Lisandro Martinez and his impact on line height
Lisandro Martinez is inching closer to a return to Manchester United, but that shouldn't equate to United suddenly defending higher up the pitch
Author’s note: I’m just going to get out ahead of this here. There’s going to be a lot of graphics in this piece so there’s no way it’s all going to fit in one email. Make sure to click on the headline or use the Substack App for the full post.
About a month ago Jamie Carragher dedicated a segment of Monday Night Football to analyze why Manchester United concede so many shots. “They defend with high a press and a low block” said Carragher, who used clips from the opening stages of United’s 2-1 loss against Fulham to back up his points. The contrasting style leaves large gaps in the middle of the park that opponents are easily exploiting.
The criticism rattled Erik Ten Hag. He quickly hit back at Carragher calling it “subjective analysis.” Yet over the next few games Ten Hag has only provided more examples of Carragher’s claims.
The prevailing narrative is that Ten Hag has to play this way due to the injuries United have sustained to their back line - namely the absence of Lisandro Martinez. Martinez is United’s most aggressive center back. He’s also really good with his feat.
His aggression and ball playing ability allow him to step up and defend high up the pitch, acting as a safety net behind United’s pressing forwards. This allows him to recover the ball and keep plays alive.
Sorry that was Harry Maguire. Let’s try that again. Harrison from @wearetheoverlap wrote, (I’m paraphrasing), besides Martinez, United’s other centerbacks are all reserved and are reluctant to step out to close the spaces between the lines.
Oh wait, that’s also Harry Maguire. Third time’s the charm. The Athletic has written that the way United defend counter attacks relies heavily on Lisandro Martinez and Casemiro being there to mop things up. If you get by Casemiro you then have to deal with Martinez who will step up and engage the dribbler. His tackling ability will then be essential in snuffing out the counter attack.
Again, I’m sorry! That also seems to also be Maguire.
Here’s Lisandro Martinez stepping up to snuff out a counter attack after United’s initial press had been bypassed.
Ok, that was a little harsh on Lisandro. For one, he was (already) on a yellow card when this happened. If he gets that challenge wrong he’s sent off. For two, he’s completely isolated with the attacker here. The odds of any defender coming out on top in this situation are not high. The entire purpose of having a defensive structure is to avoid having your defenders end up in this exact scenario.
That’s the thing about Lisandro Martinez. He’s been labelled as a savior, even though he’s shown to be a great defender but not actually a difference maker.1 He’s been on the pitch for United’s worst defensive moments over the last two years, but not their best.
That’s in no way Martinez’s fault, but the way he’s talked about doesn’t match what the numbers say. As is usual, the numbers only tell you part of the story. You need to use your eyes too.
Therefore I set out to see what the video of Martinez on the pitch says. It turns out, the way Martinez is talked about - especially pertaining to his skillset and the impact that has on the team’s style of play - just doesn’t match up with the actual video either.
Using WhoScored’s match chalkboard as a guide, I was able to get a timestamp of every single tackle Martinez has attempted in the Premier League over the last two seasons. Then I went to MUTV to actually watch the buildup and aftermath of each attempted tackle. I was looking for tackles made high up the pitch - specifically tackles where Martinez is high to keep pressure on from a high press, or where he steps up to thwart a counter attack.
What I found was there weren’t that many of them.
There’s this good example against Crystal Palace last season.
And against Leicester City you can say this thwarted a counter attack.
And let’s throw one more in against Brentford.
That’s pretty much it.
There’s a few where he’s been high up the pitch as part of the press and knocked the ball out of play. It’s a tackle that disrupts the defense but also allows the opposition to reset themselves. It doesn’t keep the pressure on. The rest of his high tackle attempts didn’t quite turn out so well for him.
This is just not Martinez’s game. The overwhelming majority of Martinez’s tackles come in his own box or just outside of it. He’s at his best when he’s making last stand defensive actions. He blocked a lot of shots, he’s a menace in the box, he’s great when his back is against the wall and he need to make a last ditch effort.
Or when he can run with the attacker rather than running towards the attacker.
The more you watch Martinez the more you notice whether or not he engages higher up the pitch doesn’t have much to do with his ability to sniff out danger, but rather just comes down to him following his man. If his man drops into space to try and receive the ball, Martinez will follow. If he doesn’t, he stays home.
Once his man drops deep, Martinez will let him receive the ball and then try to nick it off him via tackle. Sometimes it works.
And sometimes it doesn’t.
What does this have anything to do with line height?
The discourse around “line height” has been some of the worst football stuff on the internet for the past few years. Line height is a buzzword that everyone wants to use to make their point, but almost no one uses correctly.
A player is aggressive? That means he’s good for a high line! A player is fast? He can play in a high line. A player is slow? Can’t play a high line with him!
Yet when it comes to defensive line height those traits are not the be all end all. Lisandro Martinez is aggressive, he’s got good pace about him, he’s good with the ball at his feet. When Lisandro Martinez starts for Manchester United, their average line height is deeper than when he doesn’t play.
When Martinez isn’t featuring, United’s defensive line plays over four meters higher up the pitch.
The other numbers in the graphic tell us an interesting story. When Martinez is on the pitch United seemed to be carved through more easily2. A lot more of the game takes place around United’s box, and teams are much more efficient at getting the ball into United’s box. What the graphic doesn’t show is that when Martinez plays United actually concede fewer shots3 when he’s on the pitch. That makes sense considering how good Martinez (and his usual partner Raphael Varane) are at defending inside their own box.
The sample for Martinez is pretty even in terms of games started vs not and quality of opponent. There are of course still other mitigating factors that also contribute to this, but whatever impact Martinez makes on United’s line height, it isn’t making it higher.
There is a player who has the opposite affect on the height of United’s line. You may have guessed it’s Harry Maguire.
In the Erik Ten Hag era United’s average line height is about four and a half meters higher4 when Maguire starts. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a direct effect of Maguire’s presence even though his lack of mobility often gets him (wrongly) labelled as being unable to play in a high line.
What makes Maguire have such an impact on United’s line height is precisely why United end up deeper with Martinez playing. Harry Maguire heads the ball.
Maguire engages in 4.97 aerial duels per match - one and a half more than United’s next highest centerback (Evans). More importantly, it’s where those aerial duels occur. For most of United’s centerbacks, their aerial duels come in and around their own box. With Maguire, they’re much higher up the pitch.
This particular header was not considered an “aerial duel” by Opta or WhoScored, which means if we only look at aerial duel’s we’re not seeing how often players actually head the ball. To get the full picture, we have to look at headed passes as well. When we add in headed passes (from WhoScored), no one comes anywhere close to using their head as often as Maguire does.
Those headers have a big impact. When you try to go long against United when Maguire is playing, the ball is just coming back towards you.
This will obviously help your line height as if you’re keeping the ball out of your own half of the field, your defensive actions will come much higher up the pitch.
None of United’s other centerbacks are as aerially aggressive as Maguire, especially Martinez. Martinez doesn’t like to use his head at all. He employs a different style. He’d rather let the opponent win the ball and bring it down, then go for the tackle.
The risk of course is, he only wins these duels about 50 percent of the time. If he doesn’t win, now your opponent has the ball much closer to the goal.
This style concedes space and territory to the opposition. Therefore as long as Martinez plays like this, United will always be forced to defend deeper. Even if Martinez is touch-tight on his man and forces the striker to play the ball backwards, the move still allows the opposition to “reset” the line of scrimmage so to speak. With the added caveat that the ball is now more likely to be at the feet of one of their more creative players.
When you allow the ball to be laid off like this, it puts more emphasis on your midfielders getting back and cleaning up those spaces between the lines. Casemiro was good at this last season (and last season accounts for 79.12 percent of Martinez’s minutes with United). This season this has been an area where United really struggle.
If United truly want to play a higher line, they’re not just going to want Maguire in there. They’re going to need him in there.
The idea of Maguire in a high line gives fear to some United fans because Maguire has no recovery pace. It’s an issue that is made a much bigger deal of than it actually is.
Through-balls are rarely an issue and it’s even more rare for them to go straight up the middle. If they’re played out wide a defender can use angles to make up for lack of speed5. Balls over the top are difficult to get through due to Maguire’s aerial ability. Getting one past him often requires you to overhit it.
More importantly, this is what you have teammates for. As Maguire is the more aggressive centerback, he’s going to get burned. It’s much more important for the less aggressive defender - the one who is going to stay back and clean up - to have that recovery pace. That’s an area Martinez excels in.
The idea that Maguire needs to be deeper in order to play well is a loosely put together narrative that’s easy to believe because it aligns with the belief that you can’t be high up the pitch if you don’t have pace. Sure Maguire could get burned high up the pitch.
But he will also get burned when he’s sitting deeper.
What exposes Maguire in both these situations isn’t his position on the pitch, it’s the fact that in both situations United’s midfielders are easily beaten giving the attackers a chance to run straight at Maguire. It’s not about positioning, it’s about compactness.
Maguire gets a bad rap because his mistakes are so easy to remember. This comes from the fact that he plays higher up the pitch. When Raphael Varane makes an error, it happens in the box and the ensuing play immediately happens. Sometimes the shot misses the target, sometimes Onana makes a save, occasionally someone else makes a great defensive play to bail him out. It happens so instantaneously that it’s easy to forget.
When Maguire makes an error, it happens much higher up the pitch and then plays out like a car wreck in slow motion. We have three or four seconds to watch the carnage unfold before we know whether this is going to end up in the back of the net or not.
It makes the mistake easy to stay in your mind.
Lisandro Martinez is going to return to Manchester United any day now. Upon his return there will be talk about United now being able to defend higher up the pitch.
I’d expect that from most TV pundits as they tend to cling to lazy narratives. The more likely outcome is that Martinez’s style of dropping deep is only going to further emphasize the points Jamie Carragher made after the Fulham match. The forwards will continue to be high, a defensive pair of Martinez and Varane will continue to drop deep. The gaps will still be there.
If United want to play a higher line, Maguire will need to come into the team, but that’s not all. They’d need the fullbacks to be pushing up and supporting the press as well. They’d need to stay compact as a team - which is more difficult in Ten Hag’s man-ish marking defensive system.
One defender is not going to magically change how United defend, but they can impact how high they defend.
It’s just that despite how he’s talked about, that player isn’t Lisandro Martinez.
Over the last two years United have won at a higher rate when Martinez isn’t in the team than when he is.
Another indication of the gaps between the forward line and defensive line
But more goals
46.64 to 42.01 (per MarkStats)
Nemanja Matic was excellent at this
Fantastic article Pauly. Yet again, we're reminded of how much better Harry Maguire is at defensive line conducting, that hasn't changed in ages.
Whole analysis feels so incomplete when you forget to include any mention on De Gea or Onana being the cause of high vs low line. Any decent editor would have catch that.