Anthony Elanga and Manchester United's new long term strategy

Elanga's success away from Old Trafford isn't too surprising given the style of player he is, which shines some light on how difficult United's latest project really is

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It was a December to remember for Anthony Elanga. From December 14th the Swedish international scored in three consecutive matches, giving him three goals and one assist in his last four games. Nottingham Forest won five in a row taking them to second in the table, five points clear of fifth place at the halfway point of the season.

The Carrington graduate moved to Forest at the start of the 2023-24 season. Per Stathead, over the last two years his 20 goal contributions trail only Cole Palmer and Bakayo Saka for most goal contributions from players under the age of 23 in the Premier League. Juxtapose that with the fact that Manchester United are currently 14th in the table, and only have two players with more non-penalty goals + assists than Elanga and it’s fair to wonder how much better off United would be if they had never let Elanga go.

Elanga’s best season at Old Trafford - erm really his only season at Old Trafford - was the 2021-22 season when he scored two goals and added two assists in 1214 Premier League minutes. Those numbers aren’t anything to write home about and Elanga’s consistent inclusion in the team over the second half of the season always seemed to be because he was “trusted” by interim manager Ralf Rangnick. “Trusted” is almost always a euphemism for he works hard defensively even though he’s not going to give you much threat in the attack.

Elanga didn’t get many chances under Erik Ten Hag, which I personally didn’t have a problem with as he didn’t seem to have the ability that a Champions League level team needed. Selling him to Nottingham Forest for £15 million was a good bit of business.

Now when I factor in that Erik Ten Hag’s player evaluations were typically pretty bad does that make me re-think the situation? Not really. Just because someone might be bad at something doesn’t mean they get everything wrong or they’re never right. Ultimately I think Ten Hag got this one right. We’re still talking about a player with three goals and three assists halfway through the season. This isn’t exactly a world beater.

Having said all that, by no means am I surprised that Elanga is thriving at Nottingham Forest. Elanga’s game has always been direct and based on his pace and ability to run in behind or at defenders. He’s at his best when there’s a lot of space to attack.

You’re going to find a lot more space to attack when you play for Nottingham Forest - especially Nuno Espirito Santo’s Nottingham Forest - then you will on a weekly basis playing for Manchester United.

This is no different than Jesse Lingard thriving under Jose Mourinho and early Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, dropping in form when Solskjaer needed him to be a more ball dominant creator, only to then rediscover his form under David Moyes at West Ham. It’s why Jamie Vardy (and Marcus Rashford) have such great goal records against the “top six” teams. They excel at attacking the space in behind and those are the games where there’s space in behind. You get a lot more of those games playing for Nottingham Forest than you do playing for Manchester United.

What Elanga’s current form does do is potentially make us have a bit of a re-think regarding United’s current strategy for what they want to build on the pitch and how you develop academy players. It also puts into context how difficult it will be for this whole endeavor to even be successful.

Under Ruben Amorim Manchester United are trying to shift their identity to a team that is more patient and holds the ball more, in an attempt to have better control of a match. As Kwest Thoughts has previously noted this is deemed the correct and good style of play these days.

The early returns have not been good. United have been struggling to turn their increased possession into any form of potent attack. This isn’t totally unexpected considering they just don’t have that great of a squad.

It’s also not unexpected because possession football is really difficult to play well. The most successful teams that play a possession style all have the same thing in common, they have the best players. When you don’t have the top players in every position, it’s all too easy for the system to become incredibly stale. A lot of passing with no real penetration, basically Spain at the 2022 World Cup.

The Spanish beat CONCACAF dregs Costa Rica 7-0 but only scored two other goals all tournament, bowing out in the round of 16. Two years later the Spanish came back to Euro 2024 with youngsters Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal. Williams had two goals and an assist in the knockout rounds with Lamal adding a goal and three assists. Williams and Lamal were two wizards who could make-shit-happen and provided the attacking threat Spain needed. Lamal’s goal vs France in the semifinal was nothing short of sensational.

That’s the thing about possession based teams. In order for the system to work you need extremely high levels of individual quality. As we’re seeing with Manchester City, one injury to the wrong player could quickly derail you. Similarly Arsenal’s title hopes for this season went out the window when Martin Odegaard picked up an early injury. Without the Norwegian’s passing in the team the Gunners won just 11 of 21 available points.

But even with Odegaard Arsenal don’t have enough in the team to get past the likes of Manchester City. Last season Arsenal had a +1.27 expected goal difference per game, the best in the league. They won a whopping 16 of their final 18 matches and still finished two points behind City. One of the big things holding them back was “only” 62 of their 91 goals came from open play. They scored a lot of late goals and were overly reliant on set pieces as rugged low blocks gave them trouble. Obviously they did better than almost every team out there, but Arsenal were competing for a title. The margins in a title race are razor thin and dropped points against defensively stout teams like Fulham and Aston Villa is the difference between winning a title and not.

Even outside the title race this style has it’s limitations. In the last few years Brighton have played some really great possession based football, but it hasn’t translated to results. Brighton have won just two of their last 11 Premier League matches and are winless in their last seven. Last season Brighton won five of their first six games only to win just seven games the rest of the season. In fairness they had lost several key players from the team that finished 6th in 2022-23. Though in that campaign Brighton never won three consecutive matches and only won back to back matches four times. If you don’t have the top end talent, you’re never going to be able to win consistently playing like this.

Now Manchester United aren’t going to be sniffing a title race anytime soon, but getting back into the Champions League is a more attainable goal over the next few years. In order to do that you’re going to need much better players than the ones you have now. Hell, you’re going to need better players than the ones Brighton have now. Where are you going to get those players from?

Of course there are two places to get new players. You can utilize the transfer market and pay very heavy premiums to get top end talent, or you can look internally at your own academy. That’s a good thing for Manchester United as the club have a long history of building through their academy.

That’s good in theory. In practice it’s a bit different because United have never really been a possession heavy team. The ‘United DNA’ from the days of Busby and Ferguson has always been some form of “brave” players who run at defenders, work hard off the ball, and can shoot. These traits have been pretty consistent in players that have come through United’s academy, and while players with exquisite passing ability like Giggs, Scholes, Beckham and Pogba, have come through the academy it’s certainly not a dominant trait that’s found in all the players.

Not to mention, it is extremely difficult to build a possession based side through your academy. Bakayo Saka is the only academy player in Arsenal’s current setup¹ and he happens to be one of the best players in the league. Liverpool are moving towards more of a possession based structure which has limited the playing time of Curtis Jones and pretty much eliminated Harvey Elliot. Trent Alexander-Arnold would get into pretty much any team in the world. Even Bayern Munich have significantly fewer academy kids playing for them then they used to.

The gold standard of all this is Pep Guardiola and Manchester City. City currently have two academy players getting consistent first team minutes, Phil Foden and Rico Lewis, which is a lot for them, and Lewis is probably only playing as much as he is because of so many injuries.

It’s very hard to break into City’s first team. That’s not for lack of talent. Since Guardiola’s arrival City have happily let players like Jadon Sancho, Pedro Porro, Romeo Lavia, Douglas Luiz, and Cole Palmer leave. It’s hard to break into the City team unless you have exactly the qualities that Pep is looking for. He needs players to do very specific things in very specific situations, which as Grace Robertson has pointed out, is probably the biggest knock on Foden. He’s just a system guy.

Herein lies the problem. It’s much easier to develop an Anthony Elanga or a Jesse Lingard from your academy. At the top end it’s much easier to develop a Marcus Rashford than a Paul Pogba. It’s much easier to develop players who work hard, can run, shoot, and are good in open spaces then it is to develop players who are good in tight spaces, have excellent ball control, and can play off each others movements.

That last part is key and in order to do that, you need to have them playing in an environment where they’re always working on those traits, which involves playing with other players who are making similar movements and can play off them. That requires having an academy team with 15 guys who share these traits. That’s not easy to do!

Barcelona have shown to be the exception here. That likely comes from every kid in Spain growing up playing the same way these days, and the fact that they have no competition when it comes to signing the best players from Catalonia.

Essentially if United want to shift their style of play they’re going to have to revamp their team almost entirely through the transfer market. That puts an brighter spotlight on how terrible the timing for this plan might be because United are in more financial hell than they’ve ever been before.

The club is as financially handcuffed as they’ve ever been, cutting tiny costs left and right to become PSR compliant. That’s going to make it very difficult to jump into the transfer market and spend the kind of money that quality players are going to cost unless United could sell a bunch of the pieces they no longer need to raise funds. That itself will be easier said than done as United have squandered millions on players who are just not good and given them wage packages that make them virtually immovable.

On top of that, of United’s players that are still actually good, nearly all of them are at the tail end of their prime which will require the club to replace them as well.

Ideally United would be able to supplement new additions with players making the jump from the academy but again, at best those academy players are most likely to be in the mold of Anthony Elanga. And Anthony Elanga is far more suited to running into space than doing what Ruben Amorim is trying to do with United.

One of the main themes of Manchester United post Sir Alex Ferguson has been the club constantly changing projects and visions while never taking the time to properly see them out. Some of this has been impatience, some of it has been bad ideas that weren’t well thought out.

This latest undertaking seems like it could be part of the latter category simply because of the timing of it all. United are undertaking a project that will require them to build a team almost entirely through external hires right in the period where they have the least financial ability to do that.

Thanks to years of mistakes and mismanagement, United are entering a period where money is tight and they’re going to need to rely at least in the short term on their academy to provide them with talent. If you’re going to do that, it would probably be best to play in a way that casts the biggest net on academy players being able to slot into the team.

That’s not to say that Ruben Amorim is wrong or his project is bad. Amorim ticks a lot of boxes for what you’d want in a coach and I greatly hope he’s successful at Old Trafford. But given the timing of when their launching this project, the odds are stacked against him.

1. Ethan Nwaneri does not play enough to be considered a regular player