Why Erik Ten Hag's Man United Isn't Working Yet
Following a ropey display against Wolves, Manchester United's first defeat of the season arrived in embarrassing fashion at the hands of Tottenham this weekend. But looking past the poor performances and the individual errors, is there actually a team on the verge of something great?
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00:00 Hello there you handsome handsome bunch, Adam Clear here from 442 and Manchester United.
00:10 What's going on there then?
00:12 They spent a whole big heap of money again this summer and some people, not everybody
00:16 I should clarify, not everybody but some people think they should now have a team capable
00:20 of challenging for the Premier League title.
00:23 But so far they've had a pretty minging performance against Wolves and now a pretty bad defeat
00:28 against Tottenham so if you're a Man United fan, should you be worrying?
00:32 I say no, at least not yet.
00:38 So here we are, it is Saturday evening, this is how Manchester United lined up against
00:42 Tottenham and I have to say for the first half I actually thought they did really really
00:47 well because the thing is when a 4-3-3 plays a 4-2-3-1 then theoretically you should match
00:52 up very nicely everywhere.
00:54 4-2-8 should be able to just sit with the two pivots and the 10 gets marked by your
00:58 defensive midfielder so in theory you should be pretty well covered.
01:02 Because a team like Man United will want to be aggressive, they won't want to allow the
01:05 opposition to just build up willy nilly then every single one of the three attackers will
01:08 take a man and then one of the eights, depending on which defender is free, will then push
01:12 on leaving the player he's left in the shadow cover.
01:17 Basically he's left him but he's stopping a pass getting to him.
01:19 But Tottenham, obviously very aware Man United were going to do this, allowed Porrow to invert
01:23 from the right back position adding an extra body in the middle and that kind of gave us
01:28 this.
01:29 It's the very principle of that box midfield we saw so many teams do last year.
01:32 Spurs now effectively have an extra man in the middle outnumbering Man United which means
01:36 if at any point the press here fails they can get a ball through that into the middle
01:41 of the pitch.
01:42 Very dangerous situation, it's why Arsenal, Man City, loads of teams try to do it last
01:45 year and that's what they were trying to do with Man United.
01:47 Casemiro had obviously been told specifically to stay with James Madison where possible
01:51 so that left Mason Mount with this problem here.
01:54 Theoretically he should stay with Sarr because that was his man originally but obviously
01:57 Porrow's now moved into the more aggressive area he's going to want to be pressing in
02:01 so he's kind of caught between these two players.
02:03 If he pushes on that kind of forces Shaw to come over and deal with Sarr leaving Kulishevski
02:08 free but if he sits that just leaves a really easy ball into Porrow.
02:11 But even just in the first couple of minutes of the game Man United clearly recognised
02:15 the situation, they saw it was a problem and they changed what they were doing to completely
02:19 nullify it.
02:20 The players just went and sat on Vezuma, they allowed Garnaccio to follow Porrow into this
02:23 space here effectively giving them a four of their own and matching this up.
02:27 And while this does mean that Rashford is then leading the press on his own effectively
02:30 getting outnumbered by the two defenders, whichever one he was leaving the corresponding
02:34 midfielder would push onto but again only in a straight line between the man they're
02:38 marking and the ball leaving what they call the same shadow cover.
02:42 So when they weren't blocking the man they were at least blocking the pass.
02:45 And this worked really really well in that first half, Man United kept forcing turnovers
02:49 in this area every single time they got the ball, it looked like they were going to score,
02:53 they managed to nick it off Porrow a couple of times, it worked really really well.
02:57 And that's the thing, while this performance is kind of being lamented and the result is
03:00 obviously quite bad and the nature of the goals they conceded obviously makes it a lot
03:04 worse, this first half they had their game plan pretty much solid, they looked way better
03:08 than they did against Wolves and they should have been leading this match.
03:11 This chance for Rashford which again came from a turnover looked really good, how many
03:15 times do you think Bruno Fernandes is going to miss that header across the course of a
03:18 season, it was going really well.
03:20 But then of course Tottenham made a fairly simple change in the second half and that
03:24 kind of exposed all the same fragility they had against Wolves.
03:28 And it was a change that theoretically Man United would have been very happy with, like
03:32 Porrow stopped inverting which allowed Garnaccio to play a lot wider, that's where he wants
03:35 to be, that meant that Sarr wasn't pushing as far up so Mount could follow him into a
03:39 more advanced area, that's where he wanted to be.
03:41 But what they effectively did was they made a huge area in the centre of the pitch that
03:46 was just wide open, the only two players in it were James Madison and Casemiro.
03:50 And what we kept seeing was Madison going deeper and deeper and deeper to receive the
03:54 ball, Casemiro going with him and once they were isolated in this one on one situation,
03:58 Madison just killed him, killed him dead.
04:02 For a start it created this huge gap between Manchester United's defence and their midfield
04:06 which Kulishevsky was happy to go into, Richarlison was happy to go into, even Son started receiving
04:11 the ball in it meaning they were getting on it a lot more in the final third.
04:13 But when they did get it to Madison, you saw several times he was just so happy beating
04:19 Casemiro one on one and just ending up in the exact same scenario they had against Wolves.
04:24 And while you do have to caveat every mention of that game with the fact that they did ultimately
04:28 go on and win it, anyone who watched it will tell you it didn't really look like they were
04:32 going to do that.
04:33 Once the game became stretched, which is what Tottenham tried really hard to do in the second
04:37 half, Man United could not live with their running, they could not beat them in individual
04:41 battles.
04:42 The reason this is such a problem for Manchester United is because Eric Ten Hag's entire mentality,
04:46 something he's even spoken about himself this season, is that he wants them to be the best
04:50 team in world football at transitions.
04:53 Now I know not everybody is a bad nerd so if you're not sure what a transition is in
04:57 football basically imagine that team A has the ball and they are attacking and then team
05:02 B wins the ball off them for a couple of seconds because everybody's moving around, everybody's
05:07 finding space, they're doing all their fun attacking stuff, people are out of position,
05:11 nobody is necessarily set.
05:12 So those first few seconds after a ball is turned over are really important.
05:17 And if you're one of those teams that's really, really good at them then you can use the fact
05:20 that you've just won the ball when the opposition aren't ready to defend to really go out and
05:25 hurt them.
05:26 And as we saw in the first half, Man United are really good at doing that.
05:29 When they turn that ball over they know straight away where to go, what to do and how to hurt
05:33 teams and they should have been in the lead through doing that.
05:36 But the problem they have at the minute is that turnovers work both ways.
05:39 You also have to be good at doing them when you're the team that's lost the ball.
05:43 And again in that first half you could see this was part of their identity, something
05:46 they were working really hard on.
05:48 You can see here they lose the ball this time and Tottenham try and spring a quick counter
05:52 on but everybody's alive to what's going on.
05:54 Mason Mount who is, again, you've got to say, one of the best off the ball players in the
05:58 Premier League makes a really intelligent run, cuts that out and they get it back straight
06:03 away.
06:04 So what's the problem then?
06:05 I can hear you banging on your screen.
06:06 If they're this good at transitions and transitions are so important, why were they so bad against
06:10 Wolves, why have they lost this game?
06:12 And one word, mate.
06:16 Intensity.
06:17 I have already seen some people say this season that the problem Man United have got is that
06:20 they massively overcommit when they're attacking and that leaves Casemiro exposed.
06:24 And I mean, they do commit when they attack.
06:27 Right now they've got two wide players who both want to come inside with the ball.
06:30 Anthony especially just loves to get on his left foot, which means they need both the
06:33 full backs to try and provide either underlapping or overlapping runs.
06:37 And you've got Fernandes, obviously a great creative player.
06:39 He's just fallen off his base and Mount kind of wants to be in the space as well.
06:42 So it does sort of leave Casemiro all on his own.
06:45 It's a clue you.
06:46 That'll be him out for six weeks.
06:48 But they're not stupid like Bruno Fernandes for all you think of him as this great creative
06:52 force.
06:53 If you haven't watched a lot of Man United, these stats will probably surprise you.
06:56 But yeah, he's great on the ball and he makes things happen, but he also doesn't shirk his
07:00 defensive responsibility.
07:01 He wins the ball, he contests, he puts tackles in.
07:03 He's positionally very aware, so he's not leaving anybody massively isolated.
07:07 And likewise, Anthony, for what it sometimes looks like, he hasn't got a clue what he's
07:10 doing.
07:11 He does take instruction from Ten Hag really well.
07:13 If he is told to track his full back, if he makes a run into your half, he does that.
07:18 Look at this.
07:19 This is not the recovery run of a player who isn't bothered about defending.
07:22 But the reason I said intensity is because it's all well and good to have these instructions
07:26 and be able to carry them out.
07:27 But if you do not do them consistently and at a high level for an entire game, then you
07:32 will get punished by teams that do.
07:34 And this is what Man United's current problem is.
07:37 Right now, this looks to me like a system that does actually work pretty well.
07:41 They're just not executing it effectively for the entire duration of a match.
07:45 Like if we just look at this little freeze frame here and just presume you hadn't already
07:49 seen this goal.
07:50 And I said, point to me on this screen where you think Tottenham are about to pass the
07:54 ball.
07:55 Not in a million years would you think it was capable of going here.
07:59 This isn't some kind of counterattack.
08:01 It's not some lightning break.
08:02 Man United is supposed to be fairly set here.
08:04 And yet Kulishevsky is standing in about eight square miles of space on the right hand side.
08:10 Garnaccio does then run back, but it would be incredibly generous to consider that a
08:13 sprint.
08:14 And he even hesitates at the last second as he's about to pull the trigger.
08:18 But just shall we rewind this clip?
08:21 At the start of this move, this is Pape Sarr and this is Man United's entire midfield three.
08:26 Disregarding the fact for a second that Kulishevsky is entirely unmarked, you would actually say
08:30 they're pretty well set here.
08:31 The back four are nice and compact.
08:33 All three of the midfielders are in the correct shape and in front of them.
08:36 It should be pretty difficult to find a way through.
08:38 And here is Kulishevsky drives towards the box.
08:41 Man United have five defenders already in it.
08:43 The two Tottenham players are tightly marked and only Sarr, who is capable of making a
08:48 late run, still has both Mount and Casemiro capable of picking him up.
08:52 And crucially, as the ball comes in, not one Man United player has a look around to assess
08:59 the situation.
09:00 Like even from this shot here, Manchester United's midfield three are perfectly positioned
09:05 specifically to stop a runner like Sarr from getting in.
09:09 They've got two players who can go with him.
09:10 They've got one player who's already ahead of him.
09:12 And yet somehow he is the only one who makes the intense run required to get on the end
09:18 of that ball.
09:19 Happened again almost immediately afterwards.
09:20 Like Anthony has done the right thing.
09:21 He has tracked his runner to this point.
09:23 And then instead of upping the intensity to follow him into the box, he just points and
09:28 allows him to run clean through.
09:30 A few minutes after that, Manchester United are perfectly set here.
09:33 Fernandes is in a great position, but as soon as his runner leaves, he just stands there.
09:37 And then by some distance, the worst one of all, the second goal, like Ben Davies has
09:40 come on at this point, you know, really lightning fast, really scary Ben Davies.
09:44 He comes on and he again leaves Fernandes.
09:47 He just sort of lightly jogs into the box, stands there for a couple of seconds asking
09:50 for the ball.
09:51 And despite the fact Eriksen and Varane can both see him, neither of them put in the sprint
09:57 required to cover that man.
09:59 Now, yes, OK, this one was a known goal, but if you just look at it here, Ben Davies should
10:03 bury that, shouldn't require Martinez to put it in for him.
10:07 And if you're a Man United fan, this should be the really concerning thing.
10:10 Look at the body language here.
10:12 You are one nil down.
10:13 You are desperately trying to get an equaliser.
10:16 Three of you are within mere yards of a player who looks like he might be about to bury it.
10:21 Where's the urgency?
10:22 Where's the desperation?
10:23 And the really mad thing is Man United still quite easily could have got something out
10:27 of this game.
10:28 That's a really, really good side.
10:29 It was just a really good example of how wanting it more might sound like a cliche, but it
10:34 does actually carry.
10:36 Like between ten hogs, Man United and Posta Koglu's Tottenham, you've got two teams who
10:40 are both trying out new things, are both exploring new systems, but they are both really dependent
10:44 on a lot of high intensity running, either to close down space or to break into it.
10:50 And in Tottenham, you had a team that was willing to do that for 90 minutes.
10:53 And in Man United, you didn't.
10:55 Now why that is, it's way too early to say.
10:58 Their fitness levels might just not be there.
11:00 They might not have had the proper pre-season preparation, or it might be a mindset thing,
11:03 or it might be an attitude thing.
11:05 We don't know yet.
11:06 But what's clear off these first two games is that Man United have a really great plan
11:11 here.
11:12 They're just not doing it properly.
11:14 At their best, they are forcing high turnovers and creating chances, and they are tracking
11:19 their runners to make sure that the space they're inviting isn't too much of a problem.
11:23 But in just large portions of the game, they're not doing that.
11:27 And as you saw with Madison and Casemiro, when they don't do it properly, it leaves
11:30 players isolated, which makes them individually look dreadful.
11:34 And that's, my friends, is why if you're a Man United fan, you should not be worried
11:38 about those first two results.
11:39 But if it keeps going this way, then you might need to be.
11:43 But anyway, more important than that, that's just what I think, isn't it?
11:46 So if you are a Man United fan, or even if you're not, please give me your thoughts,
11:49 your theories, your opinions, all of them in the comments below.
11:52 We do really love to read them all.
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12:16 It's in the corner.
12:17 I'm not going to read it out again.
12:18 And until next time, bye.
12:20 That's all I've got.
12:22 That's what I was looking for.
12:23 Bye.