Why Sofyan Amrabat Would Solve Man United's BIGGEST Problem
Erik Ten Hag's Manchester United have had a troubling start to the new season, with concerns raised over the solidity and fitness of their midfield. A move for Fiorentina's Sofyan Amrabat has been rumoured, and with the player's ability to both defend and attack, he would be the perfect solution to their various problems
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00:00 [Intro]
00:04 Safian Amrabat, wait I didn't say hello there did I?
00:07 Hello everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here.
00:09 How are you doing? Is that a new coat? It's absolutely gorgeous.
00:13 Safian Amrabat, he looks like he might be going to Manchester United.
00:17 And in all my many, not years, like weeks I guess, as a football analyst,
00:22 I have never seen a single player more likely to solve more problems
00:27 currently being had by one football team.
00:30 And that is because my friends, there are not one Safian Amrabat,
00:33 there are two Safian Amrabats and Manchester United really badly need them both.
00:40 [Ding]
00:43 Okay, so Safian Amrabat, you may well remember him from last year's World Cup.
00:50 Now being a Fiorentina player at the time, and indeed still now,
00:54 he probably wasn't someone who was on everybody's radar prior to this.
00:58 Like genuinely show me someone who said, "Ooh, I watched a lot of Morocco last year,
01:02 and I will show you either A, a liar, or B, just like literally a Moroccan."
01:08 But he turned a lot of heads in that tournament,
01:10 and was one of the main reasons for Morocco's really impressive surge into the semi-finals,
01:15 because he sat right in front of a back four.
01:18 He was the single pivot in that midfield, and he did stuff like this.
01:22 That may well be one of my favourite tackles any football player has ever done,
01:25 right after Scott Parker's one on Joe Cole.
01:28 But that never stops being entertaining to watch,
01:31 and I promise you, right now I'll be showing that at least two more times in this video.
01:35 So that's who he is, right? He's a big guard, bastard defensive midfielder
01:39 who breaks everything up, and he stops other teams playing.
01:41 If we look at his FB ref profile, purely from the World Cup, those numbers do support that.
01:47 Per 90, he was winning the ball back in his defensive third, more than pretty much anybody else.
01:51 If we look at the middle third and the attacking third,
01:53 that shows that he very rarely ventured out of that position.
01:56 He was getting loads and loads of touches, both in this sort of area and just in his own penalty area,
02:00 but wasn't making any kind of progressive passes or long passes.
02:03 So clearly his job was to just sit here, hover, protect the back four, win the ball back,
02:08 and then just give it to somebody else.
02:09 He was stopping players dribble around him, he was blocking the ball, he was recovering the ball.
02:13 It's pretty easy to see what kind of player he is, right?
02:17 "Ha ha ha," said the fat controller. "Wrong."
02:20 These are Amrobat's exact same stats, but not from his World Cup performance
02:24 from the last year playing for Fiorentina.
02:27 And even though he plays in largely the same position, like he still operates as a single pivot in that Fiorentina team,
02:32 the contrast between what he's being asked to do there is bananas.
02:36 He very rarely wins the ball back in this area of the pitch.
02:39 Instead, he's far more likely to be recovering it in the attacking third instead.
02:43 And if you're not already sitting down for this one, I would advise you to take a seat, pal,
02:47 given he wasn't asked to do any passing whatsoever for Morocco.
02:51 What he's doing at Fiorentina is simply staggering by contrast.
02:55 That is literally the profile of one of the best and most progressive passes of the ball
02:59 across the entirety of European football.
03:03 And again, just for contrast, it's the same guy who did this.
03:07 And in fact, as anybody who watched Fiorentina last year,
03:09 like even if you just caught them in the conference final against West Ham,
03:12 will be able to tell you, he is so vital to everything about their build-up.
03:16 Like Fiorentina are an excellent, excellent team.
03:19 And the reason for that is Amrabat's passing ability, his distribution, his positional awareness,
03:24 not his tackling or his ability to disrupt things, his ability to create things.
03:29 Like even from this really deep sitting position that he has,
03:32 he gets the ball into the penalty area loads, he gets the ball to the final third, he switches it.
03:36 If you look at his completion numbers for his medium and long passes,
03:39 you can see this is one of the most like incisive and accurate passes of a ball in the world.
03:45 But you can start to see the picture that's getting painted here, can't you?
03:48 Like for his national side, he plays as one of the best defensive and destructive midfielders in the world.
03:54 And for his club side, he plays as one of the best deep playmaking, creative players in the world.
03:59 Now, here's the thing. We are only two games into the Premier League season.
04:02 By the time you watch this video, Man United may well have stuffed Nottingham Forest
04:06 and a lot of these concerns may well just feel like old news.
04:10 But in those first two games, these are two really specific problems they've had.
04:14 As we mentioned in the other video that went out this week, it'll be here,
04:17 or maybe I'll put it behind me through my shirt, which will look really silly.
04:21 Ten Hog wants Man United to be the best team in transition in the entire world.
04:25 And half of that job is that when you win the ball back, like in your opponent's third or in the middle of the pitch,
04:31 you are then really incisive, able to create chances out of that turnover.
04:35 And we saw that in the Spurs game.
04:36 Like Man United were able to win the ball back in these areas on occasion,
04:40 and they did get a couple of chances out of it.
04:42 But it's difficult to say that they were particularly incisive with it.
04:46 They weren't ruthless. They weren't hitting that killer ball early.
04:49 By case in point, here's an excellent start that Opta have got at the minute.
04:51 Man United currently lead the league in terms of the number of high turnovers they've been able to create.
04:57 They are pressing teams really well in this area of the pitch.
05:00 And they also lead the league in terms of the number of shots they've been able to create from a high turnover,
05:05 which means that's clearly the plan and it's working reasonably well.
05:08 But they haven't yet scored one single goal from doing that,
05:12 which means that either the finishing's not great, something that will fix when Hoyland comes into the side,
05:16 they hope, or the chances they're making just aren't that good.
05:20 Like it really, it really is something to be literally top of the league in the thing you are trying to do,
05:26 and literally be bottom of the league for how effective the thing you're trying to do is.
05:32 That's football, baby!
05:33 Man United's other problem though, indeed they're far bigger, more glaring, and much funnier to fans of every other club in the world problem,
05:41 is that when they lose the ball, they're about as open as Will Smith's marriage.
05:45 We saw time and again against Wolves and Tottenham, this policy of pushing for high turnovers with both Mount and Fernandes,
05:51 left this huge glaring gap between them and Casemiro,
05:55 and all these other teams who've got these players who like to get on the ball and run in counter-attack situations,
06:00 was leaving him embarrassingly exposed.
06:02 Now when the defence as a whole pushed up against Wolves, because they were at home, they were far less afraid of them,
06:07 this left all this space in behind that they kept getting into, and they should have scored repeatedly from it.
06:13 Obviously having learned that lesson against Spurs, they sat a little bit deeper, trying not to leave as glaring a hole,
06:19 but that just left this gap again, and Casemiro kept getting dribbled past by Maddison.
06:23 What they tried to do to combat this was to stay actually a little bit more compact, trying to deny the space in the middle,
06:28 but that's exactly where Spurs' goal came from, because all of this room on the right-hand side was just filled by players who can do things with it.
06:36 And again, as we discussed in the other video, the only way to protect against this, the only way to stop this being a major problem,
06:42 is to be super, super intense in every single thing you do.
06:47 Because over the course of a game, you are going to press the opposition, you're all going to crowd around it and get drawn into one area of the pitch,
06:54 and you're not going to win the ball, and Premier League teams will occasionally wriggle out from this and get an attack going with the space you have invited them to do so in.
07:02 But the thing is, unless they've got one immediate, highly accurate killer pass that's going to take everyone out of the equation,
07:08 players still have to run and have to travel, and if you are determined to match them in doing this, you'll kind of get away with it.
07:15 But Man Utd were only doing that on and off across the game.
07:18 Like, sometimes they would be really alert to it, they would match Tottenham's runs, they would match them for intensity,
07:23 but as the game went on, they started doing that less and less, which meant the space they were being left was free to be played in.
07:29 And does that sound to you, my friends, like something a player who did this would ever allow to happen?
07:36 And one other very important stat from that World Cup is that Amrobac covered the most distance on the pitch of any single player in that tournament.
07:46 So you can't accuse him of lack of intensity, of lack of running, he will go anywhere, chase anybody down, if that is a job he's being given.
07:53 So if we just really quickly look at Man Utd's system currently so far, that's obviously Casemiro, we've got Fernandes and Mount,
07:59 and the three attacking players, they're going to change as people come back to fitness.
08:03 But these three in the middle here, on paper it's a 4-3-3, with Casemiro as the single pivot,
08:07 but obviously occasionally, over the course of the game, Fernandes will move into the middle and it winds up being a 4-2-3-1.
08:13 Now this is a system that works great for every single player in it, except Mason Mount.
08:19 Now if you're a Man Utd fan and you still don't really get the Mount thing, he's been rubbish,
08:23 like trust me, if you watch him over time, you'll start to see why Ten Hag is so big on him.
08:27 Genuinely, if you're watching a Man Utd game and you can't see what Mount's doing, stop watching the ball.
08:32 Just watch him whenever he's on screen and you'll see the movement he makes and how he reads space,
08:37 and how that stat about how good Man Utd have been at turnovers, he's so important to that.
08:42 Whether he's the one winning the ball back or not, he closes down the areas, he shuts off passing angles, he's a reason that's happening.
08:48 But when they get into this formation, this is not really where he wants to be, he's not really a deep player.
08:53 He does carry it, but not brilliantly, he does win the ball back, but not brilliantly.
08:57 He wants to be floating around in these inside channels, cutting off passing lanes and getting on the ball here.
09:02 But Amrabat in this scenario does want to do these things, he does want to get on the ball in deep areas,
09:07 and as we've seen, hit those long, medium passes to the flanks or the players in behind.
09:11 He does want to progress the ball that way, and he can of course cover all the space in that area and win the ball back, if that's what you want him to do.
09:18 But the thing is, you swap him out for Casemiro instead, and all of a sudden,
09:21 Mount can sort of float and be in these positions he wants to be in, because Amrabat will cover across and be around this space a lot better than Casemiro will.
09:31 Not because he's a better defender, he's not really, in terms of how he wins the ball back and his technique and all that,
09:35 but his engine and his distance covered and his determination will see him across the pitch more than Casemiro will.
09:42 And that's why at the start I said that there are two, that's four, there are two Amrabats that exist,
09:47 because one is the perfect foil to Casemiro, he'll allow that midfield to be more expressive and to be more incisive,
09:53 and the other one's a perfect foil to Mount, because he'll allow him to be more expressive and play further forward,
09:58 and he'll do all the dirty work behind him instead.
10:00 The way to think about Amrabat, right, is that he's kind of like a footballing vape.
10:05 Like, he's still fiery and dangerous and ultimately quite bad for you, but he's also very sleek and elegant,
10:12 and he looks good doing what he's supposed to be doing, so...
10:15 I mean, don't smoke, obviously, but just as an image.
10:17 And also, whisper it, Man United fans, but if you don't go out and get him, if you don't spend the money on getting him,
10:24 Liverpool probably will, and you don't want that.
10:29 You really don't. He profiles about as close to Fabinho as any player who's ever existed, so you don't want them to have that.
10:38 You want to have that.
10:39 Look, so the bottom line here is that Amrabat is a very dynamic and very versatile midfielder,
10:44 but all the things that give him that versatility and that dynamism, dynamism?
10:50 Dy- the dy- the whatever, are the specific problems, the holds that Man United currently have in their game.
10:57 So it's not so much that he's like a Swiss Army knife, it's more that he's like...
11:01 A few moments later...
11:06 Nope. Haven't got one for that. Can't think of anything.
11:09 Here's that Mbappe tackle.
11:11 Anyway, so Manchester United fans, if you did enjoy that video, please do let us know in the comments below.
11:15 Would you like to see Amrabat as another player you'd much prefer they got instead,
11:18 or is everything just fine? Is it all going to work out in the end?
11:21 All comments appreciated.
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11:38 Thank you ever, ever so much. The brand new 442, my favourite one we've ever done,
11:43 for obvious reasons, is in stores now.
11:46 But until next time, thank you very much for watching.
11:47 I've, of course, been Adam Cleary. Get me on Twitter, Instagram, threads, or x, whatever they're calling it,
11:51 @adamcleary, C-L-E-R-Y, 442, socials are in the corner.
11:55 And wow, that was a long outro, wasn't it?
11:58 Goodbye.