Manchester United xG underperformance Part III: Tactical Failings
United's tactical plan doesn't properly utilize the strengths of their players leading to the wrong types of chances going to the wrong players
This Part III of exploring why Manchester United are underperforming their xG. Check out Part I and Part II here.
For lack of a better term, Manchester United’s attack stunk this season. They finished the season 12th in non-penalty expected goals with 49.4 but only managed to score 40 non-penalty goals - the 5th worst total in the league. This was the second time in the last three years United have scored more than 10 fewer goals than what they would be expected to.
This doesn’t look like an aberration. It looks like this is just who United are now. The aberration appears to be the team scoring what was expected in 2023-24.
I started wondering why this is the case? Is it simply down to the players not being good finishers? Is it the way the squad is constructed? Is it the popular narrative the media loves to peddle that it’s all because they don’t have a ‘proper number 9?’
In Part II of this series we looked at how United’s best chances were disproportionally falling to their defenders rather than their forwards. Let’s take a deeper look into why that is.
Squad composition
In short, United just don’t have enough “forwards” in the team. The guys that grew up scoring goals and playing in the goal scoring positions.
The 4-4-2 might be an outdated formation but while its use has faded away one thing about it has stayed. The idea of having two forwards on the pitch at all times. Going back to the Jose Mourinho era, whether United were playing a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-3-3 or any other formation, for the most part they’d still have two forwards on the field. This typically came via Marcus Rashford or Anthony Martial playing as a ‘wide forward’ out on the left.
The (extra) wide forward provides you with the right balance. Sometimes United would try to jam three forwards onto the pitch - with Zlatan, Lukaku, or Cavani in between Rashford and Martial - but this never really worked due to the lack of creativity. Two is the ideal number.
Under Erik Ten Hag United started playing a bit more often with only one “forward” in the team. The lone forward was often flanked by two shoot-first wingers who weren’t exactly goal scorers. Under Amorim, United have almost exclusively played with only one forward on the pitch. You can’t pin that entirely on Amorim, as this is the squad he inherited, though him banishing Marcus Rashford - one of those “forwards” - is a choice he made.
Tactics
Take a look at United’s 10 best chances this past season sorted by xG.
Five of their 10 best chances this season came in the nine games managed by Erik Ten Hag. If we extend the list out to the top 20 chances, the ratio remains the same with 10 of the 20 coming while Ten Hag was still in charge.
Other than the aforementioned Rashford - who notably doesn’t appear on this list at all - both managers were using all the same players. That’s a pretty strong indication that there something in Amorim’s tactical setup that is hindering United’s ability to create good chances. And not only good chances, but creating good chances for the right people.
There’s no doubt that part of it is just player ability - especially among the two strikers - but that only goes so far.
If we look at the T3 chances per match lists from Part II again, Rasmus Hojlund lead the team with 19 during the 2023-24 season. Under Ten Hag this past season he popped up on the list twice - compared to eight times under Amorim - despite only playing 12.9 percent of his league minutes under Ten Hag. It’s a similar story for Joshua Zirkzee. Four of his 10 appearances on the list came under Ten Hag despite playing only 29 percent of his league minutes under the Dutchman. For as poor as they were under Ten Hag, United were a lot better at getting the ball to their strikers inside the box.1
There’s no question some of these tactical issues are caused by Amorim insisting on playing with a back three. However, as I’ve written before, the actual formation is a red herring. The formation, and how you play within the formation, can both be very fluid. It’s Amorim’s perpetual habit of starting five recognized defenders that is problematic. In a system that requires the wing backs to get forward and provide creativity in the final third, deploying defensive players who are not incisive passers - like Patrick Dorgu, Diogo Dalot, and Noussair Mazroui - in those positions really hampers United’s ability to create good attacking chances.
Misprofiling players
More than Amorim’s formations or his selection of too many defensive players, the bigger issue has been how he’s used the attackers at his disposal. One example is the way he tried to replace Marcus Rashford.
In Part I of this series, we looked at Rashford’s second goal against Everton - a textbook 1v1 finish, which has long been Rashford’s bread and butter. Multiple United managers have found success simply by maximizing the number of times they could put him in those breakaway situations
When Rashford became unavailable, Amorim - like Ten Hag before him - simply swapped in Alejandro Garnacho as if it were a like-for-like replacement. But he’s not.
Garnacho’s skill set is fundamentally different. He doesn’t thrive in 1v1s the way Rashford does. His first touch often lets him down, and he lacks the top-end pace to consistently separate from defenders.
Look up the goals Garnacho does score. I don’t have the bandwidth to post them all here so you’ll have to check out the highlights or settle for this quick description of them:
Southampton (A) - good run to the middle of the box first time finish from a square ball
Brentford (H) - sensational volley at the back post
Leicester City (H) - curler from outside the box
Leicester City (A) - deflected pass in the box, puts his laces through it first time
Newcastle (A) - transition, played out wide on the right, takes a touch then shoots
with his toe, might have taken a slight deflection
Brentford (A) - banger from outside the box
None of these goals come from getting played in behind. They all have a very similar mold. Get to the middle, shoot first time, or after just one touch. They’re remarkably similar to his goal catalogue from last season as well (both goals vs Aston Villa, goal vs West Ham).
And yet, almost every game we see Garnacho get played in behind, but that lack of pace means it’s no guarantee he’ll even get a shot off.
When he does get into dangerous 1v1 shooting positions, his finishing style - which often relies on raw power - isn’t well suited to this environment..
Is this the type of chance you want to create for Garnacho or for Rashford? Obviously it’s a good chance but your chances of converting it are higher when it’s created for the guy for whom chances like this are right in his wheelhouse.
This past season Liverpool scored 14 goals from counter attacks - twice as many as their next highest season over the past five years. What’s interesting is that Liverpool averaged three fewer counter attacks per game compared to the season before. Their xG per game from counter attacks rose from 0.23 to 0.31.
How were they able to do so much more with less opportunities? They drastically increased the amount of times Mohammad Salah was involved in their counter attacks. Salah averaged over one touch per game on the counter last season - the only player to achieve that feet since 2017-18.
You can only manage the players you have and the trick is getting them the ball in the situation that maximize what they’re good at. Liverpool counter attacked less often but they made sure to run those counters through Salah ensuring that he could be at his maximum effectiveness.
Of Garnacho’s 13 Premier League goals in the last two season only five have even come on the left side of the goal - the volley against Brentford, that bicycle kick vs Everton, a header vs Chelsea, and the two shots from outside the box. Yet Garnacho’s shot map features a very strong cluster of shots taken from the left side of the box. Many have low xG values taken through traffic, with many either getting blocked or not making it on target.
Ideally, you want Garnacho arriving at the end of moves — not starting them. He’s most effective when he can shoot quickly, with minimal touches. But Amorim uses him as the team’s primary outlet. He leads the squad in progressive passes received, progressive carries, touches in the final third, touches in the box, and shots.
When United break forward, it’s Garnacho getting on the ball in the final third tasked with making something happen. Too often, those sequences end with low-percentage efforts.
United’s issues with chance creation aren’t limited to Garnacho - Bruno Fernandes, another non-traditional finisher, has also routinely found himself on the end of big chances, with similarly wasteful results.
In a weird quirk, Bruno didn’t score a single non-penalty goal from inside the box this past season. That particular quirk can be chalked up to variance but historically has been poor at making his shots from inside the box particularly threatening. Bruno will provide secondary scoring but under Amorim he’s consistently getting United’s best chances per match.
Variance plays its role in everything in this sport, but Manchester United’s struggles in front of goal can’t just be pinned on bad luck. There are structural issues playing a part in the squad’s poor finishing. They don’t create enough chances and when they do, they’re creating the wrong kinds of chances for the wrong players.
The club has splashed £62 million on Matheus Cunha2. If he’s to be a success they’re going to need their attack to generate the kinds of situations Cunha thrives in. They can’t just expect Cunha to finish chances that someone else is good at, but aren’t necessarily part of his game.
The talent level is lacking a bit but it’s better than what we saw this past year. They need to add creators and they need finishers. More importantly they need the players to be deployed correctly. They need creative players in the creative roles. They need multiple finishers on the pitch at once along with those creators.
If these issues aren’t addressed the same problems are going to persist. They’ll struggle to create chances from open play. They’ll end up over-relying on generating chances from set pieces3 which will likely lead to defenders getting a disproportionately high amount of the teams best chances. Don’t forget, those guys are defenders for a reason.
41.03% of their T3 chances per match came from forwards in 2022-23. 31.9% in 2023-24
Presumably replacing Garnacho
Which they were pretty poor at this year - 0.07 xG per shot on set pieces. 2nd worst in the league
The way I see it, Amorim is sticking to his philosophy and play style regardless of who he has. That’s why he was chosen by the board. Hopefully once he’s got the most important pieces in place, we’ll see improvements in goalscoring and results overall - but if we stick with Amorim, then it will take at least two summer windows, in the best case scenario.
Wow, this is actually really enlightening. Do you see Cunha and Mbeumo moving the needle at all, with Bruno being pushed further back and Garnacho shipping out?