Static, slow motion zombie passing

[Randall Flagg]

Zombies 3 stoke 1

 

[Aboutreika18]

It's working because they're not deferring to Scholes every third or fourth pass and actually driving forward on the ball.

 

[kouroux]

It was a very controlled second half

 

[Sojiro]

It was there at times but for the most part I thought we moved well. Even scholes took the ball for a couple runs which moved us on our way. Also the fluidity of the front three helped with options rather than deferring to Scholes/Carrick who sit deep.

 

[Forevergiggs]

Zombie strikers back...

We won 3-1 in the end but it was frustrating to watch United last night. I couldn't figure out how we were lined up. Rooney or Giggs were the deepest midfielders, which was bollocks. Absolutely created nothing for 80 minutes only for the keeper to make a mistake for the RVP goal. We can get by with this dilly-dallying in a weak group or in the league against weaker opposition but I hope we have a game plan and a best XI for the knock-out stages.

I am joining Mr.Noodles in his movement from now on. We need to sign another midfielder and Giggs shouldn't start any games in the midfield again, ever. I don't know who is good and would be eligible to play in the CL but let's break the bank and freaking sign him. I would go bonkers if another Witsel or Martinez goes without us even making an attempt.

 

[lysglimt]

I wouldnt put too much into last nights game....it's like we weren't even bothered for 80 minutes and then decided, ok...lets finish them off.

And Giggs really did his job fairly well last night...

 

[Brightonian]

It's really nothing to worry about, because we were always going to play badly with such an odd lineup. Neither Giggs or Anderson are the sort of midfielder who sets a tempo and keeps our rhythm going, and despite Rooney's best efforts he's not a Cleverley or Scholes either.

But as long as we have one of those two in the line-up, which presumably we always will this season in our 'first' team, then we won't have to worry about having the same problems as last night.

 

[Forevergiggs]

I wouldnt put too much into last nights game....it's like we weren't even bothered for 80 minutes and then decided, ok...lets finish them off.

And Giggs really did his job fairly well last night...

What was the job? Misplacing passes and letting the opposition attack us when they pleased?

 

[kps88]

It's Scholes' fault. No wait, blame Carrick. Oh right...

 

[#07]

I don't even think movement was the main issue. It was simply that last night United seemed to decide the Wimbledon way was the approach to take for much of the game. I lost count of the amount of times our midfielders went long. Until the lights went out there was relatively little desire to pass and move. It was Hollywood pass after Hollywood pass surrendering the ball cheaply to Braga time and time again.

 

[Forevergiggs]

It's really nothing to worry about, because we were always going to play badly with such an odd lineup. Neither Giggs or Anderson are the sort of midfielder who sets a tempo and keeps our rhythm going, and despite Rooney's best efforts he's not a Cleverley or Scholes either.

But as long as we have one of those two in the line-up, which presumably we always will this season in our 'first' team, then we won't have to worry about having the same problems as last night.

It would be nice to have a first choice midfield two though. When everyone is fit we should be able to say that any two are our best midfielders.

 

[Brightonian]

It would be nice to have a first choice midfield two though. When everyone is fit we should be able to say that any two are our best midfielders.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: we should be moving to a midfield 3, at least for the short term future. We don't have any midfielders who are genuinely world class enough to make a 2 viable against the big opponents, for a start. What we do have is a few who are (ignoring last night's bizarre one-off) in very good form.

Cleverley, Carrick and Anderson would make a perfectly balanced trio in the middle. And anyone who is still arguing that either Young or Nani are playing well enough at the moment to merit inclusion over any of those three is clearly not actually watching the football.

 

[Ash_G]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: we should be moving to a midfield 3, at least for the short term future. We don't have any midfielders who are genuinely world class enough to make a 2 viable against the big opponents, for a start. What we do have is a few who are (ignoring last night's bizarre one-off) in very good form.

Cleverley, Carrick and Anderson would make a perfectly balanced trio in the middle. And anyone who is still arguing that either Young or Nani are playing well enough at the moment to merit inclusion over any of those three is clearly not actually watching the football.

Yeah but then you end up with Rooney out wide. Why not just have Carrick clev/ando and then Rooney just ahead as he has been in recent weeks? I agree on going to a 433 but I don't think it makes sense to play ando and clev and put Rooney in an even more unnatural position, don't think Clev/Ando have shown enough goal threat/cutting edge to justify that, if it were Kagawa and he and Rooney could switch between who was wide and who played central then fair enough but I don't think Ando/Clev are as good as him even if he was a bit off before his injury.

 

[Solius]

At one point one of our players had the ball and everybody else was literally just standing there. I genuinely thought the ref had stopped play.

 

[Adam-Utd]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: we should be moving to a midfield 3, at least for the short term future. We don't have any midfielders who are genuinely world class enough to make a 2 viable against the big opponents, for a start. What we do have is a few who are (ignoring last night's bizarre one-off) in very good form.

Cleverley, Carrick and Anderson would make a perfectly balanced trio in the middle. And anyone who is still arguing that either Young or Nani are playing well enough at the moment to merit inclusion over any of those three is clearly not actually watching the football.

We played a midfield 3 last night and was probably our worst performance in terms of chance creation.

 

[Forevergiggs]

@Brightonian: I would like that too but we are not a team to built to play with a 3 man mid on a regular basis. We have too many attacking players and strikers. The need to accommodate them and give them minutes takes precedent. They have often bailed us out of tough situations too so you can't really blame Fergie too much. It's a catch-22 with the available personnel. I don't think anything is going to be sorted until Scholes and Giggs retire and we have clarity on the Nani situation.

I would be pleased if we have a definite style of play that could be adopted in most games. A team, which playing well, should be able to take care of any opposition. I don't know how bright are the chances of that happening. I to and fro a lot when it comes to our team selections and style. One can probably get that from my posts.

 

[Escobar]

Sometimes, everyone just runs away from the player who has the ball. I dont understand that at all - it is nice to try to get into a free position but if you just run away, you leave the player with the ball completely alone. Play closer and move forward as a whole team FFS

 

[Siorac]

We played a midfield 3 last night and was probably our worst performance in terms of chance creation.

Calling Giggs-Anderson-Rooney a "midfield three" is like calling Fletcher-Brown-Heinze-Richardson a "back four".

(that's how we finished a home game against Sheffield United in 2007).

 

[marjen]

At one point one of our players had the ball and everybody else was literally just standing there. I genuinely thought the ref had stopped play.

Yeah, I think you'll find that was when the lights went out and the ref in fact did stop the game.

 

[Ash_G]

Yeah I don't think you can judge a midfield 3 from yesterday. The team was so unbalanced.

 

[Stack]

Sometimes, everyone just runs away from the player who has the ball. I dont understand that at all - it is nice to try to get into a free position but if you just run away, you leave the player with the ball completely alone. Play closer and move forward as a whole team FFS

Sometimes it depends on what has been practiced at training. Sometimes you want players to move away from the guy with the ball because the opposition are marking players tightly and by moving away you drag defenders out of the ball carriers space.

 

[Jonno]

Sometimes, everyone just runs away from the player who has the ball. I dont understand that at all - it is nice to try to get into a free position but if you just run away, you leave the player with the ball completely alone. Play closer and move forward as a whole team FFS

This could also be seen to create space for the influential player on the ball to run forward.

 

[Brightonian]

We played a midfield 3 last night and was probably our worst performance in terms of chance creation.

As Siorac has said, that hardly counts. A striker and a geriatric ex-winger who really should have seen the signs by now are hardly the partners Anderson would have hoped for. I'm talking Anderson-Carrick/Fletcher-Cleverley/Scholes.

Yeah but then you end up with Rooney out wide. Why not just have Carrick clev/ando and then Rooney just ahead as he has been in recent weeks? I agree on going to a 433 but I don't think it makes sense to play ando and clev and put Rooney in an even more unnatural position, don't think Clev/Ando have shown enough goal threat/cutting edge to justify that, if it were Kagawa and he and Rooney could switch between who was wide and who played central then fair enough but I don't think Ando/Clev are as good as him even if he was a bit off before his injury.

Every time this 3-man midfield discussion comes up I end up posting the same formations to show that you definitely don't have to push Rooney out wide to make it work. I'm not going to do it again, but if you check my last posts you'll find a couple at least. Suffice to say you can do a diamond (which is, despite the name, essentially a three man midfield formation if we play Rooney at the tip), a 'pyramid' (4-3-2-1, my preference, with the front three a selection from Rooney, Kagawa, Van Persie and Hernandez), or a 4-3-3 where Rooney, although officially on the wing, actually has a free role, and Cleverley and Evra together provide the width.

@Brightonian: I would like that too but we are not a team to built to play with a 3 man mid on a regular basis. We have too many attacking players and strikers. The need to accommodate them and give them minutes takes precedent. They have often bailed us out of tough situations too so you can't really blame Fergie too much. It's a catch-22 with the available personnel. I don't think anything is going to be sorted until Scholes and Giggs retire and we have clarity on the Nani situation.

I would be pleased if we have a definite style of play that could be adopted in most games. A team, which playing well, should be able to take care of any opposition. I don't know how bright are the chances of that happening. I to and fro a lot when it comes to our team selections and style. One can probably get that from my posts.

I hear 'we're not a team built to play with a three man midfield' a fair bit these days. Personally, I don't see why not. 4-3-3 and the alternative versions of it which I have listed above suit a team with lots of form midfielders and strikers. Three midfielders, three strikers. Right now, that is what we have. Our wingers are either not that good (Young) or out of form (Nani and, to some extent, Valencia. Each of whom, when in form, could fit comfortably into the above systems in a variety of ways). Most of my proposed formations accommodate one winger, and I don't think either of the others are doing enough to merit inclusion. The 'not the United way' argument is pure bullshit. The 'United way' has to change with the times. A wing-oriented 442 is just not viable any more, and we have to adapt to a more possession-football, fluid system. Given that right now we have lots of players suited to this system who are in form, I'd say the time is right. You think we should settle on a formation and let the players get to know it inside out. I agree, although I think it's unlikely given Fergie's love of 'tactical anarchy'. But the options for that settled formation are the old one, 4-4-2, which has been repeatedly trounced by European teams (and some English ones) with more progressive systems, or some version of a 4-3-3, as above.

I realise I may be in the minority here, which I find a bit surprising, but I don't mind having a good old debate. Just please don't use yesterday as proof of anything, because clearly it wasn't representative of how we normally line up or play.

 

[apotheosis]

Yeah but then you end up with Rooney out wide. Why not just have Carrick clev/ando and then Rooney just ahead as he has been in recent weeks? I agree on going to a 433 but I don't think it makes sense to play ando and clev and put Rooney in an even more unnatural position, don't think Clev/Ando have shown enough goal threat/cutting edge to justify that, if it were Kagawa and he and Rooney could switch between who was wide and who played central then fair enough but I don't think Ando/Clev are as good as him even if he was a bit off before his injury.

Carrick/Anderson/Rooney. TC has done ok, but Carrick and Anderson is a better balanced 2, and Rooney would have to make up the third man over TC in my view.

 

[Orton]

It's like Fergie thinks if he sticks a few experienced players on then it will just work, even if they are not familiar with each other. It was horrible until we made some late changes, up there with the Liverpool game as our worst performance this season, yet we still escaped with victory.

 

[noodlehair]

I didn't understand what our midfield was doing for the first half. Rooney and Giggs were completely pointless and Anderson kept bursting into space and looking like he was about to do something really good...and then passing the ball directly to the nearest Braga player. Also, there seemed to be a competition going on between both teams to see who could overhit a pass directly off the pitch the most times.

I had to miss the second half so don't know what happened there. Surprised Giggs stayed on or wasn't reshuffled though, as he was offering nothing in the weird role he'd been asked to play. He wasn't even playing badly, he just seemed to have been put into this pointless holding, but not actually holding role.

 

[Escobar]

This could also be seen to create space for the influential player on the ball to run forward.

Not in midfield where it is packed with players that are closing down the players with the ball. You're left there without options - well, except hoofing it upwards

 

[Member 39557]

I don't even think movement was the main issue. It was simply that last night United seemed to decide the Wimbledon way was the approach to take for much of the game. I lost count of the amount of times our midfielders went long. Until the lights went out there was relatively little desire to pass and move. It was Hollywood pass after Hollywood pass surrendering the ball cheaply to Braga time and time again.

Yep, kept trying to hit over their defence for Hernandez and it never worked.
Anderson occasionally made a few promising runs and then passed to the Braga defence, but other than that, it was route one.

I couldn't say whether this was due to a lack of movement, Braga's pressing or just tactics.

 

[Bilbo]

It was a pointless game, an experimental team and I think we would have happily taken a 0-0 before kick off.

No need to over-analyse this one really. One of the dullest matches I've ever seen.

 

[pablotatt]

It was a pointless game, an experimental team and I think we would have happily taken a 0-0 before kick off.

No need to over-analyse this one really. One of the dullest matches I've ever seen.

But somehow still won 3-1, Chich got another goal, key players were rested and Smalling returned. PLENTY of positives in spite of the drabness.

 

[togg]

for those crying out for a new midfielder or two...this is a quote from Fergie

"Obviously we have some work to do on the defending part, but I think the other encouraging part is that bit by bit, we are collecting a good group of outstanding young midfield players."

...seems like he ain't thinking about a new midfielder...

 

[Comsmit]

I didn't understand what our midfield was doing for the first half. Rooney and Giggs were completely pointless and Anderson kept bursting into space and looking like he was about to do something really good...and then passing the ball directly to the nearest Braga player. Also, there seemed to be a competition going on between both teams to see who could overhit a pass directly off the pitch the most times.

I had to miss the second half so don't know what happened there. Surprised Giggs stayed on or wasn't reshuffled though, as he was offering nothing in the weird role he'd been asked to play. He wasn't even playing badly, he just seemed to have been put into this pointless holding, but not actually holding role.

I'm not sure they knew either man. I think Ferguson's idea in Europe this season is to keep the ball, keep the ball, keep the ball.....and then expect that his frightening forward line can conjure some magic out of this possession. I read somewhere yesterday that only Barcelona have a better pass completion rate than United in the Champions League this year, it was 90% overall, probably worthless now after last night. The difference clearly seen between United and Barcelona is the movement off the ball. The Catalans are far superior, far more comfortable as you would expect.

Problem United have is that they can't strike the necessary balance between possession and momentum. They retain the ball in the defensive and middle third of the pitch fairly comfortably, but when they approach the attacking third they lack the intricacies but more importantly, the patience and courage to carve open a deep defensive line. Any momentum they attempt to create is lost, unless there is a wide option. Even then the delivery has to be spot on and it too often isn't. Desperation or lack of composure then results in "hollywood balls" being pinged around to areas of green grass that don't harbour a United shirt.

 

[Ash_G]

Every time this 3-man midfield discussion comes up I end up posting the same formations to show that you definitely don't have to push Rooney out wide to make it work. I'm not going to do it again, but if you check my last posts you'll find a couple at least. Suffice to say you can do a diamond (which is, despite the name, essentially a three man midfield formation if we play Rooney at the tip), a 'pyramid' (4-3-2-1, my preference, with the front three a selection from Rooney, Kagawa, Van Persie and Hernandez), or a 4-3-3 where Rooney, although officially on the wing, actually has a free role, and Cleverley and Evra together provide the width.

I don't think it would work with Rooney tucked in with a midfield 3 behind him. Firstly going by our execution of a diamond so far it isn't like a 433, the way we played against Chelsea and Arsenal was very different to the games with a diamond. We don't really tuck our players in, off the ball in a diamond. Whoever the two wider players are in the diamond effectively keep their position, it was always Rooney, playing at the tip who had to come back the furthest to get in alongside the dm, be it Carrick or Flether.

In a 433 he can still come back to help out but without needing to do it to the same extent as with the way we are playing the diamond.

Also I don't think he'd work that well tucked in consistently. He's not a Mata/Hazard/Silva type who can carry the ball really well and thread the pass, he can do it occassionally but not to the same extent as they can. Couple that with neither Ando or Clev being particularly creative/goal threats. Both are great at keeping the ball but neither are really that incisive with their passing. It's been interesting that diamond or not still the majority of our creativity has come through wide crosses.

Personally I think it makes more sense to keep it as Fergie has been recently with Rooney playing just ahead off Carrick and Clev or Ando. We can certainly work on it to get it smoother but I think that would work best. If Kagawa comes back and finds his form then having him and Rooney alternate between a central role and a wide role in a 433 would be worth considering but I don't think either Ando or Clev are that big goal threats to play them both and move Rooney to a less influential role, maybe for really tough games but not consistently for me.

Carrick/Anderson/Rooney. TC has done ok, but Carrick and Anderson is a better balanced 2, and Rooney would have to make up the third man over TC in my view.

Yeah I agree, I think Ando is more of a natural fit my only concern is that recently we've ensure it's Ando who plays the more attacking role, even yest with Giggs and Rooney playing he was the most advanced. Could be that he's not showing enough discipline in training. Also think that again he showed that whilst in open games he can be a big force, in tighter games against organized teams he doesn't have the same impact and gives away the ball a bit too much. Clev has less direct impact to his game but I think he keeps the momentum going better on a more regular basis.

 

[Ash_G]

I didn't understand what our midfield was doing for the first half. Rooney and Giggs were completely pointless and Anderson kept bursting into space and looking like he was about to do something really good...and then passing the ball directly to the nearest Braga player. Also, there seemed to be a competition going on between both teams to see who could overhit a pass directly off the pitch the most times.

I had to miss the second half so don't know what happened there. Surprised Giggs stayed on or wasn't reshuffled though, as he was offering nothing in the weird role he'd been asked to play. He wasn't even playing badly, he just seemed to have been put into this pointless holding, but not actually holding role.

Yeah it was very odd and in all honesty I think Fergie got lucky that their goalie gifted us a way back in the game as we needed to change the middle.

Like you said there was just no understanding in the middle 3. Sometimes 2 of them would go forward and the other wouldn't move to make an option for the defender so we just had no one showing in the middle. Other times 2 of them would just stay so deep or as you said just get the ball and immediately punt it, giggs and Rooney really didn't show their experience.

Our biggest problem which is generally one of our biggest issues is that few players are willing to get in to the final third and turn to face the other goal and then move foward. Couple that with minimal movement from the front 3 and it just forces us wide but even then no one was really making any runs. Was a very disjointed team.

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

to be honest I don't recall ever seeing a match played in that much rain. even though the players train for ever situation, that was as special downpour and would cause little things that you can't anticipate to happen.

 

[amolbhatia50k]

It's killing watching United for me. It really is.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[Count Orduck]

Awful passing. And guess what? It's Carrick and Scholes in a 4-4-2.

 

[Bloxy]

Awful passing. And guess what? It's Carrick and Scholes in a 4-4-2.

They should never play together in this formation surely. RVP and Rooney starving up front.

 

[Jimy_Hills_Chin]

Awful passing. And guess what? It's Carrick and Scholes in a 4-4-2.

It is. We have actually been better since Scholes has been away. Now we are back to the depressing pass it to Scholes - who passes it to Valencia - who crosses it, mono shite.

 

[Randall Flagg]

Yeah we have passed like a bunch of cnuts.