The Genius Way Man United Beat Man City For The FA Cup
Despite being written off after a disappointing season, Manchester United didn't just beat City in the FA Cup final, they did so brilliantly. And while his time in at the helm might soon be brought to an end, it was a tactical masterplan from Erik Ten Hag that got the better of Pep Guardiola at seemingly every turn. Adam Clery takes a look at the Dutchman's ingenuity and explains how he pulled off one of the shocks of the season.
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00:00 Ladies and gentlemen, my name is of course Adam Cleary, you are watching the 442 FA Cup
00:08 Roundup video and Manchester United, this Manchester United, have just gone and got
00:14 possibly their biggest victory in years. And despite all the evidence to the contrary this
00:20 season, it is only fair to say that in this match, Eric Ten Hag was a genius.
00:26 Alright, okay, hello there chums, how's it going? Just want to quickly say before we
00:32 start that I was dreading doing this video. When it incredibly unfairly leaked in the
00:37 run up to this game that Man United were going to bin Ten Hag regardless of the outcome,
00:42 I was like, oh great, now I've got to give him one more kicking on his way out, how fun.
00:47 But that is not what we are going to be doing today, is it? Because for the first time in
00:51 a really big game this season, he got it absolutely spot on and his team executed a brilliant
00:57 plan almost to perfection. And that plan was this, right, the team sheets came out and
01:02 they had Man United in this 4-3-3 that we've pretty much seen them in all season. But from
01:06 the first few minutes it was immediately apparent that's not what the system was going to be
01:10 at all. They were actually set up in this really deep, really compact, sort of 4-2-4
01:15 or 4-triple-2, whatever you want to call it. And Ten Hag's game plan was fairly simple,
01:19 they were going to sacrifice certain areas of the pitch to completely stop City in areas
01:24 they deemed to be more important, specifically the very central part of their own half. And
01:29 throughout that first half, they looked really good for doing this. You can see here in just
01:33 the opening exchanges, City want to be playing that ball through the middle, but Man United
01:37 have completely shut it down. They've got no options in that area. But the thing is,
01:42 everybody knows by now that that's how you play against City. You shut off that central
01:45 area, you don't let them get on the ball in the areas where they can really, really hurt
01:49 you. That's not what was clever about what Ten Hag did. Because City come up against
01:54 this kind of problem all the time and they've got baked in solutions in their starting XI
01:58 for what to do when plan A isn't working. But what Ten Hag did in this match was he
02:03 correctly predicted how Man City would try and adapt to their game plan and built in
02:08 solutions to the Man United side to take advantage of that. So how did it work? Well, first of
02:12 all, this was not really Man City shape either. They were listed as a 4-2-3-1 with Foden on
02:17 the left. But if we look at his heat map from the game, he had no interest in being in this
02:21 wide space. Part of the way this system works is he drifts all the way into the centre to
02:25 become a second number 10 with Kevin De Bruyne. Silva stays out on that side to sort of stretch
02:30 this channel, which can occasionally allow De Bruyne or Haaland to drop into it. And
02:33 then Vardyal, he pushes all the way up and that gives them this attacking front five.
02:37 So Man United's game plan, and the reason they didn't start with the centre forward,
02:40 was it allowed Bruno Fernandes and McTominay to just sit on both Rodri and Kovacic. Because
02:45 Man City are going to want to play through the centre, they need to get the ball to these
02:48 two to make things happen. So they shut that option off entirely. And they were both very
02:53 disciplined with this, but not passive because they did occasionally try and shut down one
02:57 of the centre backs when they had the ball, but they only did so if they could leave their
03:01 actual player in what's known as their sort of cover shadow or shadow cover to shut them
03:05 off as a pass. And if they didn't get the ball back straight away, rather than chasing
03:08 it around, they would just drop back to where they were meant to be. And you can see that
03:12 very quickly here, like Fernandes thinks he's got a chance of getting the ball back in an
03:16 incredibly advantageous position to do so. But once that goes, rather than just getting
03:21 a rush of blood and carrying on that press, he just takes a second, gets his breath back
03:25 and goes back to where he's meant to be. Now what Man City will often try and do in these
03:29 situations is they give Foden and De Bruyne the licence to then sort of float away from
03:33 this congested central area to get on the ball. Like Foden can go back out to the left,
03:37 De Bruyne as we've said, will try and get into that half space that Silva is leaving
03:40 for them. But because there was no centre forward, they had options. They had extra
03:45 men to play with. And that meant that both Amrabat and Maneu could stick to them like
03:49 curry stains on a white top. It didn't matter where they went laterally across the pitch,
03:54 they would follow them around. And if they went into sort of these areas where nobody
03:57 was sort of marking them, they would pass them off to Garnaccio and Rashford. And the
04:00 execution of this on an individual level by Man United was just so like disciplined. You
04:05 can see Rashford here having been keeping an eye on one of them, passing him back off
04:09 to Maneu when he comes into the central area again. But again, just like Man City come
04:13 up against this sort of low block all the time, they are used to having their best players
04:17 man marked and they have a solution in this system designed to deal with that. And that
04:21 solution tends to be that Bernardo Silva, who I'll just say here, would just completely
04:25 vacate that right hand side and come and join in in the three here. And that not only gives
04:31 them much better passing angles in this sort of build up area of the pitch, but it also
04:35 means that they both outnumber these two players three to two and then the midfield five to
04:40 four. And you don't really need me to tell you that one of the reasons Man City win back
04:44 to back to back to back Premier League titles is because this is incredibly effective. But
04:49 again, because it is something they regularly do, it's something that Ten Hag predicted
04:53 and had a plan for. Now, if we look at the average positions of this Man United team
04:57 in the game, you can see these sort of six players all nicely disciplined through the
05:01 centre of the pitch. But I want you to look at Rashford and Garnaccio. And you've got
05:05 to remember, this shows you the average positions, right? Not where they specifically found themselves
05:09 most often, but where all their work averages out on the pitch. And bear in mind, they were
05:14 trying to provide all the width they were trying to get in behind City down the flanks.
05:17 The fact that they come out so narrow in that average is because they were tucking all the
05:22 way in into this central area to get that numbers game back. And I mean, you can count,
05:28 can't you? So you can see straight away this 3v2 advantage for Man City is now a 4v3 advantage
05:34 for Man United. And the whole story of that first half, and honestly I could show you
05:38 10 separate clips all showing you the same thing here, was Man City having the ball in
05:43 this central area, but having no way through Manchester United. If we just stop one of
05:48 them here, for example, and redirect what our eyes are looking at, you will see that
05:52 the consequence of being so compact and difficult to break down in the middle means that the
05:56 wide spaces are about as well covered as the old Trafford roof. And I mean, let's face
06:01 it, leaving Vardial on the left and Kyle Walker here on the right, 1v1 with Man United's full
06:07 backs is a pretty big gamble, but Ten Hag put his trust in both Dalot and Wan-Bissaka.
06:15 And it largely paid off because while the pair of them are excellent 1v1 defenders,
06:18 both going forward and back the way, they're not the kind of players who are likely to
06:23 make something happen all on their own. They're not going to go past the opposition defender.
06:27 And you've got to remember as well, even if they try to do that, that's a big risk for
06:30 City because if they lose the ball, there's so much space behind them and they know the
06:34 players they're supposed to be marking are in there somewhere. So that was the game plan
06:39 in so much as stopping Man City winning this game. And just to show you how effective it
06:43 was, this is the pass map for Kevin De Bruyne across the whole match, right? You can just
06:47 see he's nowhere near able to get on the ball as much as he would like to. And even when
06:52 he does, he's not able to pass it forward or do anything sort of effective with it.
06:56 And actually I was watching this in the pub and when Guardiola subbed De Bruyne off like
07:01 around the hour, just before the hour, there was like a noise of like shock and surprise
07:06 went round. People couldn't believe he was taking him off. But I'll just show you every
07:10 pass De Bruyne made in that second half. And I've not, I've not done this wrong. I've not
07:15 made a mistake here. Between the second half starting and De Bruyne getting subbed off,
07:20 he completed one pass, one pass. In fact, I'll just show you Foden's as well, because
07:25 he was probably Man City's best player, looked the most likely to make something happen.
07:29 But even him getting on the ball more still wasn't doing anything great with it. There's
07:33 a few here that are going into a dangerous area, but look how many of them are sideways
07:38 or in some cases, even just backwards. So it was the man marking job being done on him
07:42 when he was receiving the ball, it was normally facing the opposite way because he couldn't
07:46 get turned. He just had to give it back to whoever gave it to him in the first place.
07:49 The thing is, right, this is just how you stop Man City from winning the FA Cup final,
07:54 right? But we're not, we're not here to talk about Man City not winning the FA Cup final.
07:59 We're here to talk about Man United winning it and winning it well. And this is why, like,
08:04 honestly, I'm quite happy to throw the genius label around in this video, because you can
08:08 have all the answers to the questions Man City are going to ask you. That's all well
08:13 and good, but you've still got to use that and turn it into a way to have a threat of
08:17 your own. And this visibly very defensive structure from Man United was actually designed
08:23 to give them the best possible chance going the other way as well. This is from literally
08:28 the opening seconds of the match. Man United able to turn the ball over to sloppy pass
08:32 and just look how quickly Marcus Rashford knows he's going to get into that space behind
08:37 Kyle Walker. And it happened a couple of times in the opening exchanges, Rashford getting
08:41 into that space behind Walker, Man United trying to find him with a killer ball over
08:46 the top. It's just that Kyle Walker's whole thing is that he's this brilliant recovery
08:50 1v1 defender. So Man United didn't get anything from it. However, on the other side of the
08:56 pitch, it was a slightly different story. Man United with their shape working very well,
09:01 turn the ball over and Amrabat lays the ball off to Dalot. And if we just stop it right
09:06 here, you will see the first thing he does is look up to see if that pass into Garnaccio
09:12 behind the defence is on. There is not one single thought in his head about returning
09:17 that ball to Amrabat or turning around and giving it to the defender or the goalkeeper.
09:22 Plan A1 is to get it anywhere you can and see if you can hit this space. And he does.
09:29 And yes, of course, what follows is a catastrophic defensive mistake from Manchester City, but
09:32 it comes about specifically because this is what Man United are trying to do. It's a goal
09:37 born out of chaos, but a specific type of chaos they were looking to create. Bardiol's
09:42 got to run back towards his own goal, which he didn't really want to do. And because there's
09:46 so much room behind, Ortega is sort of forced to do something. He's got to come out and
09:51 address it somehow. And they're just getting a bit of a model and they get the first goal.
09:55 Like they wanted that to happen specifically. It's not like, look. And you saw it again
09:59 with the offside goal. Man United get the ball back. They look up to see if that ball
10:02 to Garnaccio is on. It is. And while yes, it was ultimately given offside, just look
10:08 at how much space him and Rashford have behind both the City fullbacks. Look at the distance
10:14 between them. They were forcing Man City to commit both of these players to these wide
10:18 areas because it was the only place on the pitch there was any space to do anything. And
10:22 then once they turned the ball over, they were coming out of this central area where
10:25 they were stopping the through passes, going back out wide and becoming the main attacking
10:30 threat. And the second goal is rightly going to be remembered for that beautiful pass from
10:34 Bruno Fernandes and the fact that Kobe Meunier became the first teenager to score in an FA
10:40 Cup final since Garnaccio had done it 10 minutes earlier. But once again, it is this play that
10:47 made it happen. Man United get the ball back and we'll just highlight where Walker and
10:51 Vardial are. And wouldn't you know it, they've pushed way up beyond the other central defenders.
10:56 When it gets out to Rashford, this ball across the pitch on his weaker foot is just not
11:00 on in a million years. But because Garnaccio has that room, it's worth a try, isn't it?
11:05 And he executes it perfectly. And from there, they're up the other end of the pitch. And
11:09 I did weirdly see a couple of commentators being like, oh, City was so static in their
11:13 defending here. They were just totally motionless. But if you just look at this bit here, it's
11:18 actually a 4v3 counterattack that's just about to enter the box. Like these two can't do
11:24 anything. They've got their men, but John Stones turns his head, sees he's got two.
11:28 And the only sensible thing you can do in that situation is not over commit to either
11:32 of them either way. Just Man United have expertly manufactured that situation. And Kyle Walker,
11:38 as quick as he is, is coming from too high up the pitch to get back to Kobe Meunier in
11:42 time, which gives him the chance to finish. And finish he does. And obviously the second
11:46 half was a different story entirely. Guardiola did address this quite well with his changes,
11:51 specifically making sure it was Jeremy Doku in this position instead of Vardial. Because
11:55 all the will in the world, he's not going to go past Wan-Bisaka. He's not going to make
11:59 things happen on his own. But Jeremy Doku is exactly that guy. Like if that is where
12:04 a team is leaving you the space, that is the man you want attacking it. And even though
12:07 they lost the game, that was pretty effective. Like you saw that play out several times in
12:11 the second half. They couldn't leave Doku one on one. So it was pulling other players
12:15 out of this central block, which opened up a bit more room, allowed City to make better
12:20 chances. They had the goal, obviously. Then they had two that they absolutely should have
12:24 put away. I think Harland hit the stanchion between the post and the bar. Like on another
12:29 day, those changes may have brought this game back. But the fact is Man United had done
12:34 all the hard work in the first half. They just needed to hang on. In fact, no, it's
12:39 not right to say they did all the hard work in the first half. From a system point of
12:43 view, they'd done all the hard work. But in the second half, it became about individual
12:48 hard work. Because once they'd sort of lost the advantage of being perfectly set up to
12:52 stop City, then you're relying on the players individually to do their jobs, to be accountable,
12:57 to make up for that shortfall. And that's just something we haven't seen from Man United
13:02 this season. Now, whether that's because of the injuries or whatever you want to put it
13:05 down to, it just hasn't been there. But yesterday, across the entire XI, it was. Like individual
13:11 mistakes have been such a huge thing for Man United. And there just weren't any in the
13:16 second half. Every single player did their job. Every single player contributed to the
13:21 cause. They all collectively kept forcing Manchester City out of the areas they wanted
13:25 to be in and to do things they didn't want to do. When a team is compact and low blocking,
13:30 crossing suddenly becomes a big thing. Because the most creative thing you can do in the
13:34 space being offered. Just look at City's successful crosses in that second half. Rubbish. I mean,
13:41 they're in the box, sure, but you can't score from any of the positions that are getting
13:45 the ball here. And just one final graphical overlay from City's perspective here, right?
13:49 Because inevitably, he's now going to become part of the post-mortem of all this, right?
13:53 So every touch, not pass, every touch of the ball, Erling Haaland had in the whole game.
13:59 There's like three, three in the box. Two of them are shot and all the rest of them
14:04 are just congregated all the way out here where Man United will not give a s*** about
14:09 him. And so good, man for man, were Manchester United that it becomes really difficult to
14:14 start picking out individuals and saying, oh, look what they did. And wasn't this a
14:17 great game? Like Amrabat, I thought was fantastic. Neymou just is on another level. Both the
14:22 wide players were so good. The centre-back pairing, I think only like the third or fourth
14:26 time they've been able to use that pairing this season was brilliant. But the one player
14:31 I do want to pick out here is Aaron Wan-Bissaka because this is where Man City were targeting
14:36 Manchester United. This is where they thought they were going to get some joy. And they
14:40 did. It's where the goal came from. But if you just look at all of his defensive contribution
14:44 across this game, tackles, blocks, interceptions, recoveries, it was almost a perfect defensive
14:50 full-back performance in a cup final. And that is what it takes to beat a team as good
14:56 as Manchester City in a cup final. Like you have to set up in the perfect way to give
15:01 you a chance of going out and getting something. Then you need to trust that your players will
15:07 f***ing go out and get you something. And they did. They went out and got this specifically.
15:13 And it's incredibly, incredibly shiny. And now of course, it does beg the question about
15:17 Eric Ten Hag's suitability to be Manchester United manager. Like if this was the first
15:21 game under a new reign at the club, you'd be like, wow, this is night and day from how
15:26 they were playing across the last two years. So it's whether or not a performance this
15:29 complete and this good with this much buy-in from your squad, you know, negates how in
15:35 Ten Hag's own words, crap the entire season has been. And we will obviously when they
15:41 make a decision either way, do a full video about that. But while I would say this is
15:45 just an unbelievable performance, Manchester United aren't a team whose overall strategy
15:52 across the season will see them having 27% of the ball. But in the here and now in this
15:58 one game, which is all that matters when it's a cup final, it was almost faultless. It was
16:03 excellent. It was as well as I have seen them play in a very long time. And I am happy,
16:08 genuinely delighted after all the kickings I've had to give him on this channel to say
16:12 that Eric Ten Hag, this mate was genius. So that is it for the domestic season in this
16:19 His Majesty's Barclays Premier League. If you have enjoyed the video, please do. Man
16:23 United fans, just celebrate in the comments. I haven't even got a good question for you.
16:27 Just tell me how good that felt. I'll enjoy reading all of that. And of course, we will
16:31 have way more Man United content over the summer and next season. So please do subscribe
16:35 to us here on 442. We don't want to miss any of that. And of course, other clubs as well.
16:39 Maybe just watching this as a casual bystander, your club will be covered. Almost certainly.
16:44 Unless it's like, I don't know. Carlisle. In the meantime, though, you can grab me across
16:50 all of the socials at Adam KVC, LERY442, which are in the corner of the video. The latest
16:54 issue of the magazine, which I'm going to catch first time. Ta-da is the Euros issue.
16:58 You can get that now from all good retailers and the crap ones. We don't discriminate.
17:03 And yes, that's it. Congratulations to Manchester United and in particular to Eric Ten Haag.
17:09 What a day that was for you. Goodbye.