Why Manchester United still aren't an elite team

Manchester United are one of the biggest clubs in the world but they don't really play like it why is that in today's episode presented by stat head I'm joined by JJ Bull and John McKenzie so JJ some people hold ten har responsible for their underwhelming form is that fair well let's look at some of the numbers to work out whether he is good or not and whether they should keep him for example man united one of the biggest clubs in the world are currently a team fighting for sixth place in the league with a goal difference of zero and the underlying number suggest this should actually be minus 4 this is bad they've actually scored the same number of goals this season as luten that's a big drop off from third place last season when they actually looked half decent but they won The League Cup and reached the F Cup Final last season and they're in the FA Cup semifinal this season so that's good but they finished bottom of their Champions League group this season this is bad now the numbers get more bad if you dig in using stat head so if you look at this what you can do is go through the two seasons that t ha's been at United and what you see if you do that is that they are 17th out in the top five leagues for points per match that doesn't sound that bad really but it means they're basically the same as Aston Villa and Lazio and even worse again on stad you can see they're goal scored puts them 35th in the top five leagues for goal scored this is Manchester United we're talking about it is Manchester United we're talking about and what are some of their other issues well because they're man united you think they're a massive team so they should have have lots of the ball but they actually only have about 50 point 4% of possession which kind of tells you they're not really an attacking team nor a defensive one they're kind of in between they're a bit kind of hard to understand what they are and they can seeed an awful lot of shots and to get this good Eric tenh has spent roughly 380 million pound of real money to bring in players so that's what you get now if you look through lots of other stats and there are an awful lot more you'll find things that make them look far worse like underlying numbers especially you can do that by looking through um seasons on stat head for example and if you go to the link in the description well do you know what you'll find a person Iz discount that's correct and then you can look for things on stad yourself so you mentioned how much money they spent did they get any value for that expenditure well these are the players that they kind of have this is the squad that they have as you can see on the board now um and this is what ten Haag has built he's brought in these players he's brought in Mount and Martinez and Anthony and all these kind of lads here but one thing you should bear in mind when you look at man united this season is that these players the key players that they've signed have been missing for most of the Season M's been out injured martinz has been out injured Shaw has been out injured for most of the season as well rashford's been out of form casemiro's not been anywhere near his best uh varane's missed a lot of the the season then Anthony's also not been around for some of it as well so you're missing your key group of players so that's kind of inconsistent and ten Haag has had to adapt constantly throughout his Man United Career like his first two games in charge of the team um where I think he lost 2-1 to Brighton and he lost 4-0 to brenford and he was trying to play out from the back like trying to pass it with all these guys from the back but they were getting humiliated and turning over the ball and getting done in basically so he abandoned that style of play The Possession based thing he wanted to do and what's interesting about it to me is that ten haags had to adapt constantly but when he joined he wanted to play a certain way the kind of possession style of of play and he said that he didn't have the players to do that so he couldn't play the way he wanted to and so then he's transitioned naturally to more of a direct attacking kind of uh style of play so what you end up getting with man united now is that they'll play this kind of shape this is just a rough bunch of Players let's put Mayu winnings he's been great recently let put them in here so what you get the front three stay very high like this front three this and what they want to do is try and get the ball in behind the back line so that they can attack the space it's kind of traditional man united style of play lots of wing play lots of direct attacks and so when they win the ball they try and get forward as quickly as they can and so these guys can then attack but to do that you want to try and bring this back line forward to create more space in behind and so when they're trying to play with the ball they often push some of these guys up and you might get something like this and this will this guy will join in here maybe Cas will push up but what you do is you create a big gap between this line and the Midfield so sometimes you'll have one person isolated here so when they lose the ball and opposition team attacks was just put an extra player in here they can run into all this space this happens quite a lot and it doesn't look ideal for what man trying to do but uh this is created by them playing players who are further up the pitch but they have a deeper line normally you want them to be more compact like this but they don't do it regularly and I like he says in the past that they're meant to be more compact but yet this happens every single time it must be on purpose yeah it's hard to know why they're doing this and this isn't just an issue in possession it's an issue out of possession as well because Manchester United as you've said they're trying to generate chance is through opening up space in the opposition's half that they can then attack the more space you create the easier it is to attack you have players like gacho holand Fernandez rashford those are those are really good transitional players so they're going to be able to hit that space and cause a huge amount of problem so one way you do it as you said is in possession get the ball forward as quickly as possible into space that you've created the other way that they've been doing it particularly last season was by having a really aggressive counter press and trying to win the ball high up the field and then again generate those chaotic scenarios where you've created space that you can then attack as well and what we see Manchester United doing this season in particular is playing out of a 442 shape and just being really aggressive in their press and often their midfielders will end up stepping forward as well and then you end up again with these big gaps in between the the back line and the front line and most elite teams if they're playing a really aggressive counter press are going to push that line up as you've said because it reduces the amount of space that you need to cover it does leave a lot of space in behind which is quite scary if you're a slower Defender and I guess part of the problem for Manchester United this season has been their Defenders have have not been their ideal starting Defenders and so there you've got players like Johnny Evans or Harry MaGuire who is a quick player but has a slow turning Circle and so actually that that line drops a little bit deeper and then suddenly you end up with this massive disparity between the front line and the back line and teams are just playing through the Manchester United press into that space and then just running directly at the back line and it's just been chaos some of the things to do are in purpose to try and create this these transitional moments and so what they might do for example is trying what we're trying to do is draw this line going to pull this up a little bit to create more space in behind so you can can get runners in behind so what they'll sometimes do or make third man runs you'll see them like a center back might ping up to a forward like hland he'll then lay it back first time and by doing that what you're doing is you're putting the ball up to here it draws the defenders close to them which creates that Gap in behind by playing that over the top rashford willit hit first time ball over the top for someone to run in behind so you'll see that quite a lot so all about creating those transitional moments that's what ten Haag wants to do trying to make them really good well not good but like transitional and create moments where they can run in behind and play more of the traditional Man United Way but the problem is they turn over theall a lot and because of the way they're pushing up like me and John have discussed it then leaves them vulnerable to counterattacks and they're getting loads of teams running straight at them surely he's not instructing his defense to remain so deep while everybody else is pushing forward I don't know because he says often that there either the front line wasn't good enough at their press or the back line wasn't doing what he wanted them to but it's consistent so you see it an awful lot and they will train this right and if you a player like Johnny Evans hry McGuire maybe you don't want to push up as high as that that's the thing so everyone else has to stay in line with you whoever's in charge of that so you can't leave one person back so I mean what you see now is some of the the mid fullbacks move into the Midfield do started doing that recently as well just to try and clog the middle of the pitch but they leave this Gap every single time and it means that when the teams do run at them often they just block the middle when you're playing five as side it's quite hard to score if you're blocking the middle like this so if you're running at this it might look like a huge Advantage like a 4v4 or 5v4 or something like that but actually still quite difficult to score because it does block you they slow you down show the ball wide you kind of have to move it wide because that's where the space is cuz they block the middle and then moves slow down and so although they could see a lot of chances a lot of chances are kind of low value they considered some goals doing this but they might just end up with a team taking a shot from here which is saved usually or goes wide it's an interesting point though because I think a lot has been made of the fact that I think Manchester United have the the third lowest um expected goals per shot against so when teams are taking shots against them they're the third lowest it's 0.1 I think XG per shot and a lot to been made of the fact that that's the third lowest as and and you would say well the lower the chance then you know you're doing something right but actually the spread of those values is is really small and I think the league average is 0.11 which is like very minimally like higher than 0.1 100th of an expected goal so better than the average yeah it may be the case that this is you know slowing things down making the shots harder but I think because they're conceding I mean there was one point a couple of weeks ago where they' conceded something like a 100 shots in five games or so and at that point Manchester City had conceded like just over 200 in the whole season so the volume is what's killing them here because even at the Premier League even if you're conceding like slightly lower value chances I think just the aggregation of those will mean that you will concede goals that that's just the nature of Premier League football and there be players that are so good they just ping one in from 30 yard fold in for something you know well I was going to say a lot of those shots were probably against Manchester City to be fair so as you've both mentioned ten hog wants man united to be the most transitional team or the best transitional team in the world you think that means the most um that's not really what most elite teams do you know you think of Arsenal and Man City City and Liverpool in the Premier League and even like Bayern Munich and PSG nobody really plays like that at the very top level so what do the elite teams do that United should be aspiring to do as well yeah I think the thing with the elite teams is that they need to be able to control games in some in in almost every phase um you're not going to be able to challenge for a title if you're not able to actually control different phases of play now we've talked about what Manchester United are trying to do in possession that's get the ball forward quickly if they lose the ball then the idea is counter press which means just try and win the ball back as quickly as possible because as we've said if you don't do that you're exposed you've got that big space in behind um and that the idea is that Manchester United will say well that's fine if we can get our counter press going well that's a a risk that we're willing to take so we attack directly we win counter press to win the ball back and that might even generate attacking chances for us as well that worked fine last season the problem is that this season the counter press hasn't been working and it just means that Manchester United aren't able to control games in those phases so what's happening is the ball's going forward and then coming straight back at them and you get lots of turnovers of possession which means that you're not not only are you not getting as as many good chances away but you're also conceding a lot more as well it goes backwards and forwards and the problem is is that um yes if you're a team like Manchester United we've already talked about how they've got these four players who are really good in transitional moments the problem is is that if you make the games super transitional sometimes you're going to lose games because in the Premier League the oppositions have got team Strikers forwards who are going to be able to hurt you as well so you mentioned that it's not working as well the counter press this season as it was last season is there a specific reason for that like Personnel wise because they seem to have at least on paper improved the squad yeah I mean you can point to certain things I think in terms of what's changed this season on last season one of them is that casmiro has not been quite so good out of possession and obviously if you're the remaining Central midfielder when the opposition are attacking you and you can cover that space well we've seen for example Dean Rice have a huge impact on arsenal for that reason then you it gives it affords your counter press a little bit more cover as well um they have changed the way that they're counter pressing I think as well teams have just figured out the way that they press and found ways of of building through it as well which has made it less efficient as well and again Premier League football you're now coming up against teams at the bottom half of the table who have center backs who can build up through presses even if they're really good presses and so there's questions about whether or not this style of play is functional enough for a really elite team because you are just leaving up to chance if you're saying we're going to have these the ball coming backwards and forwards all the time lots of turnovers of possession actually we're not really controlling the game well enough in those moments where where we have the ball because what you want I think as an elite team is to recognize that sometimes you can defend with the ball as well as without the ball you don't want to just give the opposition the ball and say come at us and we'll try and defend it you want to say we're going to keep the ball as long as possible maybe we won't always score in those moments but we will generally be able to control games and that's what the really Elite teams do so Manchester City are probably the best examp example of an elite team who can trol games really well right they've got Pep Guardiola of course that's what they do but how exactly do they do that yeah so what I think Manchester City are trying to do is with the ball they're going to try and control the play in the final third as much as possible so what we're going to actually do is talk about a number of different attempts to control the games from Elite teams and we're going to look at different parts of the field where they're controlling so Manchester City it's all about controlling the ball in the opposition's final third and like when you've watched Manchester City play enough you know what they do is they squeeze opposition's right back they possess the ball they make sure that they are able to retain possession moving it down the field they don't want to do anything that's too high risk because they want to keep the ball and what they end up then doing is just absolutely squeezing the opposition into the the final third like this but what they're trying to do is not only score goals by being around the opposition's penalty area they're actually trying to control this phase of the game they want to keep the ball as long as possible make it hard for the opposition to score if you keep the ball in this area you're miles away from your own goal so if even if the teams that you're playing against win the ball back they're going to have to move a huge amount of distance to actually cause you any problem that's far from the goal that is far from the goal so you'll often see Manchester City in this sort of in this sort of setup now can I just point out that L8 and R8 means left eight and right eight you can just when he wasn't sure yeah to do this you need to have a couple of things one thing that you need to do is you need to have really technical players because as you can see what you've done is you've reduced the playing area into a really small space and what's going to happen is the opposition are just going to block out their penalty area it's going to be hard to find uh the the space to generate chances right so often Man City will play for ages and ages and ages and what they're doing is moving the ball side to side trying to find that weakness to just play the ball into and then score you need really technical players to do this the other thing that you need is a really good rest defensive structure now what we mean by rest defenses in this scenario as you can see if the ball is turned over there's a huge amount of space that can be attacked and what we mean by rest defense is the structure that you take up in possession so Manchester City attacking here in the event that they lose the ball how are they stru then to be able to defend this space so you know we see usually for Man City you've got Roger you got often the outside the center backs or the the fullbacks coming inside to narrow the pitch you'll have the two center backs here that is designed to allow you to re cycle the ball but it's also designed to to make it hard for the opposition to to actually attack the space once they win the ball back and stones will of course be quite often in that line in front to even stop it getting as far back as the center backs right and then if it does they've got rapid Kyle Walker just in case yeah and I bring this up because you know this is the way that a lot of elite teams are playing and you know it would be easy for me to be like what the Manchester United need to do to control games better they should play like pep guardiola's Man City I mean every manager wants to try and play like pep guardiola's Man City this is the way that Elite teams are trying to do it and probably Manchester United will want to get to a point where they're able to control games like this because as we've said it's just a really good way of being able to control games but they're not there right now ten hog might argue I don't have the players to be able to do this I don't have the really Elite technical players to be able to possess the ball in the opposition half we've already talked about the problems that they have with the center backs playing a High Line This is a super high line um so he he would highest of lines in in the league right yeah and he would argue that we can't really do this right now so the question is are there other ways of being able to control the game which don't rely on you having this kind of personnel to do it so what other ways are there to control games yeah so I want to talk about another team who control the ball in a very different part of the pitch and that is Brighton particularly Brighton last season theyve maybe changed things up a little bit this season but you'll remember Brighton last season everyone was talking about the way that they like to bait presses pull opposition players forward and so what they're trying to do here is essentially trying to control the ball in their own third um so what you do is you have these really nice buildup structures they have all of these automatisms so they know how to move around opposition presses work the ball through those presses and get the ball in behind in quite transitional um moments we we call them artificial transitions because usually when you're transitioning you've won the ball back from opposition and then hit the space in behind what you're doing here with artificial transitions is trying to create those same conditions but through possession of the ball so it's it's less risky and it's a vegan Counterattack that's right yeah so essentially what you're doing then is you're you're attempting to pull the opposition really high up the pitch because you've got a you've got a really sort of provocative press I would call it because what you're doing is you're saying yeah come at us you you'll see the center back with their foot on the ball being like come and get it the idea then being that you want to get as many of their players forward like this and then have these routes to work through those lines of pressure and then you can hit particularly the wide players in behind over the top um you're controlling the ball in your final third you're having solutions to get through opposition presses and then you're doing these really transitional ATT attacks through like car mtima we had Sol march on this side or Simon a dingra this this season as well this is actually a really good way of being able to control the ball in a very different part of the pitch and I think this would actually be quite a nice way for Manchester United to play right because we've already talked about their front four being really good transition almost a little bit like this rashford thing like it's one little pattern they don't have very many patterns that you see often I think cuz like this is so coordinated and highly coached whereas maybe the thing that tin ha's doing is trying to allow individual players who suit being given freedom to be individual uh to do what they want when they get the ball but then the problem with that is that when you get the ball you don't know exactly where your teammates are so there's no automated movements to make and it looks disjointed and that's where things go wrong yeah I think Manchester United's buildup under Eric ten hog is just about it's about trying to get the ball forward as quickly as possible Right right rather playing back he tends to go where's the ball going he tends to put it to someone in the middle here and then build from there to bypass the press and it's all that's all about speed and moving it forward but again that makes the game more transitional it means you lose a bit of control whereas this is super control because it's like you'll have long periods of games when Brighton particularly last season where they would just play the ball around the back teams would be really hesitant to step in Brighton don't care because they're like well this is a moment where we're we're possessing the ball we're not having to defend we're actually controlling the condition conditions in the game so again maybe bringing in a coach to Manchester United who could introduce some of this super automated buildup patterns and then move into these transitional moments might work for them I guess the the counterargument would be Brighton play a little bit of a different way this season because they've lost players but also because other teams have figured out what they're doing a little bit more so that's the danger right so it looks highly automated so you recognize exactly what they is they' got a style got an identity that people talk about manit don't but man's identity is basically chaos rather than structure and that's why looks like there's nothing there and like you say teams do eventually work it out or they work out a way to counteract it like I think it was West Ham this season just refused to be baited by that come and press us plea from like Duncan um Webster whoever and I think they' won 3-1 playing with actual counter attacks because Brighton lost patience and eventually went forward and of course the other downside to it is that it is risky when you're first doing it if you don't quite have the right players or if you do lose the ball that deep that's the that's the the difference between controlling the the ball in the final third compared to doing this right is that when you do lose the ball you're a lot closer to your own goal yeah absolutely it's it's a very risky way of playing so maybe there's a third way where we we're not talking about controlling it super deep and having the risk of having the turnovers if your buildup isn't good enough or not having the Personnel to be able to squeeze teams into the final third and so I wanted to just give you an example of a team who are doing controlling the the game in a very different way at the elite level and this is shabby Alonzo's by lusen because what by Le are doing is a sort of halfway house between what we've got with with city which is squeezing everyone high and Brighton which is building up really low and what actually they're trying to do I would say lusen is is control the ball in the center of the field now so we' talked about the final third on either side now we're talking about Midfield um control what B lus are trying to do is they're trying to build up in the regular way that you know most elite teams do so kind of control buildup getting settled possession as we call it from from goal kicks for example which means that you know you've won possession of the ball after you've taken the goal kick the opposition have dropped off a little bit they're giving you time and space and so what they then do is they get to the scenario where they're able to possess the ball in the middle they're able to play around from one side to the other but then rather than doing what Manchester City might be trying to do which is again move the move the ball down the field squeeze the opposition deeper reduce space make it harder for yourself to attack what lus are doing is they're actually getting these scenarios where they're able to overload certain parts of the pitch in channels particularly so maybe you got Flor and V on the left wing dropping in to help out we have the right winger here with with frong coming up the pitch able to drop inside as well and what they're trying to do is they're trying to find these moments where they can do these really quick passing movements through the lines of pressure and then change the tempo super quickly in order to play almost like mini transitions again um with with space not making the opposition able to get really compact um and so we're sort of in a halfway house between what Brighton are doing and what man city are doing and the difference for me then is like Brighton trying to build up from here labus are trying to build up from here and um so you're reducing the amount of space you can actually attack into but you're still leaving enough space open un like City to be able to get the the most of the fact that the opposition is still spread out a little bit in this like Goldilocks approach to tactics what sort of trigger would they have when they have the ball to suddenly increase that Tempo like you say yeah and I guess that's the the the importance of the coaching here is is that what we are seeing is you know is a lot of pass it's still you know passing around side to side to try and find those those open openings but with the with the realization that at some point you just everyone is going to end up in those channels and and it's going to be a lot of Third Man combinations like JJ was talking about before so player dropping in here so that he can bounce pass it around the line of pressure and yeah it's so good to watch because it is all about slow patient side to side stuff and then suddenly bang you change the tempo bang bang bang they're through they're in behind and it's um yeah it's about trying to get the balance then between patience but also um I guess aggressive attacking as well which gives you the upside of of as we've said the space that is opened out so man united aren't playing with the control that people maybe expected when ten hog arrived when his reputation was Sky High after his success with Ajax but what were his Ajax team actually like to jog our memory here's Alex Barker so plenty of people thought rhog was the Smart Pick when Manchester United hired him but with United now struggling that feels like a distant memory so what exactly did he do at ax that made him United's preferred candidate and can re-examining this period help us better understand the situation him and the club currently fighting find themselves in when I say Eric tenh Hog's aax you're likely picturing that famous 1819 side who won their first league title in 5 years and reached the Champions League knockout stages for the first time since 2006 beating Juventus and Real Madrid along the way so what made them so good well the season in question was marked by their aggressive pressing ten hog set up in a 4231 often deploying a man-marking system the forwards would press the opposition very high and centrally so they're baiting this pass into the fullback at which point aax would then squeeze over forcing the opposition to kick it long and these long balls were then easily swallowed up by the likes of Matias delict aax also had a ferocious counter press they won more tackles in the final third per 90 than anyone else in the Champions League including jgen kops Liverpool and that lead into another thing that made aax stand out that season the speed they attacked with with Frankie D young tenh har had a player who was a huge advantage in buildup as he could securely carry the ball through opposition lines which is more risky than trying to pass it forward but when it works it can be more disruptive to a defensive shape as he can pull more players out of position and from here IX were blessed with a fluid group of attackers performing at a really high level that season now there were some differences between how aax played in the league and the champions league as in Europe they were more content to hold less of the ball Ching to be a bit more pragmatic and try and limit the opposition strengths and perhaps that was the most impressive thing about ten hog in this period yes he was able to dominate domestic competition but he was also tactically flexible enough to adapt against Superior opposition and get results now while this was an extremely successful season possibly aax is most successful in the modern era it wasn't the 201819 campaign that got tenh Hara job in the Premier League I think what came after actually solidify ten Hog's reputation as a top European coach this is because that summer aax lost a number of key players and now ten hog faed a big problem they couldn't attack as quickly without Frankie Dong's ball carrying and they couldn't press as aggressively without Maas delit and lash shera's physical presence while LX were on C to win the 2020 era of vaa before it got cancelled you can see there's a large drop off in their Champions League numbers compared to the previous season even considering it's a small sample size and this underperformance left tenh har with a choice he could try and find a way to maintain the style of play he had Success With or he could adapt his tactics to the new players he had at his disposal ten hog chose the latter over the next couple of years ten hog moved LeAndre Martinez from Midfield to Center back he also rejigged his Midfield to move it to a single pivot system and finally he completely reshaped his attack with the signing of Sebastian all I became more patient on the ball slowly pushing more players into the final third taking more time to create chances in the box and this could be seen with the type of chances Al was getting across his time at aax over a third of his shots came with his head and tenho didn't just adapt on the ball out of possession his team defended much more zonally because with the likes of all and an aging daily blind at left back I didn't have the same energy to maintain a man-to-man press and it's fair to say it worked ten Hog's final season saw IEX conceded just 19 goals the lowest in his tenure and they continue to enjoy relative success on the European stage reaching the quarterfinals of the Europa League in 2021 and the round of 16 in the Champions League in 2022 after beating Dortmund 71 on aggregate in the group stages so this is why man united hired Eric tenh hark he successfully adapted to the individuals he had at his disposal and continued to win trophies and not only did they dominate domestically they also showcase their ability to beat teams many were considered to be above their level so why hasn't Eric tenh been able to essentially do what he did at Ajax as Alex has explained at Manchester United well I think there's an argument to be made that the Eric tenh from Ajax was what Manchester United got we've already talked about how Manchester United are good at getting to Cup finals which is what we saw from Eric tenh ax he's actually a very pragmatic coach I would say even his time at aax shows that and think Alex has done a good job of of showing how often what he does is he takes the players at his disposal and and fits them to to whatever is going on I think there's an argument to be made that that's exactly what's happened at Manchester United as well but you know Ajax obviously have a talent differential in in the era deisy which I think means that you can have dominance in the league this transitional style of play I think the big question is can you do that in a league where you have Arsenal and Man City and Liverpool where they're all trying to play like high control football and when these games get you know transitional in a in a league like the aisy then you can get through enough of those games and still win the league I think in the Premier League what we've seen from Eric tenh hars Manchester United it's just not consistent enough to really challenge at the highest level I would say though right so ten Haag has had a lot of things to deal with on and off the pitch that might have affected how his team have played he's had to adapt a lot because he said he didn't have the players that he wanted in the very start but now he has a team that he's assembled for a lot of money but he hasn't had that team for a lot of it so mitigating circumstances that we can maybe give him a bit of a pass for some of it I would say injuries are a huge one CU they have had loads of injuries which might actually be partly his fault from the way that they play it's a lot of running the way they train there a lot of running and training apparently H and that's there's no probably no coincidence there's so many muscle injuries there um that's one of the things but if you look at Off Pitch stuff which definitely affects things so things as simple as changing the captaincy taking that away from Harry McGuire giveing it to Bruno Fernandez there's loads of different problems and uh issues within Squad that might develop and then individual player things off the pitch there's a load of them that have happened that are quite little big stories but you've got like even um Harry MaGuire for example is one things he's dealt with off the pitch May well have affected his form on it um certainly some people have alluded to that in the past and so then you've got players out of form that you can't really deal with the rashford's out of form just now that means kind like being down a key player he was our key player in the ten haag's first season then you've also got things like did ten Haag deal with the Jaden Sancho issue very well he's gone now as a player who was worth a lot of money he was very good when he signed and now he's gone so that's one thing unrest at the club's ownership ship that can have an effect on players and not sure whe they're not very stable like who's in charge who's going to be in charge who's going to pay me and then you've also got just dealing with Ronaldo in general which is a whole thing in itself and that becomes a huge big fiori then you've also got like the recruitment is so weird and ha Hazard so then you buy a player like Anthony for way more than you're supposed to and then the pressure of living up to that impossible price tag will definitely influence or affect how you're playing so he's had a lot of not a lot of the players he wanted to play to make it work and then he also had to deal with a lot of things off the pitch which would not be ideal and so I think maybe if he'd had all of it together without all that to deal with it might have worked slightly better sometimes but still they would I don't think they'd be that far off where they are now really would they I think the big question for me is like what kind of football do Manchester United want to be playing yeah and I think that regardless of the new ownership the answer to that question has to be elite football in some way and as we've talked about throughout this episode elite football has to come with methods of being able to control the ball in different phases of play the big question for me about Eric tenh har is have we seen any evidence that his team can control the ball in every phase of play it's been two years now and I'm not really seeing it I think the this sort of transitional Style with like heavy counter press you know High pressing to try and win turnovers of of the ball yeah it worked fine last season got them third in the league they were miles off the the title race and this season it's dropped right off without the Personnel to to play it successfully so I think the big question for me on on tenh is like fine I I understand there's mitigating circumstances but there still has to be reasons for keeping a manager in their job if the and those reasons have to be like in the future we believe things can change and I'm not sure that I'm necessarily seeing that from Eric ten Hogs Manchester United I was thinking the way they play with all the direct attacks um the only team I can think of maybe similar that does it in different way would be like Atletico Madrid but you sit deep right and then you have the direct attacks and that way but they play completely differently every other s only kind of subscribes to the idea that you can control games without the right and they but they've constantly had this like recurring um identity crisis where they try to evolve into an elite team and dominate the with possession high up the pitch then realize it doesn't quite work or he can't quite coach it and then they revert back to to what they've always you know been good at which is kind of counterattacking in the more traditional sense right it's worth saying Liverpool as well like they are a team who play quite direct they do try and control games mainly out of possession and I think you know there are other ways of being an elite team in in the Premier League than just Man City and and Arsenal I think it's worth pointing that out that's why in my section I wanted to talk about different ways of being able to control the ball but for me it's for for what we see from Manchester United I don't get a clear sense of what that control looks like in all these different phases so if you wanted to see what that looked like and you were in s Jim ratliff's shoes what would you do moving forward I think for me first and foremost it has to be centered around the director of football they need to bring in a director of football who's going to say this is what I think Manchester United should be trying to do on the field sort out your game model talk about control how are we going to control games whereabouts on the pitch are we going to try and control uh in possession how are we going to keep that in control things better than I'm controlling things right now um how how are you going to structure out of possession play as well once you've got those foundations in place everything becomes so much easier right because you have a list of managers who you think can do that and then you start employing players and bringing them in who you think can play in in the way that we we're talking about I think too much for Manchester United what we've seen is you you you end up with pragmatism all the time because it's like we have to have results now and so what you end up doing is just bringing in good players who end up playing like this really transitional football and then you're like oh we're going to have to play transitional football because we these are the only players that we've got and so I think it has to be a top down change it has to be um a sporting director has a clear idea of what is happening on the pitch and then everything else around the club just feeding into that burn it all down start again and be patient basically what would you do um I think you could give him another year they're still sitting round about sixth or seventh next season then I think you'd be fair to go where it hasn't worked he has to do it gives a bit more stability In Time by then they can put the director football and you can start building and maybe it turns out that uh what he's doing is going to work all along and I was I'd love I'd love to be completely wrong about it that would be great cuz I could learn and I could see what it is that I need to learn and be a better person Ruben but also maybe they could bring in G Southgate if you like this video please consider subscribing to the channel the athletic is home to some of the world's best sports journalists including David orstein Amy Lawrence and and Rafa honstein with the latest transferred news and insight on every Premier League story that matters the athletic.com puts you inside 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Channel: The Athletic FC

Views: 206,901

Keywords: Tifo, tifo football, tifo irl, tifo in real life, football, soccer, football tactics, premier league, the athletic, the athletic fc, the athletic football podcast, football transfers, football news, soccer transfers, soccer news, manchester city, manchester united, arsenal, chelsea, tottenham, liverpool, sensible transfers, tifo sensible transfers

Id: H5psy1SEMLE

Length: 33min 10sec (1990 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 23 2024