After poring over 18 hours of video footage before a trip to Old Trafford this season, something became clear to one performance analyst tasked with nullifying Manchester United’s strengths and exploiting their weaknesses.
“It was quite easy to see that they were better with the ball than without it,” says the analyst who, as with other sources The Athletic spoke to for this article, was doing so on condition of anonymity to protect their position and relationships.
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“With their pressing, if they weren’t able to win the ball high in the first couple of passes, they would be quite passive and not as comfortable in the low or medium block. We knew that if we were patient and we were good on the ball, that we could have a good amount of ball possession.”
And yet even then, the players and staff of United’s visitors left Sir Matt Busby Way on that particular night taken aback by just how well their plan worked: “The thing that we were surprised by the most was actually how much time and space that we were able to get at Old Trafford — that we were able to get out of the pressure so much.”
Erik ten Hag’s side have seen less of the ball than their opponents in nearly half of their 47 games across all competitions this season, including on nine occasions at home.
A chunk of those have been encounters with Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool, where United might reasonably expect to cede possession and look to play on the break — yet they also lost the battle for the ball against Everton, who only secured safety from relegation last week, third-bottom Luton Town and in both meetings with second-bottom Burnley, as well as in four of the six games in their ill-fated Champions League campaign.
Despite having the fifth-best defensive record in the top flight, United only need to let in six goals in their last four matches to set a record for the most they have conceded across a Premier League season. The 77 scored against them in all competitions is already the most since the 1977-78 season, and the most on a per-game basis in 60 years.
It has not been this easy to score against United in more than half a century, often due to identifiable patterns that are as clear to pundits and punters as much as the professionals.
A gap between United’s high press and often low-lying defence was highlighted by pundit and former England defender Jamie Carragher on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football after the 2-1 home defeat by Fulham in February.
Ten Hag hit back, describing Carragher’s analysis as “subjective”, but that gap is something that has been picked up on by opposition coaches and analysts tasked with finding areas to exploit within United’s system.
So why does it happen?
“We noticed when you would play with two No 6s, they would use their No 10 and one of the No 6s to connect with the two players, so they were quite man-oriented on those two players,” one analyst explains.
“That’s what creates the big gap — that they only have one No 6 between the lines. We wanted to overload that area, because what we noticed was that with that big gap in there, if they wanted to be open, we could go straight into it.”
However, opponents not only exploit that gap but also how United typically react to a swarm of players cascading through the middle of the pitch.
“When teams overloaded central areas, their back four would get so narrow, so that when we played around the winger and the first line of the press, the full-backs would have such a long distance into pressing our full-backs that they wouldn’t be able to manage,” says one source.
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“Every time we bypassed the winger, they would have to drop and then they would get passive, and then we would get more and more space on the ball higher up the pitch.”
Wingers were instructed to stay infield to occupy United’s defence, who would tend to go man-for-man when defending their penalty area, leaving space on each flank to either play a cross or arrive late and unmarked. “They became so narrow and man-oriented that if we had hard runs against the near post, we would empty out the area at the back post a lot, and we would create some overloads there,” one source said.
United’s high press has been effective at times, particularly in the early part of the season when Ten Hag would point to his side boasting “the most ball regains in the whole Premier League”, although this figure has dropped off considerably since, until they had only the ninth-most high turnovers in the top flight.
“You have the front part (of the team) that’s trying to implement this much more aggressive pressing system and you can be that aggressive,” says another analyst. “But if you’re going to be that aggressive, it needs to be team-wide. You can’t say, ‘Actually, our centre-backs are not really good at this so we’re just going to let them hang back’.”
United’s weaknesses are plain to see but then so are their strengths, particularly when playing on the counter-attack.
Much has been made of Ten Hag’s desire, declared at the start of pre-season last summer, to turn United into “the best transition team in the world”, and several of those spoken to by The Athletic for this piece agreed that is not an especially unrealistic aim.
In Marcus Rashford, Rasmus Hojlund and Alejandro Garnacho, United have the requisite speed, athleticism and power to blow opponents away in large, open spaces. It is something that those to come up against Ten Hag’s side this season have attempted to protect themselves against.
“We knew that we couldn’t match them over big areas,” says one source. Repeatedly pressing United high up the pitch, aiming to force turnovers in possession, was considered risky business: “That would open up spaces for them.”
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Give United that space and the sheer pace with which the ball comes back at you can be devastating.
“After the first 15 minutes, we were 2-0 down and it was like, ‘Wow’. The quality, the speed of play they had was just, ‘Wow’,” says Conor McGaharan, performance analyst at Newport County, the League Two side who faced United in the FA Cup fourth round in January.
That one of the most expensively assembled squads in world football had too much for a fourth-tier outfit should not come as a surprise but Newport’s staff were still blown away by how United ran into a comfortable lead that day through pinpointing and exposing a known weakness: “Bruno Fernandes alluded to it afterwards, about the cutback space where they scored their first two goals from. That’s something we had identified earlier in the season and it was something we’d work on, trying to correct and fix it, but they saw that and felt they could exploit it.”
It was not a case of United playing fast and direct for the sake of it, says McGaharan, who had noticed during his pre-match research that, when in possession, Ten Hag’s side would often attempt to overload one side of the pitch, then switch the play:
“They had their principles. Antony would be one-v-one and would stay away from the ball. Garnacho, Fernandes, Casemiro and (Luke) Shaw would try to create a four-v-three on the left-hand side. When someone wasn’t supposed to be where they should’ve been, because of how quickly they move the ball, that’s when they would do it.
“They were waiting for the moment. When an opposition player wasn’t where he was supposed to be, that’s when they would go — ‘Bang’.”
That sheer speed of United’s play made it difficult for Newport to deal with Diogo Dalot, who was stepping inside from right-back and creating overloads centrally. “We had to change shape to stop that from happening and get closer to the ball,” says McGaharan, with the Welsh side ditching their usual 3-5-2 for a diamond midfield.
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Yet once that problem was solved, Newport reckoned they could cause their Premier League visitors problems — and they did, by exploiting the narrowness out of possession that others in this feature have highlighted.
“With the shape of their midfield, we felt that if we could get a switch through their midfield three, onto the outside shoulder of the furthest midfielder, and we could get our wing-back going forward, we could get crosses into the box,” says McGaharan.
“We had seen that in their 4-3-3 — whether it was one or two in midfield, they would get quite narrow to the ball.
“We felt that if we can secure that first pass and get them into that midfield shape, so that we could settle the game down and they weren’t coming after us all the time, we could get that switch off and then attack wide to make it a one-v-one or two-v-two and get crosses into the box.”
While Newport’s first goal of the tie was a deflected strike from long range by Bryn Morris, their equaliser 10 minutes later came exactly how they had hoped, with United retreating narrowly, and the ball being switched wide for a cross converted by Will Evans.
Despite falling to a 4-2 defeat, a side who ultimately finished 18th in 24-club League Two still had 17 attempts on United’s goal over the 90 minutes — right at the start of a much-criticised trend that has seen Ten Hag’s side face 370 shots over their last 18 games.
Ten Hag has defended United’s often chaotic style by pointing to the individual qualities of his players in transition and an expectation that United should play fast, attacking football that is aligned with the club’s traditions. Yet at a time when City and Arsenal have risen to the Premier League’s top two spots by minimising risk and prioritising control, that approach appears out of step with the prevailing winds in elite football.
A counterpoint is offered by Liverpool, whose title challenge has fallen away in recent weeks, but whose principles of play during Jurgen Klopp’s nine seasons in charge have embraced chaos as much as control.
“The biggest difference is that Liverpool know how to artificially create that chaos in a safe environment,” says one analyst, comparing Klopp’s setup with that of Ten Hag.
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“Watch Trent (Alexander-Arnold) get the ball in a wider area and Liverpool’s rest defence in the centre tightens up, he plays an early cross and then Liverpool can counter-press on that. It’s a low-percentage pass. You’re not expecting to win it necessarily but you’re creating the second ball, you’re creating what’s essentially an artificial transition, and you’ve minimised the risk because you’ve dictated when it’s going to happen.”
As part of new co-owner INEOS’ restructuring of operations at Old Trafford, United are seeking to define a coherent, effective and club-wide style of play that will dictate the way that the manager — or more accurately, the head coach — sets up the senior team.
Whatever that style may be, it will need to make the most of United’s considerable strengths and address their significant weaknesses.
(Top photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
