- 5/28/2025
Another defeat for Ruben Amorim's Manchester United - this time away at Newcastle - means the Red Devils are now guaranteed their worst ever points total in the Premier League.With their season in danger of being a disaster, Adam Clery takes a look at what the team are doing wrong (and doing well) to explain why results have been as bad as they have been.
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00:00Right then, hello there everybody, Adam Cleary here for you, ACFC, and if I look tired, it's because I was up until 1am last night watching Manchester United's biggest win of the year.
00:13Rory McIlroy finally winning the Masters.
00:16But as for the football team though, it's been bad result after bad result after bad result after bad result, and nobody on telly seems to be able to agree why that keeps happening,
00:27so this is a video on why that keeps happening.
00:34Alright, so I'm not going to take a bath in the stats, because Man United fans, you won't really want to see them,
00:39but just so we're all clear where we are, their season has looked like this.
00:45Now they sacked Eric Ten Hag here when they were only like 4 or 5 points off the Champions League places,
00:50as they appointed Ruben Amorim here, and since then, it's just progressively got worse and worse and worse and worse.
00:57In fact, here is a stat that I invented all on my own with my brain, since they beat Manchester City,
01:03in mid-December, they have one solitary Premier League win that wasn't against any of the minging teams currently in the bottom three.
01:14That's, that's really bad. They just keep losing matches. Why?
01:22Well, the thing is, Manchester United have two major problems.
01:28Yep, no, actually, you're right, there's substantially more than two major problems,
01:31going right to the very top of the club, all the way down to the individual players,
01:35but for the purposes of this video, in this browser window that you are watching on a phone and or tablet and or television,
01:40we're going to talk about two, so there's two.
01:42And problem number one is that this system that Ruben Amorim deploys,
01:46already every single team in the Premier League knows exactly how to play against it.
01:52The anti-Amorim formula is as predictable as the site of the system itself,
01:56and Newcastle very conveniently provided some great examples this weekend of what it is.
02:02So the 3-4-2-1 that he likes to play is excellent in transition.
02:07Like, genuinely, I will heap praise upon it for what it can do between the lines
02:11and just after the ball is turned over.
02:13I'll even show you some of that slightly later in the video.
02:16But when it is required to build out from the back, which, you know, Manchester United,
02:20that's going to happen a lot in games, it has been entirely, entirely sussed out.
02:25So what happens is because Man United like to use their goalkeeper,
02:29the centre-centre-back, he steps out a bit and is joined here by the more defensive midfielder
02:34while they sort of go there, and they end up with this, like, 3-2 shape.
02:39And that's absolutely fine.
02:41Like, most teams will do this 3-2 shape because most other teams will only commit two players here
02:46to press this first line.
02:48So the idea is you can move them around, you can get the ball into these two players here.
02:53Even if they've got a 3, they should be able to find a way to do that.
02:56And once they've got the ball, they can turn and they're a way up the pitch.
03:00Either they can feed the wing-backs, or they can feed the other midfielder,
03:03or if they're feeling really sexy, they can feed the two 10s.
03:07Not to use the L word here, but this is exactly how it functioned at Lisbon.
03:13But what everybody seems to be doing to Manchester United now is just not pressing these three players.
03:20Just letting them have the ball, not allowing the space to open in behind,
03:24and just making sure their options in front of them are limited and difficult.
03:28And you don't tend to see this done very often, because when you sit off this first line,
03:33it allows these players to use their quality, play over the press, and into their teammates,
03:38into space.
03:39But teams do not fear doing this against Man United.
03:43And that's because when they go along, they're either going into the wing-backs,
03:46who are really badly suited for holding a ball out of the sky,
03:49and shouldering somebody off and bringing their teammates into play,
03:52so they get squeezed from that direction, forcing them to come back into the middle.
03:56Or they go really long into the attackers, where most Premier League defences will back
04:00themselves 100 times out of 100 to gobble those long balls up, win those physical battles.
04:05Or, and this is the key bit, if you do still try and play into these two players,
04:09it's now a lot riskier to do that.
04:12They end up getting squeezed when the press gets backed up.
04:15And as in yesterday's example, players like Lindelof and Dugate are so not suitable
04:20to be receiving these balls, facing their own goal, with other players crowding around them.
04:27That's not who they are, they're bad at that.
04:29And you see this in the Bruno goal, like, it's an awful pass from the goalie, yes,
04:32but what is it you'd actually want him to do here?
04:36Like, if you go wide into the wing-backs, like, this side is already closed off,
04:40and Tino Livramento is already putting the squeeze on the other side,
04:43so that would, again, just force him back towards his own goal.
04:46And so the decision he makes, just go along, get it out of there, and don't worry about it,
04:50is probably the right one, just that the execution is absolutely terrible.
04:56Like, what a team who's really good at doing this would do is one of those really quick bounce passes,
05:00like your Brightons and your Man Citys, used to be famed for.
05:03The goalkeeper could fire it into Dugate, who, if he was really good at doing this,
05:07if his touch was absolutely magnetic, he could just knock a perfectly weighted
05:11little sideballer and Lindelof, who could then get spun and play forward.
05:15But again, we're talking about Dugate and Lindelof.
05:19That's not who they are.
05:21That is not their bag, baby, to quote Austin Powers.
05:25But anyway, the thing is, about the execution being crap,
05:28is that that's the major problem with Manchester United.
05:31The opposition now almost always expect the execution to be crap.
05:38Right, we're going to do some really in-depth and aggressive graph work here,
05:42so apologies if this, like, triggers any repressed memories from first-year university.
05:47This one, as a starting point, is absolutely astounding.
05:52This is every single time Newcastle took the ball off Manchester United in that 96, 97 minutes.
06:02See the tackles, interceptions, ball recoveries, every time they proactively go and get it.
06:07I'm just going to leave it up for a couple of seconds so you can have a proper look at this, right,
06:11and observe just how many of them were going this way, remember?
06:15That's Man United's goal.
06:16How many of them are in an area you personally would not want your team to lose the ball in?
06:23And trust me, right, as somebody who looks at these graphs a lot for work,
06:27not just because I'm weird, that is loads.
06:31Loads and loads.
06:32Swear word, loads.
06:33All right, Man United fans, you're done wincing at this one.
06:36This is graph number two.
06:38This is all of Man United's unsuccessful passes.
06:42Now, yes, there is a bit of an overlap here.
06:44A lot of the tackles, interceptions, the recovery come about as a result of these,
06:48but there is also some stuff that's all of its own.
06:51Some of it's straight out of play.
06:52Some of it's just into the middle of nowhere.
06:55Overlap is substantial, yes, but this is bad in its own right.
06:59And all told, right, when you factor in Newcastle doing all of this and you combine it with
07:04Manchester United not doing all of this, Mark Statz, who is an essential follow on Twitter
07:10if you're a terrible, bad nerd like me, worked out that they lost the ball in the danger zone
07:1750 times in that match.
07:21That is Manchester United just hoying the ball into the old Kenny Loggins more than once every two minutes.
07:32Wait, hang on.
07:33Yeah, every one minute, 57 seconds.
07:37You cannot win a game of football if you are doing that.
07:42That is an astounding statistic.
07:44And just to distill this even further, Opta produced this graph as well,
07:48which shows that Newcastle recorded a league-high 16 high turnovers in this match.
07:55And if you're just wondering what the difference between the high turnovers and the danger zone stuff is,
07:59like a high turnover, Opta defined it as like an attack that's won by getting the ball off your opponent within certain...
08:07It's basically the premium, luxury, super dangerous and fun version of all this.
08:13And what's particularly mad about that is obviously high turnovers are the thing that the really aggressive teams live or die by.
08:20And as we've seen, Newcastle weren't even being really, really aggressive.
08:25And they still got 16 of them, turned five of them into shots and three of them into goals.
08:31Which is only the second time this season that's happened.
08:35The first was Arsenal mullering Man City a few months ago, in case you're curious.
08:40Okay, I'm just not going to be too dramatic about this. Teams can lose the ball here.
08:44This stuff can happen in a game of football.
08:46But I am going to have to chuck Mark's stats some decent money for his Ko-Fi account.
08:52Because he pulled this graph together yesterday, right?
08:57And hope you sat down.
08:58Since Ruben Amorim took charge of Manchester United,
09:00they are the second worst team in the Premier League for giving the ball away in this danger zone.
09:08I don't know why I'm doing quotes for it. That's just what it's called. Danger zone.
09:12And the thing is, given the improvements in Crystal Palace in recent weeks,
09:16you would suspect that by the time the season concludes,
09:20they'll probably not be second bottom.
09:22They'll be bottom. Bottom's a funny word.
09:25And so, for all the talk when Ruben Amorim joined Manchester United,
09:30partially by me, yes, about how this system was based around direct running and carrying and take-ons,
09:35they've also got the second worst stats in the Premier League for that.
09:40Because the situations for which it has to happen in aren't happening.
09:45And the thing is, they are actually really, really good in transition.
09:51I'm being genuinely serious.
09:53They're excellent at the thing they're trying to be excellent at.
09:56You can see in the goal, like, the lines are actually broken here.
09:59This is Newcastle's defence.
10:00This is Newcastle's midfield.
10:02They've actually found a way to get through them and disorganise them.
10:05And once they get into that situation, here is the direct running they're supposed to do.
10:09Here is sort of the ambitious, ball-carrying goal threat.
10:13Like, Dallow charges into the middle of the pitch, not just down the line.
10:17It creates a space out wide for Garnaccio.
10:19And he carries on his run as well.
10:21And Newcastle can't live with it.
10:23And they get the quintessential Ruben Amorim system goal.
10:27But the problem they've got, and this is still problem number one, but I'm going to do problem number two in a second.
10:31The problem they've got is that you cannot reliably get into situations like this if you cannot reliably get out of situations like this.
10:43And just to check back on that graph, how reliably can they get out of situations like this?
10:49The second worst amount of any team in the Premier League.
10:53So, there you go.
10:58Oh, shit, yeah, the second problem.
11:00Yeah, so the other major issue that I have decided upon is Bruno Fernandes.
11:07He was the left-sided number 10 in this game.
11:11And yet, if you look at his heat map, Newcastle somehow limited him to this.
11:17See this blob?
11:18This should be here.
11:20Just hang on, if you're about to push Dogdo through my letterbox for criticising Man United's only really good player.
11:26This is a clever point I'm making.
11:27Just bear with me, right?
11:29If we break this down by halves, you see the problem.
11:32The first half, this is his past map.
11:34They found him, not very often, but still did find him in the areas in which you want him to be.
11:40Like this little one here.
11:41You remember that.
11:42It's a great little link-up with Joshua Xerxes, who arguably should score.
11:47And we're all applauding what a great move that is.
11:49But Newcastle, already knowing about the threat in transition and sort of structuring the team to stop that happening again,
11:55realised that Bruno was sort of the only player who could then unpick what it was they were doing.
11:59So they made an alteration in the second half to stop this.
12:03They went to a 5-4-1 when they were out of possession instead of having four at the back.
12:08And they dropped Jacob Murphy into the defensive line.
12:11And that's meant that if Bruno went all the way out to the left-hand side to find a bit of space, which he likes to do,
12:16or he received the ball in this area, which he wants to do,
12:19either Trippier or Jacob Murphy could press out of the defensive line and cover him.
12:27And you can't really do that if you're in a back four,
12:29because you leave a huge amount of space for the wing-back to get into.
12:31But because there's five, one of them can basically just follow him out into the space.
12:35And you can see here with Trippier, keep following him the deeper he goes so he can't get turned when he gets the ball.
12:42And that takes him out of the game.
12:44And thus, if we get rid of his first half passes and replace them with his second half passes, there's nothing.
12:50The part of the pitch you would want him to be, again, there wasn't loads in the first half, but there was some.
12:54And now there's nothing.
12:56They forced him back and back and back and back into this part of the pitch.
13:00Man United are chasing this game from the 46th minute.
13:03They are losing, and their most creative weapon cannot get anywhere near the area where he is effective.
13:11Now, that is, crucially, not the fault of Bruno Fernandes by any stretch of the imagination.
13:15But when your approach is predictable, and you only have one player who's really capable of suddenly asking the opposition some different questions,
13:25it becomes very easy to counter.
13:28And it is that lack of quality throughout this team that I think might be the real issue here.
13:33Like, I know this is the kind of channel where we get all giddy and excited about shapes and formations and tactics.
13:38But for all the money spent, this team is really short on the quality required to play this shape or this formation or this tactic.
13:48And it's why, weirdly, I actually wouldn't write them off in the Europa League.
13:53Because they actually do have a noticeable quality difference between them and the other teams in it.
13:58It's just that the Premier League is mad.
14:02You're living in an age when Real Madrid want Bournemouth centre-back.
14:06When the West Ham squad that won the Conference League are now 17th.
14:12It's hard here.
14:13And I mean, yeah, now that I think about it, I probably could have boiled all this down to one tweet.
14:18But for everybody saying the problem is the players, and everybody saying the problem is the system,
14:22I remain convinced that the problem is neither the players nor the system.
14:26It is these players in this system.
14:29Like, they go completely hand-in-hand.
14:32They could play a different way and it might be better, or they could get different players and it might be better.
14:36But these lads doing this feels horrible.
14:40But yes, there you go.
14:42They're not going to get relegated.
14:43They might still win a trophy.
14:44So, I don't know.
14:45Who knows?
14:45I'm trying to keep the end of these videos a lot shorter.
14:48Because otherwise, I'll wrap it on for two minutes.
14:49So, I'll just hit you with a bullet points.
14:52Please let me know what you think of this Man United team in the comments.
14:55I would like to take the temperature of this fan base.
14:57Are you in crisis mode?
14:59Or are you just, whatever, at this point, get all that down there.
15:01These are my social media handles.
15:03The nice, fancy graphics, they're coming soon.
15:05I'm running the Hackney Hearth for the campaign against Living Miserably.
15:08I'll put that in the description.
15:09Try and raise a bit of money.
15:10That'll be really nice.
15:13I love you.
15:14Happy Monday, if that's when you're watching it.
15:16If it's not, then happy whatever day.
15:18That was short.
15:19Was that short?
15:20That felt short.
15:20Bye.
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