People aren't expecting us to play like Barcelona. That's an extreme.
We're asking for a minimum standard of passing. We had Scholes and Carrick as the CM's for years. We've just spent the last two years with McFred.
You see the difference?
Why is our passing so garbage?
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We're asking for a minimum standard of passing. We had Scholes and Carrick as the CM's for years. We've just spent the last two years with McFred.
You see the difference?
That's not tactics. They're just better players.
We have no build up players and we’re now being linked to an Eredivisie midfielder who has 80% passing accuracy. I’m nervous about us not fixing this gaping hole in our side
Because you can't be successful in this era without being excellent at ball retention. Teams that crumble when pressed have a relatively low ceiling. Even if you mainly want to hurt the opponent in quick transitions, your players must be comfortable on the ball in a way too many of our players aren't.
Part tactics, another part better players. They have some sort of formula there that works.
It also helps when those combinations ended up with KDB who always delivers the ball so accurately for chances to land.
Why not modernise in a different style using the players you have? Football is a broad game, with various systems and strategies but the principles remain.
I think the formula is all players being very comfortable on the ball. Once you have that and then as a result keep the ball for most of the game, tactics are a minor point.
It's not about being more "modern". It's about the basics. First and second touch, decision making, weight of pass etc.
Grealish and Bernando are definitely possession-based players. Sterling wasn't which is why he was out of the door right after his output started to drop. He was still a very good dribbler at his peak.
Yh that's understandable, but your starting midfield is Casemiro and Eriksen normally; that is good enough to boss most games imo.
I don’t understand what you’re even saying. Just because Sir Alex Ferguson was successful with a style, quite literally over 11 years ago, Manchester United must stay married to that style of football?
As obviously have quite obviously pointed out, there’s a monumental difference between adding some profiles in central midfield who are capable of doing the bare minimum and retaining the ball under pressure, and playing like Barcelona (who also don’t play how they used to under Pep, anyway)
Well it sort of isn’t, hence the thread? Especially in big games. We can’t go toe to toe with big teams and struggle to impose and maintain possession to see out tight matches like today. Playing a transition counter attack style of football in every big game can only take you so far.
It's not. They themselves have their drawbacks(Casemiro really can be loose on the ball) but two players can't make a team anyway. You can maybe afford two players in an eleven who are average in possession assuming they bring something else to the table.
Buy at least half our team is average to poor in possession.
There's no evidence of this. Liverpool for example in recent seasons have been successful without being a possession based team. Athletico Madrid another side aren't characterised by ball retention. I personally think Ten Hag has the players in wrong positions. Your having a good season but could be better with a different system and tactical approach.
I believe coaches should always pick a system and style which gets the best out of their players. Not everyone has to play the same way.
I used Fergusons teams as an example because they weren't known for being much of a passing team. But your right, could do with some midfielders who can perform the fundamentals.
That’s just not correct. Liverpool have routinely been the second highest possession based side in the league after City under Klopp. The season they won the league they averaged 64.4% possession per game.
They won the league in 2019/20 with an average of 64.4% possession, second only to Manchester City (68.7%). They were excellent at ball retention, actually.
Atlético, sure. That's one example. But I don't really want us to play like them because they're a joyless football team.
I believe this is after they purchased a world class sweeper keeper in Allison. Hate to admit to this, but it all started from the back. We need to move on from De Gea.
Also we have a press resistant CF in Martial..but our wingers are wasteful. Same as our no.10 role players.
The last season we averaged more possession in the league than Liverpool was the 15/16 season. They've been second only to City for average possession in the league in three of the last four seasons. And this is a team you describe as not being possession-based, let alone one that is.
There's more than one way to skin a cat, but they pretty much all involve us being able to keep the ball better than we do.
It's just the players.
Starts at the back with DDG and works out through the team, AWB, Maguire, Casemeiro,Antony,Bruno, Sancho, Sabitzer, Elanga etc.
Just too loose and just not good enough on the ball to retain, maintain and recycle possession.
These players are more suited to the frantic nature of quick transitions and counter attacking football, not playing a composed brand of possession based football.
Starts at the back with DDG and works out through the team, AWB, Maguire, Casemeiro,Antony,Bruno, Sancho, Sabitzer, Elanga etc.
Just too loose and just not good enough on the ball to retain, maintain and recycle possession.
These players are more suited to the frantic nature of quick transitions and counter attacking football, not playing a composed brand of possession based football.
Grealish wasn't really one at first which shows Pep has worked wonders on him. He truly feel like he belongs there now.
Regardless he still had base ability which helped Pep work on, we need to increase the general technical baseline of our team to see a significant improvement in passing
The Formula is very evident, they had Aguero and Jesus, they go and buy Haaland and Alvarez. We lack goals, we loan in Weghorst, see the difference.
The broadest principle of all is using the ball correctly no matter what style you then branch out to use.
We don't intend to be so bad with the ball; we just are.
Even defensive teams are resolute in possession and know exactly what they want to do with the ball when they have it and can play to the remit instructed. We can't, and it leads to a ceaseless amount of unforeseen issues in-game.
Our collection of players are too much of a mish-mash of differing regimes and philosophies to ever truly be harmonious, which is why we need a cull and do-over in one playing style and/or defined image... with competent players.
Further up the pitch it's alright but we are still shit at playing out from the back. Been the case for years and years
Yep. I don't post on here much but I've been of the opinion midfield is still the biggest issue at this club, along with a clinical striker.
I fully agree. I don't think we've been able to consistently control games since Scholes retired.
I've sang this song for months now, others have labelled me a opposition fan, for calling out our Midfield issues.
But my stand remains, if Ten Hag doesn't sort out our midfield control issues, one day the team will collapse and the players will throw him under the bus, and it might be next season.
Our performing players like Licha,Rashy, Case might be out of form next season and results may unravel quite quickly when control is not there.
He needs to find 2 genuine midfielders.. that's all. He will upgrade this team immensely, if not such today's games will always be with him.
I will judge him by how he solves the Midfield control, without control we cant be consistent, and without consistency we can't win any major trophies. You cant be 90 points team when you can't control a football game in 2 months.
Same same problems Ole had, Ten Hag has, midfield control and structure. Hopefully he will solve it.
I think I’d tend to agree.
Our overall really ball retention is awful. Only Martínez and Eriksen are capable of taking care of the ball. Casemiro has been disappointing for me considering his experience, however, he’s far less wayward positionally than Fred, McTominay and Sabitzer so tends to avoid much criticism. Bruno is the worst culprit but I accept its part of being ‘creative’ to an extent.
I've noticed this too, however once he gets in the rhythm his passing gets a whole lot better. I'd chalk it off to being a bit rusty and needing consistent game-time to maintain his sharpness.
Yeah, I don't really mind Bruno playing a high risk passing game, further forward it's reaped plenty of rewards. He chance creation is one of his best qualities.
From looking at it, Casemeiro maybe tries to play a lot more long passes that don't come off, his short and medium passing is actually quite good. Stats wide, it's more or less in line with his Madrid days.
It's those areas of midfield and at the back where having more composed players in possession, who look after the ball better and who's quality of passing is better. For me accuracy and quality don't really go hand in hand with a lot of these Utd players.
Don't think this is true at all. How often do you hear about "City making it look easy"? Sure, that has to do with the level of players they have but it also has to do with them being as well drilled and prepared as they are. Players know where to be and where to go. They outsourced parts of the decision process to pre-game which lightens the burden in game and increases speed. Pep is a coach who is able to find systems for a period of time, that make their players be comfortable, nobody is asked to do things they aren't good at.
This is obviously something, that is brought to you by quality players but is also connected to ingraining certain principles and tactics. The player-argument isn't very substantial in my opinion. There are many teams punching above the weight of the players they have by being well drilled into a functioning unit. Look at Brighton, Brentford to a degree, Newcastle.
Not correct for Liverpool, as has been pointed out already and as far as I know, doesn't apply to Atletico as well who left the path of solely destructive football as well a while ago.
As written above. Players are a factor but by far not the only ones. Other teams with players worse than ours are able to play dominantly and possession heavy when needed so yes, the level of players obviously incluences the level you can reach in terms of the highest percentage, but you don't have to reach the highest echelons of possession football to get to a useful level. I'd say we are below average in this so low hanging fruits to improve. A notion that we could only achieve that by adding the worlds best players in every position is just as wrong today as it was wrong in the infamous days of Ole.
When we sign players, is passing % a big thing for the powers that be or is it assists and goals? You could sign a player who has great pass % but they play in a side that just passes it backward and sideways and go nowhere. There is a big difference between that and a creative passer.
Not saying that.
Obviously you can drill players to be in certain areas and to make certain moves. LVG did that and it was boring as hell. Football is a lot more fluid and dynamic than that. Pep drills his players to repeat set patterns over and over and over, which is fine when you can spend 100s of millions on players and can jettison half a billion worth of fullbacks because you don't need them anymore.
Players need to have the intelligence and ability to think for themselves on the pitch, they need to be aware of what's around them, move to the right areas and have the skills and composure required to control the ball and execute passes quickly and accurately. Too often some of these players don't even move to create space for themselves or others, you can't teach brains.
It's the speed of thought, movement and execution that is lacking, saw a good example with Elanga last night, easy first touch pass to Sabitzer, out for a throw. This happens too often with some of these players, passes are poorly weighted, played to the recievers wrong side etc.
You say other clubs with worse players are capable of it, there's many in this Utd squad that if they moved to one of those clubs they wouldn't be able to do it there either.
So why does Pep spend so much on players?
Many reasons...
a) he can
b) He is trying to assemble the best squad possible to beat the best teams in Europe. Which is (at least in my view) not exactly the same starting point that we have. To get to a good or very good level, you don't need the best possible player (see Brighton etc). The better you are, the harder it gets to improve which is when it gets expensive.
c) As stated, I don't want to say that players aren't a factor. Maybe they are even one of the biggest ones. But other factors are there. A system (or a lack of some systematic features) that supports players to thrive or/and to minimize exposure of weaknesses will help. At the highest level, you have at least those two always on an exceptional level at the same time. I would be on the same side as you asking only for better players if we would be challenging at the highest level, excelling in many aspects of the game. Then we might be in a Liverpool pre-VDV and Alisson situation. But I don't think, we are there yet.
And knowing that we have more issues across the squad and bench but only limited ressources, we have to be smart and, for sure, try to maximize output of the available personel which should be the bread and butter, the most important feature of a coach.
LVG did WHAT? What is "that"? Why is always LVG brought up when people talk about possession based football? Again and I try to be as precise as possible: Nobody wants United to become a possession based team. What we want (and what is needed to become a top team over a sustainable period of time) is that our teams gets more comfortable on the ball, able to assert more control on games by controlling the ball IN SITUATIONS OF NEED. Its not like LVGs football is the star all possession fans are striving for, his football wasn't functional as it didn't create chances whatsoever. Nobody wants that back, everybody can stop arguing against that.
Pep uses set patterns over and over and over. And they seem to work, why shouldn't we look at competitors (or teams we are aspiring to compete with) for things to copy?
Half a billion in fullbacks - Mate, I see your point, but those things aren't really recent anymore aren't they? So not sure, if it is really relevant to the discussion. I am not trying to depict Pep and City as the best thing possible, but they undoubtedly do a lot of things correctly and we would be fools thinking that we can just look into our past for recipes for past success and continue that proud tradition easily by recycling it.
Yes City is paying lots of money for players. But so are we, so is Chelsea. But City has a far bigger output I'd say so reducing all that on "money spent" is probably pretty short-sighted.
You are right, a certain amount of intelligence is needed and it is difficult to train that level. But I don't think, there are many players out there who really are too thick to understand what a manager might want from them. Your first sentence sounds like in top teams are only filled with top players who are also highly intelligent, permanently assessing every new situation and coming up with solutions on the fly. I am pretty sure, that isn't the case (at least not 100%). It is fascinating that this discussion comes up again after all the talk we had about it during Ole reign. A system or a set of instructions of a manager aren't supposed to REPLACE decision making by the players on pitch. It is supposed to support it by narrowing down the number of variables. And while there are players like Fred and Bruno, who thrive when they can act instinctively, I am pretty sure other players would thrive when given a functional structure, I'd say McTominay and Shaw are candidates for that.
ETH will create such a structure but he isn't there yet. That is fine. But some seem to state, that his part of the job isn't as relevant as long as he gets player who are "good enough" or "intelligent" and I think, a) to assemble a whole team of that is expensive and takes time and b) it might be worth the time trying to maximize output differently during the wait.
Elanga doesn't get many minutes, is a squad option that rarely plays. Same for Sabitzer. So while your explanation is plausible, I could make a case for my argument being the main reason as well.
There will always be misplaced passes. They happen at Bayern and at City just as well. Nothing will prevent that and I'd support measures, to make sure players are fully focussed to reduce shoddy execution of stuff. But that alone isn't the reason for "our passing is garbage". The reason is, we still aren't great at adapting to opponent shape, getting rid of markers, become available to pass to, increase tempo of passing to make it more difficult to defend against.
You might be right, but knowing that there is no way to proof that, I don't see the point of that argument being used to try to improve circumstances to maximize player output. I invite you to check my post history, I am certainly not advocating giving all players endless chances. And yes, players like AWB or Maguire shouldn't have been bought in the first place because of their deficiencies, but it is what it is - I for one don't want to spin the transfer circle over and over again until we maybe hit a combination that "improves team passing" out of nowhere. I'd try to be more proactive.
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Yup. See stats below for average possession every season (in the league) since then.
16/17 to 22/23 (now):
The fact is that our inability to control matches have been pretty much the same shite for a long time. During these seasons we haven't cracked the possession stats top-4 even once.
Source: https://www.fotmob.com/leagues/47/stats/season/17664/teams/possession_percentage_team
I'd love it.
I honestly don't really care if we aren't the highest % passers in the league, or even close to it, so long as we're playing attractive, attacking football (and preferably getting results). When I first started following football, I was told to watch Liverpool. I did, and they passed it so much and I kept falling asleep each game. Then I watched them playing Manchester United and finally there was a team that hooked me. And it was because of the playing style, being adventurous. Do I groan at some sloppy passes? Absolutely. But do I groan when a quick one-two goes amiss or a player loses the ball trying something creative? Nope. What I really, really hate? Passing backwards, passing sideways, while everyone is flat footed. Fluffing around. Boring stuff. Passing % generation.
I wouldnt mind playing like Barca 2000s and City now. Winning trophies
Our passing and control of games looked far better in the first half of the season. I remember even the Leicester match early in the season and for the first 60 minutes we looked so dominant in our control of the game and there were plenty of games like that. Been steadily getting worse for a while though.
Yes your right, what I meant was Liverpool aren't known for being a slow build up passing possession based team. They're more direct compared to City for example.