- 47 minutes ago
Manchester United have finally agreed a fee with Brentford for the transfer of Bryan Mbeumo. He joins Matheus Cunha in Ruben Amorim's new look attack, but what is it about him that has convinced the club to shell out nearly £70m.Adam Clery looks at what makes him such a unique player in the Premier League and why that's as close to a guaranteed success as it's possible to get in a transfer.
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00:00Greetings and salutations, friends. Welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel. Adam Cleary, obviously.
00:06And cards fully on the table. For a very long time, I have thought Brian Umbermo was the most underrated
00:13forward in the Premier League,
00:15to the extent that if anyone ever asked me, who would you really like Newcastle to sign, Adam?
00:20I wouldn't even think about it. I would just say, Brian Umbermo, please.
00:24But Newcastle United are not getting him, are they? Manchester United are?
00:29Probably. At the time of me recording this video, they are still yet to agree a fee.
00:33But if he's going to go anywhere, he is going to go there. And for a sizable sum of money.
00:38So, why do they want to pay that? And why do I, along with people who are vastly more qualified
00:45than me, think he's worth it?
00:47Well, pop the kettle on. I'm going to show you.
00:53All right, so just the bio, incredibly quickly, right?
00:55Brian Umbermo is a French-born Cameroon international who signed for Brentford for just a few million quid in the
01:02championship in 2019,
01:03has genuinely developed every single year as a player since then, and, despite having no hair now, is still only
01:1125 years old.
01:13Great hair!
01:14Actually, no scrap that bit, because his birthday is in August, so by the time they get this done, he
01:20might well be 26.
01:21And the idea is that he is arriving to be the peanut butter here to Matthias Cunha's jelly over there.
01:28The yin to his yang, the ki to his peel, the Pokemon red to his Pokemon blue, the right-sided
01:36number 10 in the 3-4-2-1 system
01:39that Ruben Averin would simply rather die than deviate from, apparently.
01:44And while, yes, he did not technically play in this exact role last season, this is the area of the
01:49pitch in which he thrives,
01:51and he got 20 goals and 8 assists in the league last season by, like, playing in it.
01:57Now, let's just back up a second and give you some Manchester United-specific context, right?
02:02Ruben Averin wants, in all positions, but especially in these two,
02:06two direct runners who can simultaneously roast you on a transition, but also still open you up in possession.
02:14So, if you want to play there, you need that extremely rare profile of just being, like, supremely athletic, quick,
02:20and strong,
02:21but also really technically gifted.
02:24So, you can prize open a defence or find a pass that most other players can't.
02:28And, of course, if you watched the video we did about Matthias Cunha going to play in this system,
02:33that's exactly the kind of player that he is.
02:36And as we showed you in that video, when you turn the ball over,
02:39you need to be able to break quickly with it at your feet,
02:42getting into the right areas, and basically creating tap-ins for your teammates,
02:47in particular the centre-forward, which he does.
02:49And, of course, when you're on top, you need to be able to drift from one space to another,
02:54sometimes wider, sometimes more central, sometimes up top,
02:57to move defenders around and find space for both yourself and your teammates, which he does.
03:03Now, interestingly, and I shall just wave the magic wand here,
03:07Brentford predominantly played this, like, 4-2-3-1 system.
03:11They mixed it up every now and then, but primarily it was this,
03:14with Brian Umbermo as the right-sided attacking forward.
03:18And simultaneously, very interestingly, but also very annoyingly for me,
03:23when they did use a 3-4-2-1 last season, which happened twice,
03:28at home to Newcastle and away to Spurs,
03:32because in neither of those games did Brian Umbermo play in the position he'll play for Man United.
03:39He started one at wing-back and one up top.
03:42And yet, some would say slightly conveniently,
03:44if you go back and watch the Newcastle game where he's playing right wing-back,
03:47you can see why this area of the pitch is so well-suited to him,
03:52even if he doesn't necessarily start in it.
03:54Like, even though he's the wing-back in this system,
03:56he is very advanced, he's very aggressive, he's well ahead of the play,
03:59he receives it, and he does not have one little thought in his head
04:05about getting to the byline and opening up this channel for a teammate.
04:09He just wants to get into it himself with the ball.
04:13He skips past Lewis Hall, which is not easy.
04:15He shrugs off Joe Linton, which is really not easy.
04:19And then he just lets it rip right into the top corner, which is pretty good.
04:24And while obviously it's a very impressive goal, yes, round of applause, well done,
04:27even though obviously I was furious when it went in,
04:30it's a very good indicator of what he's always trying to do when the opportunity allows.
04:35Now, this was his total heat map in the Premier League last season.
04:38So all the games are sort of bundled into one, right?
04:41And obviously, spending a lot of time on the touchline here
04:43because, as discussed, he was the right-sided forward in that 4-2-3-1.
04:47But you can also see it's a huge percentage of it you would class as being
04:51in this inside channel and, crucially, virtually none down here.
04:57And what does that tell you?
04:58Well, that tells you he is the right-sided attacker,
05:00but he never, ever, if he can help it, gets to the byline.
05:04Because when he's running with the ball, he's going inside instead.
05:08Like, clearly, he is starting in these wide areas,
05:11but he's getting, with the ball or without it, into these ones.
05:15Which, and my God, thank you, Opta, for this one,
05:18is even better illustrated by this.
05:21Every single one of his chance-creating carries last season.
05:25And you might well be thinking,
05:26well, just hang on a second, Adam, I'm actually not a total nerd.
05:29I've never once sat around a pub talking about chance-creating carries.
05:33Can you translate that for normal people, please?
05:36And, yes, of course, right you are.
05:38A carry is simply running with the ball, which you probably already knew.
05:41And these are all the times he did that in the Premier League last season
05:46that directly led to a shot, either for him or someone else.
05:51The red ones are chances he made for himself.
05:53The blue ones are chances he made for just anybody else.
05:56And if you are part of the audience who watches this on their mobile phone,
06:00instead of on the telly in their living room,
06:02which is what I secretly hope everybody does,
06:04you might have to squint a little bit.
06:05But if you look, follow these circles back to their point of origin,
06:09they almost all start in wide areas before moving into that inside channel,
06:16just like that Newcastle United goal,
06:18because that is what Brian and Bermode does.
06:22And out of all of these chances, either for him or for somebody else,
06:2611 of them ended up in the back of that net last season.
06:31And I can already tell, I can feel it, I can sense it through the screen.
06:34You want to ask the single most important question about that stat, don't you?
06:41Is that good?
06:43Is 11 a lot?
06:45Last season, there was only Mo Salah got or made more gold this way with 13.
06:52And that 11 not only put some level with Vinicius Jr. in, like, joint second,
06:57but one ahead of Lamine Yamal.
07:00So, yes, that is quite impressive.
07:04You would expect only the very best players in the very best teams
07:08to be posting those sort of numbers for doing that particular thing.
07:12So just to quickly reiterate that pecking order for you, right?
07:15You've got Liverpool, then Real Madrid and Brentford, then Barcelona.
07:21And when you look at his numbers, you can just see why he's so effective at doing this.
07:25These are genuinely extraordinary for any player, let alone, with all due respect,
07:31someone playing for the team that finished 10th in the Premier League last season.
07:35Key passes, which is just making chances, passes into the box, crosses into the box.
07:39He's at the very top of European football for all those numbers,
07:43as well as carries into the penalty area, carries into the final third,
07:48like taking on players, beating players.
07:50He's very quietly, over the last couple of years, jumped into this elite bracket of players in European football
07:56for just being a real, direct, go-and-do-it-yourself attacking threat.
08:02But you watch any set of clips for him, either creating or going for goal himself,
08:06and you just see defenders properly panicked whenever he faces them up.
08:11Like, this is a particularly favourite and Buemo example of mine,
08:14and if you are a Man United fan, you'll probably enjoy it as well.
08:19They're playing Liverpool, and Buemo squares up Simicas early on,
08:23and immediately Alexis McAllister joins in to try and shut off him going inside the full-back.
08:30Now, don't worry, there's a lot more to this, but even just from this bit,
08:33you can see that Liverpool's game plan was to double up on him.
08:36They did not think they could live with him 1v1, so they did not want to let that happen,
08:41which, if you're a player, huge compliment, but if you're a manager,
08:45will leave you with several exploitable opportunities from where those players go missing from.
08:51But this doubling up doesn't work, because just by occupying the brain space of these two players,
08:57the full-back is able to overlap really easily and get to the byline.
09:02Now, of course, if this was at Man United, that's not a full-back,
09:05that's a wing-back whose job is to provide that outside run even more than a full-back would be
09:11doing it.
09:12So already, that bodes quite well.
09:14Now, Brentford don't actually score from this, but when you look at it right here,
09:18Brentford absolutely should score from this, and that's all because of Umbermo.
09:21Now, the next time the ball comes to him, the transition has been so quick,
09:25they've caught Alexis McAllister out,
09:26so both Virgil van Dijk and Cody Gakpo think,
09:30oh shit, someone's got to get over there, and they race to cover.
09:33Now, in my opinion, it's actually a bad idea for him to shoot here,
09:37because if you pause it at that exact moment,
09:39and you look at what has happened simply as a consequence of his presence,
09:43his gravity, his aura, as people younger than me might say,
09:47then he can slip the full-back in here to give Rissa a tap-in.
09:51Or, if you've got the deafness, the arrogance, the riz, I guess,
09:57I don't know how people talk anymore,
09:59then you can just lock that in yourself and give Rissa a go.
10:03He has pulled, just by existing, the centre-backs apart like this,
10:08and again, that's just what he does.
10:10Like, this is 10 minutes later, the exact same scenario,
10:13the exact same three players,
10:16all getting drawn towards him easier than I get drawn towards Gothlass's,
10:21with loads of black eyeliner on.
10:23And again, he does make the wrong decision here.
10:26He goes for goal when he should be slipping in his full-back.
10:30Which, yeah, in all seriousness, he probably will have to improve,
10:33because this Man United system lives and dies
10:35by your ability to draw the opposition towards this player
10:39before slipping in this player and then rolling it across from this player.
10:44Like, Victor Jokeres is going to go to Arsenal for like £60 or £70 million or something,
10:48purely because of how well this idea worked at Sporting.
10:52So, he's doing the hard bit, like the bit that most players can't do.
10:56He's doing that, but he's got to get his peripherals up,
11:00because that's the easy part.
11:01But yeah, if you just mentally strip away the Brentford kits from this image,
11:05it's about as picture-perfect and ideal as you could have
11:08for what Amerenball is supposed to be.
11:11Direct attacking threats in the 10 positions,
11:13supported by wing-backs with the ultimate goal being
11:16to give the forward a chance he simply cannot miss.
11:20And the reality is, for Man United,
11:22while they did have very talented players in these two positions last season,
11:26like Fernandes had a go,
11:28Maynou, Mount, Garnaccio, Ahmad,
11:30you don't fear any of them in this part of the pitch
11:34the way you would fear Mbermo.
11:37Like, yes, some of them offer the transitional threat that you really want,
11:40and some of them do have that technical threat in possession,
11:43but none of them, you would argue, have both.
11:46Certainly not to that standard.
11:48Like, I can absolutely guarantee you,
11:49Bruno Fernandes does play this pass for the overlap, absolutely,
11:53but he doesn't then skin you alive
11:55when you turn the ball over in your own half.
11:58And likewise, a Madden Garnaccio,
11:59you absolutely do not want to see running at you with the ball.
12:03But when they get into a position like this,
12:05are you throwing three players at them in a panic
12:08because of what they might do?
12:10No, I would argue, or at least not yet.
12:12But Mbermo is a player who gives you all of that
12:15and just this staggering level of intensity as well.
12:19And this is what would excite me,
12:20a really bad nerd, more than just the goals, right?
12:23According to Opta,
12:24he made more off-the-ball runs,
12:27like over a thousand of them,
12:29while a teammate had the ball,
12:30than every other player in the Premier League last season.
12:35Only Bruno at Newcastle and Daniel Munoz covered more ground than him in total.
12:40So, like, he's arguably the third hardest worker in the Premier League,
12:46if you want to measure that purely by graft.
12:49And actually, no, you make a good point there.
12:51That's not really a great measure of it, is it?
12:53Just, like, running around.
12:55Like, you put me or you in a Premier League team and just run around,
12:58doesn't mean it'd be good.
12:59But he came third in the entire division
13:01for the amount of times he went and won the ball back in the final third.
13:07Semenyo was top with 37.
13:10And Mbermo, who does not even play for a team
13:13who press you that often or that aggressively,
13:17was third with 32.
13:19So imagine what he might do with those running numbers,
13:23with those ball-regaining numbers,
13:25playing for a team who do press you really hard.
13:29Like, his numbers for tackles, for interceptions, for ball recoveries,
13:32they all just scream work rate, game reading, intelligence, stuff like that.
13:37And just, if by the time this video goes out, right,
13:40Man United have still not agreed a fee with Brentford.
13:43And just on the off chance, there's somebody from the club watching, right?
13:47Just, just come here, right?
13:50Just pay it.
13:51Just, f***ing pay it.
13:54Anyway, though, yes, regardless of if you're working for a Premier League club
13:57at the minute and you did enjoy the video,
13:58then please do let us know in the comments below.
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14:35So that's, that's, there you go.
14:36That's my key messaging for you.
14:38That and Brian and Bermos, Mint,
14:40and Man United should buy him if they haven't already.
14:44Bye!
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