Why Man United Need To Stick With Andre Onana
Why Man United Need To Stick With Andre Onana
Transcript
00:00 [DING]
00:02 Alright, so when either I or anybody else talks about
00:04 Onana being worth it for Man United,
00:07 what do we actually mean by that?
00:08 Well, in short, for Eric Ten Hag to play the way Eric Ten Hag wants to play,
00:13 he needs to have a goalkeeper who can do the kind of things that Andre Onana can do.
00:17 Last season, he did not.
00:18 He had David De Gea, and thus they couldn't play like this.
00:21 Ten Hag effectively wants six players involved in the build-up phase.
00:24 That's why last season you saw Manchester United far more commonly in a 4-2-3-1.
00:29 These six players here, they were responsible for receiving the ball out of the back,
00:34 circulating it, inviting the opposition press on,
00:37 and then playing the ball through those lines into the attacking players.
00:40 They did not want David De Gea particularly involved in any of that.
00:44 If they could help it, they had to do it all themselves.
00:46 And if it did go back to him, he would just pump it long
00:49 and they would try and do something else entirely.
00:51 And the main consequence of this is that the defence has to play about five or ten yards
00:56 further back than they would ideally like to,
00:59 because they can't trust De Gea to take any sort of command in this area.
01:03 That's where they needed to be.
01:04 And straightaway, you can see there's now a huge disconnect between the attacking players.
01:07 So naturally, they have to play about five or ten yards further back,
01:11 and your whole team is nowhere near as far up the pitch as you would like them to be.
01:14 So you go out in the summer, you get a goalkeeper like Onana,
01:17 who you can trust with the ball, and he's a feet who does understand the build-up
01:21 and inviting the press on and has the ability to break the lines himself with his own passes.
01:26 And straightaway, he can now be playing roughly on this line.
01:29 So your defence, they can all shuffle up.
01:32 Your attackers, they can all shuffle up.
01:34 Man United can play ten yards, fifteen yards further up the pitch when they are building up.
01:40 And more importantly, because it's only six players you want doing this,
01:44 you can have two number eights, you can play a 4-3-3, you can have an extra attacker.
01:49 And the consequence of this is because you are now further up the pitch
01:52 and you have more bodies committed.
01:54 The second part of Eric Ten Hag's game plan is once you have broken the lines with this build-up,
01:59 the entire team then pushes up.
02:01 You play incredibly high so that when you do lose the ball in your opponent's half,
02:06 you can turn the ball over, you can get on them a lot quicker and a lot easier.
02:11 Which means you also need a goalkeeper who's not just comfortable playing here,
02:14 but is going to be comfortable playing all the way up here.
02:17 Either mopping up balls over the top as the opposition panics and humps it along to get away,
02:22 or when you are recircling the ball yourself, there being another option somewhere in this area.
02:27 And that was the thinking behind Andre Onana because that is just what he was doing at Ajax
02:32 and what he was doing against Inter Milan.
02:33 If you watched our video in the summer looking at why they so desperately wanted him,
02:37 we had a full of little clips of him doing little pirouettes here, going past defenders there,
02:42 just playing his football, living his best life about halfway in his own half.
02:48 And to an extent, this has sort of worked.
02:53 Like, you don't see this 4-3-3 every single week, but you do see it.
02:57 And you don't necessarily see this open, free-flowing, really dangerous, suffocating,
03:02 high up attacking football all the time, but you do sort of see it.
03:07 Like, here is a stat that may surprise you.
03:09 Manchester United are currently third in the league for the total number of high turnovers,
03:14 for the amount of times they've won the ball back in the opposition's third.
03:17 Their one high turnover this season behind Ange Ball at Tottenham,
03:22 which is a system almost specifically designed to turn the ball over high up the pitch.
03:26 And that is undeniably because of Onana's influence on this team.
03:30 Like, Man United are so much better positioned to win the ball in this part of the pitch
03:34 because A) they play so much further up because their goalkeeper enables them to do that,
03:38 and B) they've got an extra player in this part of the pitch compared to last year
03:42 because their goalkeeper is the one leading the build-up.
03:45 So that holding midfielder that would have been there is now one of the eight that is there.
03:49 Direct attacks as well, which is something we talked about earlier in the week.
03:53 Basically, any sort of attacking sequence that starts in your build-up phase,
03:57 so you're knocking it about, but then you get it quickly into the opposition's half,
04:00 and then you either get a shot away or you get a touch in the box.
04:03 Basically, you manage to do something from here that ends up here.
04:07 They are fourth in the league for that, which is really, really good.
04:10 Like, it's a stylistic thing.
04:11 Not every team wants to attack that way.
04:14 They sit here, like, right at the bottom of that stack because it's just not their style.
04:17 They want to pass it around a lot more, but the teams that do really want to go for the jugular,
04:22 that's how they play, and Man Utd are one of those teams,
04:24 and they're doing really well at doing that.
04:27 Doing really well at doing it. Good English.
04:28 And the thing is, even using the Galatasaray game as an example,
04:32 which is somewhere you would say he had an absolute nightmare,
04:34 Onana was contributing really positively and really well to Manchester United's attacking play.
04:40 And if you've only seen the highlights of this game, you might have missed this
04:42 because you've got to rewind ever so slightly further than the clips were showing you,
04:46 but Onana is directly responsible for two of Manchester United's goals.
04:51 Two of the goals they scored, I should clarify.
04:53 Obviously, he was also responsible for two of the goals.
04:55 His crisp-pocket hands just gently ushered into the back of the net.
04:59 Anyway, watch this.
05:00 For the first goal, they are playing it around the back,
05:02 and while they are a lot deeper than they would probably like to be,
05:05 you can see here Eric Ten Hagy's got that six-player setup with one midfield pivot,
05:10 and Onana in there.
05:11 Galatasaray are squeezing and squeezing,
05:13 and eventually it comes back to Onana,
05:15 who flights a really, really nice ball into McTominay in the midfield.
05:20 And from there, they beat the press, they get turned,
05:22 they get runners off the ball, they start the overload, and they score the goal.
05:25 Again, for the third goal, Galatasaray are really squeezing them.
05:29 They're pushing right up, they're going man for man.
05:31 And under incredible pressure,
05:33 Onana plays this beautiful ball from his own six-yard box down into one of the channels.
05:39 They get a throw-in off that reset and get the third goal.
05:42 But this 30-second passage of play
05:44 encapsulates every single reason why they bought Onana.
05:47 First of all, the pass, under pressure from the defender,
05:49 and accurately finding a teammate in space.
05:52 And then, all of about 10 seconds late,
05:53 they're beating the Manchester United player at the very base of the build-up phase.
05:58 And you can see straight away, because they brought him into play,
06:01 Galatasaray all of a sudden aren't quite sure how to press.
06:04 They kind of go all over the place.
06:05 They get really stretched, and that creates the space.
06:09 For this brilliant interchange between the three players here,
06:12 Andre Onana with the ball at his feet,
06:14 and four passes later, it's in the back of the net.
06:18 And that is why Andre Onana is worth it to Manchester United.
06:24 But this is why he's not.
06:27 So this is Andre Onana's FB ref profile in the Premier League this season.
06:32 Now, just to explain everything you're looking at here,
06:34 this little number down the middle, that's how many times in 90 minutes that's happening.
06:38 And the green bar basically indicates how he ranks
06:40 compared to all the other goalkeepers in the league.
06:43 Basically, the larger it is, the greener it is,
06:45 the higher this number is, the better he's doing.
06:47 And just to explain the stuff he's scoring really low on,
06:49 like, it's stuff he should be scoring really low on,
06:52 like goal kicks and average length of goal kicks.
06:54 He doesn't really take them, he plays that from the back.
06:56 And when he does, he tries to find players in the channels rather than humping it long.
06:59 So that's just his style of play.
07:01 That's not a negative, that's just a reflection of what he's doing.
07:04 It's the same with crosses stopped and the number of actions outside the penalty area.
07:08 Like, Man United are one of the top teams,
07:10 so he doesn't face that many crosses in because they've got a lot of the ball.
07:13 He doesn't need to do too much per 90 minutes outside of the penalty area.
07:16 Like, those aren't stats you would ever really score a keeper at a top club on.
07:20 But what you would score them on is the number of goals they concede,
07:23 and their save percentage, and their clean sheet percentage,
07:26 and their average distance of the actions they're capable of taking.
07:30 And all of those, Onana's having a great season.
07:33 78.8% save percentage. There is only Alisson in the Premier League right now
07:39 who's saved a higher percentage of shots he's faced.
07:42 So purely as a shot stopper, statistically speaking,
07:45 Onana's been the second best keeper in the Premier League this season.
07:49 And what were we saying before about Man United wanting to play
07:51 five or ten yards further up the pitch?
07:53 The average distance of the defensive actions Andre Onana is taking,
07:58 I'll just bring up David De Gea's stats from last season,
08:01 is pretty much five yards further up the pitch than his was.
08:04 He's doing exactly what Ten Hag wants to do,
08:09 and he's doing it really, really well.
08:11 Ha ha!
08:12 But this is the exact same set of statistics for Andre Onana
08:18 in the Champions League this season.
08:20 It is almost the exact opposite set of stats.
08:23 Everything he's doing well in the Premier League,
08:26 he is genuinely a liability for in the Champions League.
08:30 His save percentage puts him in the bottom third of the entire competition.
08:33 And this one stat at the top here,
08:36 which is going to take a little bit of explaining,
08:38 that is, and if you just roll your eyes at this, I completely understand,
08:41 that is post-shot xG, so the value of the chance after it's been taken,
08:46 basically what is the probability a goalkeeper should save that,
08:49 minus the amount of goals he's conceded.
08:52 And from that number, when you calculate it over 90 minutes
08:55 and divide it by all the number of games,
08:56 you should either get a positive number or a negative number.
09:00 If you get a positive number, then great,
09:01 that means over the course of the season,
09:03 the team should have been expected to concede a certain number of goals
09:06 based on the chances that were had against them,
09:08 but they didn't, because you were in goal,
09:10 and that's really great, and you stopped all that from happening.
09:12 But if you get a negative number, it's quite the opposite.
09:15 It means that the team should have conceded a certain number of goals
09:18 based on the quality of the chances against them,
09:20 but they didn't, they conceded more than that,
09:22 because you were in goal, and you should have saved some of those.
09:26 And in the Premier League, Onana's number is positive.
09:28 In fact, it's one of the most positive numbers in the Premier League.
09:31 But in the Champions League, Onana's number is negative.
09:34 In fact, it's one of the most negative numbers in the Champions League.
09:38 And I know sometimes when people talk about xG
09:40 and all this really deep statistical stuff,
09:41 it just doesn't really pass the eye test, does it?
09:44 You can sort of see the number,
09:45 but it's not really borne out when you're watching the game.
09:47 But I would argue, if you watch those two free kicks he conceded,
09:52 you can certainly see where that negative number comes from.
09:55 Worst of all, although what I'm going to say,
09:57 of course, not worse than throwing two goals into your own net,
10:00 but still bad from Eric ten Haag's perspective, will be this.
10:04 The average distance of the actions he's taking is 18 yards in the Premier League.
10:09 It's on average, it's outside the box.
10:11 And in the Champions League, on average, it's like just outside the six yard box.
10:17 He is not being able to comfortably come and do Andre Onana things in that competition.
10:23 Now, of course, there are reasons for this happening.
10:25 It's not just purely Andre Onana.
10:28 Manchester United, when you watch them in the Champions League,
10:30 seem almost incapable of controlling a game,
10:34 of displaying any kind of game management that makes it more chaotic.
10:37 And if you are yourself quite a chaotic goalkeeper,
10:40 then the lens, the spotlight is going to fall on you considerably more
10:44 than it's falling on everybody else.
10:45 I'm not saying it's Onana's fault,
10:47 but it is certainly happening very near him.
10:50 Like, I know Onana is going to be the one quite rightly getting all the headlines for that game,
10:54 but you have to look at the performance of Bruno Fernandes at exactly the same time.
10:58 Like, those are diabolically bad free kicks to concede,
11:01 but they're also two really stupid free kicks to give away.
11:05 And your captain did both of those.
11:07 But the first one in particular, you've just gone 2-0 up.
11:10 You've taken the sting out of the crowd.
11:12 You've quieted all that down.
11:13 You've got this big lead.
11:15 Now, Galatasaray are going to be really concerned about how high they're pressing you.
11:18 And you somehow get caught out with both your number eights in the box in this situation.
11:23 You leave your opponents with this just yawning chasm to play their football in.
11:28 And after they've let them run the entire length of the pitch,
11:31 Fernandes finally fouls one of them on the edge of the box
11:33 and immediately starts giving out and complaining to all of his teammates.
11:38 That is not a football team in control of that situation.
11:42 So you can see this is not a team that really has a handle on what's going on.
11:47 And in the Champions League, where every game is so pressurised,
11:50 where every team is so desperate to win,
11:53 they know any single defeat isn't just a, "Oh, we're playing Man United.
11:57 We'll write it off. We'll go again next week."
11:58 As you might occasionally get in the prem,
12:00 they know they've got to go at them and they've got to really try and rattle them.
12:04 And they've proved you can rattle them.
12:07 And when they are rattled, they're not even just rattled, they completely implode.
12:12 Rob Dawson from ESPN bringing up the frankly mind-boggling statistic
12:16 that in the Champions League this season,
12:17 they've conceded two in four minutes against Bayern,
12:20 two in four minutes against Copenhagen,
12:23 two in 10 minutes versus Galatasaray at home,
12:25 and two in nine minutes versus Galatasaray away.
12:28 Now, granted, your goalkeeper acting like a toy that's just heard the words,
12:31 "Andy's coming" at free kicks doesn't help that fact,
12:35 but it certainly doesn't cause it either.
12:37 So anyway, yes, what was the question? Is Andre Onana worth it?
12:41 Well, to Eric Ten Hag, yes.
12:43 Yes, he definitely is because he is the one thing
12:46 that is currently enabling you to play the way you want to play.
12:50 You're having great attacking returns.
12:51 He is a major, major reason for that, but you have other issues.
12:55 You have structural issues. You have mentality issues.
12:58 You can't seem to wrap your heads around different states of the game.
13:02 And he, the problems he is having are a symptom of that.
13:07 They are not the cause.
13:08 You take Andre Onana out of that team, goodbye, Andre,
13:11 and put somebody else in, you will have the same chaotic,
13:16 sort of wide open issues, except now, you just won't be as good going forward.
13:21 And yes, okay, maybe another goalkeeper would have saved those two free kicks.
13:24 Christ, I probably would have saved those two free kicks,
13:27 and I have zero knees and a heart condition, but did you watch it?
13:33 Galatasaray would have probably just found two other goals.
13:37 It was that wide open.
13:38 Anyway, I'm now off for a lie down and to pick that Subutiyo player up
13:41 before I stand on him in a pair of socks.
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14:00 But until next time, my friends, and until Saturday 8 o'clock,
14:05 where this just absolute mad pack of bastards
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14:11 I've been Adam Cleary, and I'll see you soon.
14:13 Goodbye, and good luck.