I didn’t think I needed to explain it further, but for some reason you took from my post that I was stating the midfield was doing all the defending. That clearly wasn’t my point. You just seemed to have an agenda of showing that Maguire has been amazing and that’s why we look better defensively.
At no point did I suggest the defenders are not playing well. Far from it. I think they are playing a lot better than I expected them to do. Maguire has been brilliant last few games regardless of who he’s partnered with. But that wasn’t my point. The post I originally responded to was questioning whether there was some tactical change to explain why we’ve looked better defensively. I was highlighting that yes the fact that Ole had switched to playing Fred and Mctominay together as a duo in front of the defence after our terrible start which was compounded with the 6-1 thrashing against spurs. We were all over the place defensively at that time and the defence was being exposed at will by opponents running directly at the heart of our defence with very little protection. Since Ole switched to those two to sit in front of the defence, our results started to improve and we started conceding less key chances to opponents. Ole stuck with the duo and it has become his go to choice for any crunch game.
To suggest that our defensive performances haven’t improved because of them helping the defence by sitting in front of them and offering them protection would just be naive. There is no way a combination of Pogba and Matic offers the same protection as Fred and Mctominay. I’m not even a big fan of the Mcfred combination. Pogba and Matic are technically more gifted than the other two and are better all round players. But there’s a reason why they aren’t the first choice in big games at the moment. People can pretend Fred and Mctominay just run around and don’t do anything to help the defence which is just silly. If one doesn’t realise why Ole is choosing McFred duo ahead of anyone else then I question their understanding of the game. That’s not to say our defenders haven’t performed brilliantly. But having team mates play in front of you who give you some protection doesn’t half help.
There have been plenty of posts where people make claim that our defence is so useless that it needs two DM to do the job for them. Now when you explained what you mean, it is clear I made the wrong assumption about you and I apologise.
I agree to some extent but not fully. Playing McFred was clearly a large part of the solution, but Maguire getting back on form, and actually most of team getting back on form, was just as important.
Playing McFred is not necessarily a much more defensive approach. It is strengthening the central defence but that gives the possibility to play players who don’t participate much in defending, and to allow our FB to move forward more. If I understood Ole correct, he played Matic and Pogba against Burnley because he wanted some big strong midfielder who also could challenge in the air. Against Liverpool he said he wanted them to play so Pogba could play high up the pitch. With that setup we had two forwards plus two skilled midfielders who could join the attack.
