Off-ball movement
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There is no reason to run when no one can play a through ball.
Not a single passer who is accurate with time and placement. Until that - runs are not the first problem.
Today Smalling had the best pass and it was a through ball to Rashford. Says it all.
Not a single passer who is accurate with time and placement. Until that - runs are not the first problem.
Today Smalling had the best pass and it was a through ball to Rashford. Says it all.
Feels like at this point we would benefit from just drilling basic 1-2 passing and movement over and over again until its second nature. I'd love to watch an actual training session to see what we work on.
Something I'll always reiterate the identity of the team is passed through by the manager. Thus far Ole with the exception of 2 games has underutilized the use coaching to get the players on song. This is something I feel that will always be evident next season, I just don't think Solskjaer has any pedigree to move the team any further than what he has done thus far that was his ceiling in my opinion.
There's absolutely nothing positive from our play that we can take into future seasons, the play has been disgraceful.
There's absolutely nothing positive from our play that we can take into future seasons, the play has been disgraceful.
It was decent when we played 4-3-3 in Ole's first 7 or 8 games but has been awful since. There's barely any energy in our attack anymore (apart from Rashford)
This is a key point for me. Dalot, Rom drifting out there occasionally and the even more occasional good ball from Young aside there is nothing going on on our right flank, making us much easier to defend against. No combinations, no movement, and in any case we're too slow at switching it to catch any opposition teams out. We're struggling all over the park to play any kind of fluid, dangerous football but allowing the right hand side to get into this state is like having a fight with one hand behind your back.
It would be hugely instructive, not to mention painful, to be a fly on the wall in opposition meetings before and after our games with them. I wonder what dangers they're pointing to, and what weaknesses they're highlighting? Is the defensive part of the team talk almost as simple as 'strangely enough they don't move quickly anymore and they lack composure on the ball, so close down their passing angles, press them into mistakes, overload our right flank in defensive phases and we've got every chance of keeping a clean sheet', because that's what it looks like it could be at the moment given how slow, static and predictable the football is.
Get Joao Felix. He'll pick up space.
Or Piatek upfront.
Players who try will ALWAYS find space.
Or Piatek upfront.
Players who try will ALWAYS find space.
Sancho’s movement puts everyone one of our attackers to shame.
Add him and Bruno and we would look infinitely better in fluidity and attack.
I’m all for Felix as well if possible.
Lukaku isn’t fit and has a loser’s mentality, Martial plays with the tenacity of a cheshire cat, and Lingard is scared of being on the ball because deep down he knows he’s shite.
You either need high IQ footballers or good coach to teach them.
Romelu??
An issue which I find incredible is that Ole used to be one of the best finishers around, primarily because of the timing of his runs and his ability to see a gap and charge at it, gambling on a pass being put in for him to latch onto and lash home; yet his team can not or will not gamble on the runs.
There seems to be nobody backing the forwards when we eventually attack the opposition, no-one at the edge of the box attacking a possible rebound. There were moments yetserday when we had the ball wide right but there was no options available in front or on the opposite side of the pitch. Far too often we played the ball wide and hoped for a good cross when the better option would have been to drive straight at the heart of West Ham's defense.
Ole needs mobile strikers who are willing to gamble on runs and open the defense. Greenwood looked like he was willing and so did Rashford when they came on but for too long we suffered static Romelu, out on the right?? when he can't control the ball with his "stronger" left foot and Lingard looked like he was lost and didn't want to be there. To challenge next year, we need 2 mobile strikers.
There seems to be nobody backing the forwards when we eventually attack the opposition, no-one at the edge of the box attacking a possible rebound. There were moments yetserday when we had the ball wide right but there was no options available in front or on the opposite side of the pitch. Far too often we played the ball wide and hoped for a good cross when the better option would have been to drive straight at the heart of West Ham's defense.
Ole needs mobile strikers who are willing to gamble on runs and open the defense. Greenwood looked like he was willing and so did Rashford when they came on but for too long we suffered static Romelu, out on the right?? when he can't control the ball with his "stronger" left foot and Lingard looked like he was lost and didn't want to be there. To challenge next year, we need 2 mobile strikers.
Not sure if serious
Good point, nobody wants to feel uncomfortable when playing. I for one don’t understand why De Gea doesn’t have pillows on his goal line either.
I was about to make a post about off the ball movement but figured I would look around first. From reading your post, I couldn't have said it any better myself. We check in for the ball played to feet instead of anticipating where the ball should go by running into space. Amazingly, we almost scored today 26 seconds in because Rashford made such a run. Then in the second half he made the same run again and was almost in on goal other than being let down by a poor first touch. Other than that, I saw no movement today...
Isn't off the ball movement taught at a much younger level like u-15s and all.... Why are professionals who are on 200k odd wages been taught about off the ball movement? I don't remember any of Fergie's teams having to be taught off the ball movements? Everyone's so static and our coaches can't seem to address this ongoing issue. What's next? These players will need to be taught about "passing and dribbling within the lines of the pitch"?
Holy Molly, I remember creating a similar thread in 2015 
My OP makes me depressed when I read it
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/no-off-the-ball-movement-no-availability-for-passes.400643/
"It's what makes so terrible this team so terrible to watch. Players just standing around and waiting for a miracle, as if the ball was going to move forward by itself. This was a pb under SAF and it still hasn't been close to being rectified.
Surely in a possession style football, you'd want these things to be applied no ? Why do our CBs have to be our playmakers and create opening by carrying the ball ? Why does it have to take them to do that ?"
My OP makes me depressed when I read ithttps://www.redcafe.net/threads/no-off-the-ball-movement-no-availability-for-passes.400643/
"It's what makes so terrible this team so terrible to watch. Players just standing around and waiting for a miracle, as if the ball was going to move forward by itself. This was a pb under SAF and it still hasn't been close to being rectified.
Surely in a possession style football, you'd want these things to be applied no ? Why do our CBs have to be our playmakers and create opening by carrying the ball ? Why does it have to take them to do that ?"
I was going through old tweets the other day and found one complaining about the lack of movement in 2011. It’s unbelievable this is still such an issue. We seem to have struggled against smaller teams for years now, under different managers, and it’s all for the same reason.
It’s the main reason why many people like Lingard, he can instantly make the attack seem better because of his movement. In reality he’s actually very average in terms of attacking output, it just makes such a difference having players who will move.
It’s the main reason why many people like Lingard, he can instantly make the attack seem better because of his movement. In reality he’s actually very average in terms of attacking output, it just makes such a difference having players who will move.
Lingard likes to move a lot indeed, away from the ball
I actually swapped over to the Juve-Ajax game around 60/70 minutes last night and it really was depressing to see how static we looked in comparison to the other teams. Barely any off the ball movement.
It’s painful.
It’s painful.
I feel like the last 4 managers' we've had (including Fergie) don't really value it.
Fergie towards the end of his tenure had a pretty straightforward plan. Move the ball out wide, get the ball into the strikers from the wide positons quickly. Midfielders were just there as fillers to stay compact and move the ball into the wide areas. I'm talking about Fergie teams post Ronaldo. He was still capable of getting results this way because he was Fergie.
Moyes had also had a very similar idea. Move it wide quickly and get the ball in from there. He wasn't capable of getting results because he was Moyes and not Fergie.
Van Gaal valued above all structure. He had a very twisted idea of possession football where the players occupied and were contained within their blocks.
Mourinho also valued structure more than anything - but for Mourinho it's all about being ready to respond to the counter attack. He didn't want his players to be out of position for breaks. He even wanted his forwards to be cautious of the break.
That passing move Ajax pulled off - I don't think we could manage that if we had 3-4 extra players on the field never mind with 11...
Depressing stuff indeed. Even during that Young error(which is still clearly his fault - not absolving him of blame), not much movement during that sequence either and rather poor positioning during the build-up.
Most new united managers since SAF have started relatively well in terms of attacking intent...unfortunately a month in they realise the huge deficiencies in our defensive players and look to build a degree of conservatism into our tactics to protect them at the cost our ambition going forward.
Despite some efforts to buy players to fix this we haven’t landed on the silver bullet. Ultimately you can forget about attacking until we have a couple of CBS who can handle themselves 1-1 without the need for cover and are able to play the ball through the lines.
Despite some efforts to buy players to fix this we haven’t landed on the silver bullet. Ultimately you can forget about attacking until we have a couple of CBS who can handle themselves 1-1 without the need for cover and are able to play the ball through the lines.
We have poor movement in behind and Our leading striker Rashford drifting wide second half - which lead to us recycling the ball back to midfield as no one was in the box.
So we had no natural width or when we did we ended up with no one in the box. Frustrating to see us not at all disciplined are in tune.
So we had no natural width or when we did we ended up with no one in the box. Frustrating to see us not at all disciplined are in tune.
The only movement we know is running straight down for counters. I don't like the setup we have, in order to play counters you need players far apart. This is also what's stopping us from playing quick one-two's to break the lines. We are too far apart. Just look at Ajax quick and direct passing yesterday, they literally had four attackers in and around the half moon.
I dislike our current set-up too.
It's far too direct. We still don't play 'modernized' football. It looked promising to start under Ole, but it's reverted back to old ways.
Nothing evidences more how poor our movement is than when we get a throw in, no matter where we are on the pitch. It is embarrassing how many times we turn over possession from our own throw. It is as if we don't practice movement from dead balls in training. We always have 2/3 players making isolated runs rather than working as a unit so the spare player can collect the ball short.
Some of it is down to the players (Martial is probably the worst culprit), but I'm afraid the lack of intelligent, integrated, movement and appalling buildup play is largely a result of the coaching.
Ole has made some improvements since arriving, but this is one area where things have remained disappointingly the same.
"A player only has the ball for 3 minutes per game.
What do you do during the 87 minutes without it?
That's what determines a good player" - Johan Cryuff
The movement of our players when we have the ball is bad, it's worse when we don't have the ball! This is why we struggle to score and this is why when teams show the slightest attacking intent against us, we concede so easily or we concede so much possession.
What do you do during the 87 minutes without it?
That's what determines a good player" - Johan Cryuff
The movement of our players when we have the ball is bad, it's worse when we don't have the ball! This is why we struggle to score and this is why when teams show the slightest attacking intent against us, we concede so easily or we concede so much possession.
It's like amateurs playing football when i watch united play.
Agree. If you watch him he often actually moves behind opposition players when we gain possession. It's as if he's hiding for fear of receiving a pass. Not sure if he was always like this or perhaps his confidence is shot.
It is annoying. We need players to make themselves available for passes from midfield and they hide.
Its all about intelligence. Watch Barcelona's first goal for example of how they close the space and then retrieve the ball or Ajax,who are possibly the best off-the-ball team in Europe at the moment.We're some levels below that, intelligent wise.
Suarez made a great run on Messi’s first goal. Meanwhile on the other end Rashford has the ball with tons of space to run forward and Martial basically just stays with his defender out on the left giving Rash no option but try a low percentage shot.
It’s horrendous how little attacking movement we have off the ball unless there’s acres of pitch to run into. Against low blocks, there are no runners in behind at all. Can’t understand how it’s not been identified and developed upon.
Ours is so good so much so getting a manager/coaches who can properly coach off the ball movements is not a priority. Meh don't need it, who needs a proper football plan at the top of the club hieararchy.
One of me main concerns which also shows in todays match against Wolves. In the first half there were 2 or 3 instances within 5 minutes where we had the ball on the wing with the Wolves defence a bit on their heels to get back in position. James stormed towards the backline, while both Bruno and Pereira stood still a good 10 metres outside their box without the slightest intention of storming into space in the box. Mata seems like the only player aware of the advantage of sometimes leaving his area to rattle the opposition.
An addition, our wingbacks way too often do not overlap when there is room for it. The time Pereira completely screwed up a backheel, Shaw was no where near him and just stood and watched further back.
It happens too many times in every match I can remember this season. Seems like it's been coached out of most of our players. And by now any impact from Ole to change it should be visible.
You can have 11 world class players, bit if you havent got some movement, you will struggle most of the time
I have sai
I, and many, many others have said this so often mate. For me, this is why I cannot stand Martial. There is more life in debenhmas front window.
Tell me more about it. Haven’t heard about this since 2013
The last 5 minutes have shown pretty mich how clueless we are in building chances and building up pressure through movement. There are 2 players on that left side and 4 from Wolves. Instead of helping out or switching the play quickly, we keep fannying around while everyone just watches and stands still.
Ultimately the last chance created came from Wan Bissake finally making a run to the byline and crossing it in, where our LW Dalot tucked in inside.
We are just randomly kicking around, making it up on the spot what we do and how. Seems that we only train fitness in training and do some general drills without actually preparing any attacking patterns and combinations. These players look like they dont know what to do and barely have some chemistry together.
Ultimately the last chance created came from Wan Bissake finally making a run to the byline and crossing it in, where our LW Dalot tucked in inside.
We are just randomly kicking around, making it up on the spot what we do and how. Seems that we only train fitness in training and do some general drills without actually preparing any attacking patterns and combinations. These players look like they dont know what to do and barely have some chemistry together.