatically drift to the right. There is no point for all of them to be so close to each other for the entire length of the game. Shaw and Darmian should also be further up the pitch.
More than the right side, what's depressing in the graphic is how most of our team is camped inside our own half against a mid-table team, who themselves like to play on the counter.
Lets just hope we are talking about Dalot at the end of the season like the next Cafu.
Any decent right winger will be better than Mata. At least he will at least try to stop their LB attacking us and ganging up on our RB. He will at least put in some decent crosses. Darmian may not be a top class RB but he is made to look a lot worse by Mata.
The midfield are playing together for the first time having barely trained. It was never going to be a cohesive display but there were glimpses. You could see Fred and Pereira were getting drawn into the same areas too often and it was allowing Leicester to find space. The map really reflects that.
I think Mata's spell as a false 9 distorts it some but that right side is just putrid. Valencia will at least provide width but does nothing with it. Still a massive upgrade on Darmian.
Not sure I agree. As I said, it's not just a Mata issue, the exact same pattern occurs whoever we choose at RW, be that Martial, Rashford or Mata. They all cut in and drift towards the middle. If you're correct and we're doing this tactic purely because none of our players have the ability to stick out wide then why the feck did we not prioritise that as a summer signing and instead focus on CM/CB.
It's far more likely however that all 3 are being instructed to drift and we're abandoning the right with only the RB to provide width (presumably to provide the RB with more space on the right as the opponents LB should be following our RW player further into the middle of the pitch. Either way i've hated the tactic hence me making the thread last year.
That is exactly what happened though if you look at the heat maps. Average Position is a really shit method of analysing player positions because it doesn't take into account players rotating. In an example scenario lets say Hazard plays on the left for 45mins then switches to the right for the 2nd half. The Average Position would have him in the middle of the pitch.
No it doesn't lol, it shows the same side of the pitch for both halves.
It just wouldn't make sense doing it the way you described, it wouldn't be accurate.
Good point and I should have checked that. Are they posted somewhere?
I'm assuming the above is average position throughout and not when on the ball? Would be interesting to see the two variations
Yes it does. It wouldn't show the same player twice on the image. That's how average position images work. Sometimes they provide an image for each half, but again, when subs start taking into effect it doesn't take into consideration possible changes for formation. Average Position is a really, really shit way of checking player positions. Heat maps are far, far more accurate.
You can find them on whoscored:
https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/1...-League-2018-2019-Manchester-United-Leicester
Click heatmaps then toggle on which player you want to look at. You can also check touches in scoreboard to see where players touch the ball on the pitch, again another decent way of checking players movement. If you're photoshop wizard you can overlay the the touches with the heatmap.
I do think its because none of the players want to stay out wide. Mata can't do it, Martial drifts inside whichever flank hes on, and Rashford, well i'm not too sure what he does. He certainly doesn't have the dribbling ability to consistently beat a man and the modern PL fullback is too smart to let someone beat them on pace alone.
We've been linked enough times with right wingers to make me think Mourinho wants to correct it, and i suspect the pursuit of a CB was to move to a back 3 where the fullbacks become wingbacks.
How are we supposed to stretch teams? Why are the two wingers playing in midfield?
But then we don't have a quality RB to become wingback to solve the problem. Darmian and Valencia simply aren't good enough in the final third. So that would require us to purchase another player to be first choice right wingback.
The alternative is to sign a right forward/winger who won't constantly drift out wide and have a presence in the opponents box. I mean if it's such a problem position that we're having to abandon the attacking threat from an entire wing because we don't have players capable of sticking wide then surely that would be top priority to fix. It's a bit puzzling. To put it into perspective, we had 2 touches in the right side of the box against Leicester at Home. City had 18 against Arsenal away.
I agree - I said back when Martial was the LW. He was consistently told through out the match to keep width out on the left because on the right hand side we have a player that is more prone to playing inwards. It was good when martial would cut in an score on the left of midfield but he would struggle to apply the width that Jose historically needs from one side of his team.
Since we have Sanchez on the LW who is a forward who cuts in - it makes sense why he felt he needed willian on the RW to give him width. The season before the year we got sanchez we were linked with Perisic a wide playing midfielder LM, and Bale the left footed RW. This season no inverted forward, just willian and not anybody else - not malcom nor mahrez etc.
It's merely his tactics
Duff- Robben
Pandev- Invetrted forward Eto'o
Hazard - Schrulle
Hazard- Willian
Ronaldo -callejon
Ronaldo - Di maria RM
The same goes with his preferences for target men - Costa, Higuain, Drogba, Lukaku, milito, ibrahimovic.
At this current point - the best thing to do is move Sanchez out right until the next transfer window if he continues to not capture title winning form. Actually thats a lie- the best thing to do is play 352 a formation that requires not a single winger or players in makeshift positions.
I feel Darmian would love to have anyone else but Mata in front of him.
Never seen much of him for Italy but I imagine most of the teams he plays against in international football are of a lesser quality.
As for the club needing to get him fit well, I’m sure the last two managers and their respective coaching staffs have tried to get him fit over the last three years. But his piss poor stamina problem remains, so either it’s a physical limitation he can’t get over or he is not putting in the hours doing enough cardio to improve his stamina.
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