I’ve been out and about recently so haven’t had the time to construct a full post recently. But I’ve had a lot of thoughts about a few things that we’re seeing at Manchester United and wanted to write them down. Some of these things aren’t so much “this is what’s happening” but rather, “I noticed this and it’s only been 1-2 games but it’s something to keep an eye on.” I also haven’t had a chance to pull the gifs for em so you’ll just have to take my word. So here are my thoughts all jumbled together.
The composition of the team
I know Grant Wahl was talking about PSG here but this comparison really makes sense for Manchester United as well.
United have formed a bit of a Galacticos team themselves. Cristiano Ronaldo, Bruno Fernandes, Paul Pogba, Jadon Sancho, Harry Maguire, Raphael Varane… yea it checks out.
The thing about the Galacticos is that we kinda know exactly to what extent it works. Those early 2003- Real Madrid Galacticos never won the Champions League. They only won La Liga once (before Beckham, Roberto Carlos etc left). Even Galacticos part two weren’t crazy successful domestically. They won La Liga once under Mourinho and only once under Zidane. They were dominant in Europe under Zidane partially because Zidane was a member of the first Galacticos and knew exactly what their flaw was.
There is such a thing as too many good players. Not all good players can play with each other. While players may play different positions they sometimes like to occupy the same spaces, which can cause problems. Most importantly, football is a weak link game. Christopher Anderson and David Sally’s The Numbers Game has a great chapter about this titled “why football teams are like space shuttles,” which focuses on the O-ring problem that doomed NASA’s spacecrafts. In other words it doesn’t matter how good the good parts are, if you have a bad part it will doom you.
Zidane understood that he had the best in Cristiano Ronaldo. But in order for Ronaldo to win you games you needed to compensate for what Ronaldo doesn’t give you, which is defensive work.
To summarize it extremely quickly, he compensated for that by adding an industrious midfielder to the picture. Those mid 2010 Real Madrid teams tended to play a pretty boring 4-4-2 off the ball to make up for Ronaldo’s lack of defending. As a result, there often wasn’t room in the team for Gareth Bale, which caused issues in the team that are still there today. It just wasn’t going to work with the both of them.
United (may) have this problem in two ways.
Paul Pogba, Jadon Sancho, the left wing, and Cristiano Ronaldo
The tail end of last season as well as the first two games of this season showed us how freaking good Paul Pogba is when playing on the LW for United. It really seemed like this was going to be the preferred position for him at United this season with Jadon Sancho on the right. When Pogba wasn’t playing on the left Sancho could move over there.
It was successful because wasn’t playing as a traditional winger, but rather was cutting inside to the half space to both help out the midfield and be an extra attacking midfielder (while Luke Shaw provided the width). The half space is also where Sancho likes to operate and where he’s most dangerous from.
Then the club signed Cristiano Ronaldo.
In his first game against Newcastle it was already obvious. Ronaldo too likes to drift over to the left and look for the ball in those half spaces. This was good for Bruno Fernandes, who was able to push on forward and make runs into the box1, but less good for Sancho, who was now being forced to play as a touchline winger on the left side. It’s very much not how you want to be using Jadon Sancho and he never really looked like he got going against Newcastle.
Having said that, he still finished second on the team with six shot-creating actions, despite only playing 65 minutes. Just imagine how good he’ll be when he’s actually playing well.
On Tuesday against Young Boys, Sancho moved over to the right and Pogba returned to the left wing. It should be said Pogba was dominant against Newcastle in a deeper midfield position on Saturday (but that’s also Newcastle), but given Ronaldo’s presence now it was fair to ask not only if Pogba was needed on the LW but if it would work. The early returns weren’t great as Pogba really struggled to get involved in the match.
Meanwhile Sancho also struggled on the right side, getting just 21 touches (only Ronaldo had fewer) over the first 35 minutes before Aaron Wan-Bissaka was sent off. That number is even worse when you factor in that United had 65 percent of the possession.
That brings us too…
The midfield and passing the ball to the right
It all goes back to how the team is built and the weak links. The weak link for United as you know, is the midfield.
United won their fans over this summer with the big name signings of Jadon Sancho, Raphael Varane, and Cristiano Ronaldo. Sancho addressed the need for a player who can attack from the right side.
The defense was good but could be better. United’s attack was pretty damn good. Suddenly United had opportunities to sign two world class players and make those areas better and they jumped on it. But all the while they never upgraded on the weak link.
For weeks I’ve been trying to come up with an analogy to describe this but all I could come up with is this crappy one2. It’s like there are two cities on opposite sides of a river. One of those cities is focused on food/agriculture while the other is focused on technology. They each use their resources to try and make themselves better rather than just building a bridge over the river to allow them to share their resources which would make them both thrive.
United have a great defense. United have a great attack. They don’t have the players that can both protect the defense and move the ball swiftly from the defense to the attack which would allow them both to thrive.
That was Tuesday night.
United had all the ball but couldn’t get it to their dangerous players in areas where they could be dangerous.
That’s an indictment on the midfield, especially since Fred and Donny van de Beek only took 19.69 percent of their total touches3. United need midfielders who want the ball at their feet and can push it forward, that is very much not Donny van de Beek. Van de Beek only getting 8.62 percent of the touches in the first 35 minutes is scary. He doesn’t call for the ball, he doesn’t seem to want it.
While Fred looks to create passing angles and space for his partner to do things on the ball (by dropping into the back line), Van de Beek does the same thing just in a different way (pushing forward). It doesn’t work, this having all the ball but not being able to get it forward and create chances is becoming a theme when Van de Beek starts in the pivot (IBFK (a), Watford, Leicester, Everton friendly, Young Boys).
Van de Beek was solid defensively and he completed 23 of 24 passes making it look like he played really well. But only 64 percent of his attempted passes were forwards, the lowest percentage by any player in United’s pivot this season. It wasn’t bad, but it’s simply far from good enough,4 and what’s worse is that fans are championing this effort. It needs to be better.
The only player that seemed to want to get on the ball in midfield was Bruno Fernandes… dropping into midfield. That’s not where you want Bruno, but Bruno dropping deeper was the only way United’s attackers could get a touch on the ball5.
Yes Paul Pogba is better on the left wing then he is in the midfield pivot but it’s absolutely useless if you can’t get him the ball. The fact that he and Sancho had 22 and 21 touches respectively (when again, United had ALL of the ball in this game) is an indictment on the midfield.
(21 touches in 35 minutes and he still managed to create a shot when United only had two on the night. Jadon Sancho is GOOD)
Sancho - passing to the right
I’m not so surprised Sancho only had 21 touches in the first 35 minutes simply because he was playing on the right. United have had a right wing problem for ages but it also seems like they have a passing to the right wing problem.
It’s easy to say “that’s because there’s no one there” but even when Marcus Rashford is out on the right United fail to get the ball out to him. You can also say that’s because Aaron Wan-Bissaka is weaker on the ball but I noticed this last year in United’s League Cup match against Brighton when Diogo Dalot started at right back.
Throughout the match Dalot was wide open and United never seemed to move the ball over to the right. The starting midfield that day was Fred and Scott McTominay, the pair that would be United’s first choice pair throughout the season.
They also didn’t seem to eagerly pass to the right when Brandon Williams played - though that could just be because it was Brandon Williams. It’s something worth keeping an eye out for the next few weeks.
The calamity of Tuesday night
Let’s be clear. United were playing terribly before the red card on Tuesday night and if they didn’t make any adjustments it was only going to be a matter of time before would have equalized.6
The red card then certainly changed everything and Ole didn’t cover himself in the best light for the rest of the match. That’s not to say he failed in every step of the way, but certainly in most steps.
The logic behind bringing on Varane and switching to a 3-1-4-1 formation makes sense. You get your compactness in the middle, you have wingbacks that can provide width going forward, while Pogba and Bruno can still get forward to join the attack.
The thing about that is you need to actually get possession and settle things down to give your wingbacks a chance to actually push up and become wingbacks but a midfield three of Fred, Pogba, and Bruno is very much NOT going to keep possession. Surprise surprise, they didn’t.
With United not being able to keep possession, the wingbacks were pinned deep and United were essentially in a back five. That just created more of a gap between the midfield and Ronaldo, leaving him isolated. From his time at Juventus and Real Madrid we already know that when Ronaldo is isolated he’s pretty useless. He also doesn’t do any defending so that left United with essentially only nine men. That makes it even harder to hold possession and stop defending, so United had to keep defending.
The logic was there, the choice of players was not (how Pogba was left on the pitch for 90 minutes is beyond me).
There’s so much to criticize Ole Gunnar Solskjaer for in this match that it’s hilarious how people were just grasping at straws to try and throw at him. Most often was how Solskaer learned nothing from the Martial and Fred red cards last season?
What exactly was he supposed to learn? Those red cards happened with United down 2-1 each time and in both games he tried to attack only to concede more. Seems like he learned something because this time he was up 1-0 and he tried to hold that lead. (Again, he just put out the most bizarre choice of players to do so). He would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for a horrific mistake from one of his players.
Saying that Klopp or Tuchel or Pep wouldn’t have let this happen is also hilarious. Mistakes happen. Tuchel had a man sent off at halftime TWO weeks ago in a game that was 1-1. He responded by closing up shop and just focusing on defending. Chelsea conceded 14 shots in the 2nd half to Liverpool (United only conceded 10 in the second half). The difference was that one mistake.
The sky isn’t falling
It’s a bad loss and it’s not helped by the fact that United suffered a similar bad loss in Istanbul last year7. This one is in match one. There’s plenty of time to correct this in a much easier group.
It’s one result and anyone blowing up this result into more than it is needs to chill. I could care less about this one result. It’s the group stage of the Champions League. The only result that matter is “did you get out of the group?” If the answer is no, that’s a failure. If the answer is yes then I could care less about how each individual game went.
Until next time.
Which is what he’s really good at
I have another one that plays into the “United are a start-up company” analogy but it’s far too long to type
United had 375 touches in the first 35 minutes. Against Leeds they had 575 total
I posted a long thread about this the other day. Check it out.
Bruno accounted for 44% of Pogba, Sancho, and Bruno’s touches
I’m confident but only like 53% convinced that OGS would have adjusted to this because the obvious adjustment was just swap VDB and Pogba so why not do that after 30 minutes? In Bruno’s first match it took him 25 minutes to realize Fred-Andreas Pereira were completely overrun and drop Bruno back deep.
What? A match where Donny van de Beek started in midfield + United had all the ball and couldn’t turn it into chances? You don’t say!
I too noticed Van De beek not showing for the ball, I agree it's hard to see him being successful as a 6 for United. Could be a confidence thing? Haven't not seen much of him play it's hard to say but from what I've seen his game is based off making runs into the box, not dictating possession which is arguably what we need.
Enjoyed the article.