Set pieces and balls into our box

[noodlehair]

We clearly STILL do not do any work on these at all. When you watch from every corner or ball in, our players do not mark, do not take up zones. They do not attempt to close down crosses and force opposition players into areas where we defend more strongly.

We sit off teams and let them get the ball into our box, and then they'll have one pplayer there and none of oour players will be anywhere near them. None of our players will be lined up to intercept the path of the ball. It looks like they have never actuallly worked on defending in their lives.

All this talk of us "learning" and sorting out past mistakes is absolutely empty when we just flat out refuse to work on or improve the most basic part of our game, despite it being at a level which is genuinely embarassing and costs us soft goals time after time after time.

This isn't something that requires us to sign better players. It's just the most basic parts of the game. The sort of thing it would be perfectly fair to criticise a league 2 side for being as poor as we are at.

 

[izec]

We are not coached. In game as well as freekicks, corners and throw ins. Good managers are obsessed with details and try to gain as much advantage, leaving nothing to coincidence. We frankly dont care.

I agree

 

[bazalini]

I'd f**king love to know the answer to this as well.

I'd love to see what work is being done on this on the practice pitch. At least with Jose and Van Gaal you knew they'd be set up defensively.

Looks like its all attack attack attack and hope we score more goals then the other team.

Bunch of Muppets. I'm still so pissed over this.

 

[Big Ben Foster]

I don't understand how we can be so shit at set pieces, both attacking and defending. It's been a recurring theme for several years now, going back several managers even.

 

[noodlehair]

We are not coached. In game as well as freekicks, corners and throw ins. Good managers are obsessed with details and try to gain as much advantage, leaving nothing to coincidence. We frankly dont care.

I agree

It is at a level where I don't think it's unfair to call it unprofessional.

This is a professional football team...one of the biggest in the world with endless resources. Our players and coaching staff are paid millions to do nothing except work every day on being as good at football as possible.

To come out game after game and look less prepared at set pieces and crosses than you woulld expect from a lower league side is just completely unacceptable. It's cost us 2 points today. 2 points at Wolves. 4 already this season. Who knows how many last season. I've never known anything like it where a team has been so determined to ignore a fundamental thing like this.

 

[kouroux]

Wtf have we been doing all preseason long if there isn't a clear change from last season ?

 

[fps]

I'd love to know why Ashley Young was taking them. Pereira hiding again.

 

[GiddyUp]

David De Gea, although a great shot stopper, does not command his area at all. He had ample time to get out and put a glove on that cross yet he is rooted to his line. I really believe that Romero deserves a run.

 

[Flying_Heckfish]

Said this on the Ole thread as well. Just rank bad organisation. Why did we leave Lindelof exposed? Maguire should be marking/covering the main threat, we may as well stick Lindelof on the post or outside the box he's that useless in the air.

Southampton didn't even have that many really dangerous players in the air, although JWP does offer accurate delivery.

 

[Foxbatt]

I agree with the OP. Look at the way especially Young let's let man cross the ball. He should be more tight on his man. He is scared that he will be beaten and that's why he lets them cross.
It was Pogba who was marking the Soton CB initially. He let him make a run on Lindelof.
But again it's down to coaching.

 

[Amerifan]

We are not coached. In game as well as freekicks, corners and throw ins. Good managers are obsessed with details and try to gain as much advantage, leaving nothing to coincidence. We frankly dont care.

I agree

A lot of our guys are young and haven’t played together. Maybe we are focused on fundamentals like passing accuracy that need to improve before we move on to set pieces?

 

[el3mel]

I don't think we do any work in training at all never mind working on set pieces. They probably run a lot in training and that's about it from what we see.

 

[bond19821982]

No one can whip in one. Pereira is shit in everything else but set pieces. While Pogba is good at it, we need him in the box.

 

[noodlehair]

David De Gea, although a great shot stopper, does not command his area at all. He had ample time to get out and put a glove on that cross yet he is rooted to his line. I really believe that Romero deserves a run.

This may be true but it is still something that should be worked on. There were 5 United players who were in a position to quite easily prevent that goal yesterday, and that's not including De Gea.

Young did not attempt to block the line of the cross. Maguire pointed at the Southampton player instead of picking him up. Lindelof who was nearer, pointed at the Southampton player instead of picking him up. Bissaka was not even looking despite being stood directly behind the Southampton player. Pogba who was picking him up just ran off.

From the corner immediately before, a very similar thing happened. When you look at what our players were doing when the ball came in, the answer is that none of them appeared to be doing anything. Just wait and see if the other team score.

When your whole team can't do one simple job between them, it is something that needs to be addressed on the training ground. What other team would fail to mark one player from a cross into their own six yard box?

It was a very obvious weakness for the whole of last season, from the very first game against Leicester onwards. THe current coaching staff have been in place since before Christmas. Even if, for some unknown reason, they decided not to find time to work on this during last season, they have had the ENTIRE pre-season to sort the basics out.

Genuinely you will not see another professional football team as dissorganised as we are with set pieces or balls into the box. It's not some minor issue either. It costs us quite a lot of goals and points over the course of a season. It can easily be the difference between finishing 4th and about 9th.

I mean it's so serious to me that it completely undermines everything else we do. I can't take anything Ole says seriously when we just refuse to sort out something as basic as this, which has almost nothing to do with the quality of the players.

 

[kouroux]

@noodlehair We also have to wonder why we don't benefit ourselves from these defensive lapses on set pieces and I simply think it's because teams prepare them better than us (if we do any preparations at all)

 

[noodlehair]

@noodlehair We also have to wonder why we don't benefit ourselves from these defensive lapses on set pieces and I simply think it's because teams prepare them better than us (if we do any preparations at all)

Yeah. Well when you think about it, it's impossible to properly practice attacking from set pieces or crosses, if you don't bother to work on defending them. You can't do one without the other.

We don't even seem to have sorted out who our corner/freekick taker is...it's different every time. It changes from one game to the next and sometimes two or three times during the game...We've had 5 or more corner takers already this season. Shaw, Periera, Young, Rashford, Mata.... We're just making it up as we go. Even a school team knows who their best corner taker is.

The thing is, if you take away this issue, we win yesterday, and then the performance actually doesn't look that bad. We probably win at Wolves. We might even have scored from one of the thousand set pieces and crossing situations we had against Palace.

It's making a huge difference to our games and results. It's genuinely embarassing. Makes us look like a bunch of uncoached playground footballers.

 

[Kostov]

I'd love to know why Ashley Young was taking them. Pereira hiding again.

I really was baffled by this. Why for feck sake. Pereira is clearly not David Beckham but he is clearly better at set pieces than Young.

But this is a thread about set pieces in our own box, defending.

 

[FireballXL5]

We have to be the worst coached and drilled side in the PL. You can see it on the pitch, they're just making it up as they go along.

 

[Infra-red]

A definite failing on Solskjaer's part.

 

[chillooout]

How can a player such as Michael Carrick in coaching role let this happen? Are the players too braindead?

 

[Rajma]

I hate seeing our throw-in routines as players clearly have no idea what to do during those, we simply leave it to chance.

 

[Bestofthebest]

I hate seeing our throw-in routines as players clearly have no idea what to do during those, we simply leave it to chance.

I have been going on about this for years, under several different managers. We stand around like statues instead of being on the move and usually loose the ball within two or three touches. This was happening under Fergie but we got away with it because we were so good in other areas.

 

[Godfather]

I don't know what's worse. Our own corners or those against us. Actually I think our own anger me more. Our new plan seems to be to float them in slowly onto Maguire's head who flicks them on or puts them back into the six yard box. It's ridiculous. Instead of trying to put in a dangerous corner that we can score directly from. At least once.

 

[Godfather]

I have been going on about this for years, under several different managers. We stand around like statues instead of being on the move and usually loose the ball within two or three touches. This was happening under Fergie but we got away with it because we were so good in other areas.

Unser LvG it was alright. Actually everything "coachable" was pretty decent under him. Even our corners and fk. At least until he started putting Jones on corner duty.
Nowadays it seems everything we do in training sessions is run. It feels like Moyes again.

 

[Bestofthebest]

Unser LvG it was alright. Actually everything "coachable" was pretty decent under him. Even our corners and fk. At least until he started putting Jones on corner duty.
Nowadays it seems everything we do in training sessions is run. It feels like Moyes again.[/QUOTE

Yes, probably right that most things were better under van Gaal but there is a real question of should we really need to tell players of international calibrate how to take throw ins. I was told as an eleven year old to only throw to a player on the move and to not stand around when we got a throw in. Also, we never had " specialist" throw in players it was whoever was nearest, quick as you can.

 

[Davie Moyes]

Great post. Hits nail down on the head. We never look like scoring from our many set pieces. Even in the build up to their for corner I sensed we are slacking off closing down their players and it was oh so predictable they would score from the resulting corner when they hardly threatened all game.

 

[Di Maria's angel]

A definite failing on Solskjaer's part.

Nah, surely not.

 

[noodlehair]

I really was baffled by this. Why for feck sake. Pereira is clearly not David Beckham but he is clearly better at set pieces than Young.

But this is a thread about set pieces in our own box, defending.

Well again it works both ways. How can you practice defending a set piece effectively if you don't even bother working out how to take one properly?

It's amazing that this is even a topic of discussion about a premier league football team. It would be like having to discuss why the McClaren F1 team wont teach their pit crew how to change a tire.

I really want Ole to do well but basic things like this are just totally unacceptable. I mean obviously so. Just sort it out.

 

[SirMattlives]

So, does anyone actually know who among our team of coaches is responsible for what parts of the training?

 

[Isotope]

Any decent Gk would punch out that one, instead of ball watching. That's inside the 6 yard box, supposedly Gk owns it.

 

[kouroux]

As the Chelsea game showed, set pieces are still important part of football. Our play is so fecking terrible that we should work more on these things like a good old relegation side as our football is equivalent to theirs nowadays.

 

[Snow]

Set pieces are massively overrated. Last season there were 20 goals from direct free kicks out of the 1072 goals scored. We scored 2, same as 5 other clubs and 1 less than Arsenal.

There were 3907 corners in the PL last season. I'm not sure how many were scored generally it's not more than 2% just like the free kicks.

 

[100]

Bump. The floated bollox to maguire is more mindboggling than the Phil Jones corner era. It might make some sense to mix things up once in a while but every fecking corner? We can't win one header - let's try and win two. Let's move our most dangerous threat at corners to a position that's of less danger to the opponent. For how shite we've been the lack of common sense at such a straightforward aspect of football is what makes me think the coaching staff don't have a clue.

 

[noodlehair]

I'd say it's amateur stuff but even a Sunday league team would have worked on it by this point.

It's impossible to describe how embarrsingly poor this.

 

[100]

Fred was on Yerry Mina

 

[Kag]

From a coaching perspective, this is easily the biggest issue we have.

Opposition defenders are being allowed ten yard runs towards one of the most cowardly goalkeepers in the division. Fred and Wan-Bissaka are picking up Mina and Keane. It was Otamendi last week. Why? Maguire, who is genuinely brilliant in the air, is being asked to stand around on the six yard line and mark nobody. It’s mental.

 

[DWelbz19]

I think the Sky Sport stat said we have conceded the second most from direct corners (6 goals).

 

[noodlehair]

And AGAIN.

There's no words to describe how bad this is. It'd be unacceptable if we were a school team at this point.

 

[Heinzesight]

It’s a shame Maguire turns to absolute dogshit at heading in the opposition box.

 

[100]

Rashford acting like hes been assigned the position of standing still at the front post, rather than attacking the ball?