I have been saying this for a while... you can't defend deep and press high. Every game, our midfield is bypassed by a simple 1-2..
There is no way a team can press high without the defenders pressing high. How Ten Hag cannot see this and he is apparently detail orientated?
He has seen it, and commented upon it. It is an obvious problem. We had the same problem under Solskjær and Rangnik as well. We had less of that problem last season. It was evident vs Man City and Aston Villa in I think Octobre, but evidently got dealt with relatively succesfully for most parts of most games. This was a point of enthusiasm for me last season, as I was doubtful that we had enough players at the club capable of playing that way at all for more than 20 mins, and Ten Hag was the first coach overseing a fairly well functioning high press at United ever.
This season, it’s back to how it looked when Solaskjær or Rangnik (and even Mourinho for a very short period of time) tried to implement variants of high press. It looks good for 20 mins here, 15 mins there, but as soon as something doesn’t function, one player, then two, then three and four falls out of the cohesion.
Cohesion in high press is partly having a good plan with established variants to suit different match situations, partly a question of having players suited to the challenges that high press gives, partly a question of well drilled and established relations, and one very big part of belief and confidence in the collective. What ruins it is one overeager/desperate player pressing too early, or one insecure defender pulling too slowly upfield. Then the others are fecked, and the next time one more will hold back too long or go into press too early, or fall back too late.
If it hadn’t been for last season, and the fact that he has had two different versions of Ajax developping that cohesion on a very high level, I would worry that Ten Hag doesn’t have the tactical know how. I don’t worry about that so much.
The fact that the press cohesion is such a repetitive problem this season, for me points to the other three factors: Player profiles, relations and confidence/belief.
We have several players that more or less doesn’t suit the profile of cohesive high press: Rashford doesn’t press well, is slow to fall back, and is quick to leave the team when going on deep runs (a strength of his, but will regularily stretch the team). Bruno is eager and hardworking, but easily overeager or takes impulsive individual decisions, Garnacho has the work ethic, but is only developing the positional understanding and sometimes switches off when we lose the ball, Martial presses intelligently and diligently, but without intensity, McTominay isn’t positionally smart enough, Mainoo see Garnacho, Amrabat is slow, Casemiro is slow, Maguire, Varane 2.0 and Lindelöf aren’t fast enough, strong enough or sure enough to fancy the high line. The players of a right profile (Onana, Martinez, Shaw, Antony, Mount, Højlund) are either young, new, not of required quality and/or injured too much. To have the right player profiles for high pressing cohesive football will take at least two more windows, to get players of the right profile with the right quality might take longer.
Relations: This is easy and obvious, the injuries and other forced rotations all since during preseason had us with less well established player relations all over the pitch. Players lack the inbetween flow and timing that is the difference between tight cohesion or looser structure. To which degree this is coaching related is debated, but it’s certainly a relevant factor to why we lack cohesion and look as if we have an inexplicable game plan.
Belief/confidence: this is huge for a defender/DM faced with the splitsecond decision of going full sprint away from goal or moving more cautiously. If a defender isn’t certain the attacking players can snuff out or pressure the opponents ball players enough, they will be naturally hestitant to open up acres of space behund themselves. If the defender is not the fastest, or of a pensive type, this will double it up. Likewise if one attacker isn’t adamant the midfield andd defense aren’t tightening the hole behind them, they might hestitate to push forward in pressure, and if some of the other attackers stick to plan but one or two doesn’t do it fullheartedly, we are easily bypassed, and the defenders are running homewards.
The one point is that a non-functioning high press will often look like we do, as if we play 4-1-5 by plan and have huge stretch between defense and attack as default, or fall back and soak up pressure even against inferior teams. This is very obviously not the plan, nor the probably endlessly repeated and rehearsed instructions, but weak execution (due to above factors) makes it look that way. iMO
