- 7 hours ago
Manchester Untied could have gone 4th in the table with victory against Everton, and yet conspired to lose despite having an extra man. But after some improved form, why did Ruben Amorim's team looks so toothless in a game that should have been very winnable. Adam Clery looks at what the limitations of this team still are, and why those were exposed by David Moyes.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Right, hello everybody, welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel, and just to get straight to the point for you,
00:05Manchester United, who it felt had maybe started to turn a corner, got beat off Everton, despite them being at
00:13home,
00:14and also, more importantly, Everton only having ten players, and that feels worthy of discussion.
00:21They are given the earliest imaginable Christmas present from Idrissa Gay, incidentally maybe the funniest red card of all time,
00:28in my opinion, play something like 70 minutes against ten men, and make maybe two decent chances.
00:36So how then, did a team that could have gone fourth last night with a win, manage to turn in
00:41what some Manchester United fans are calling
00:44their worst performance under Ruben Amorim?
00:48Well, not to spoil the thrust of the video, but for a man who says the system doesn't really matter,
00:53the answer is, in fact, entirely, the system.
01:00Right, I cannot afford to waste any time today, because apparently, Tiny Temper needs to be in this room at
01:05some point in the next hour,
01:07and, yep, that's all the information I've got on that, but you're right, this video is maybe one whole day
01:13late.
01:14But that is because, as you can see, we have been renovating here at ACFC Towers.
01:19FOTMOB, our official data partners, they have provided us with a nice new pitch,
01:23because the other one was looking incredibly tatty,
01:24and Superbet, who are absolutely real, have gone and splurged on some pitch-side advertising.
01:31So, there you go. That's nice, isn't it?
01:33Oh, and also, as I mentioned yesterday, the shirts are finally, finally, finally, finally available to buy,
01:40and if you remember, you get some money off them.
01:42It'll all be in the description.
01:43Right, anyway, these were your two lineups.
01:46They were pretty much as you'd expect,
01:47although Man United were having to navigate a few injuries at the top of the pitch,
01:50and then very early on, Idrissa Gay goes, whoop, see you later,
01:54and I, not even doing this performatively, thought that was class.
01:58Like, honestly, you have no idea how many footballers do not give a shit about the games,
02:06about their team, about the entire sport, right?
02:09So, give me 11 lads who will do the stupidest thing you've ever seen over one bad pass,
02:15and I will win you the lot.
02:19Anyway, this should have ended the game pretty much as a contest,
02:22but Manchester United's approach from here was this, right?
02:26And obviously, we'll have more footage and clever graphs and statistics and all that,
02:30but I could honestly stand here for 10 whole minutes with just this one image
02:34and tell you absolutely everything you need to know just from that.
02:39Now, your opponents are down to 10 men.
02:40They are in a 4-4-1 low block.
02:43They are camped in their own half.
02:44They're not engaging you at the back under any circumstances,
02:47and you've basically got five players standing outside their defensive shape.
02:53And that means what you are doing here is you are trying to build up possession
02:56and make things happen with three almost entirely motionless centre-backs,
03:01none of which are being challenged with the ball.
03:04And you'd maybe get away with something like this if your wing-backs are actually just two proper forwards
03:09who are just sort of good at tracking back,
03:11or your centre-centre-back is really just like a midfielder who's seven foot tall
03:16and loves getting into the middle.
03:17But no, that is not what's going on here for Man United.
03:20Their wing-backs are Dogu and Masrari,
03:22and their centre-centre-back is a centre-back.
03:26They stayed rigidly in this shape from kick-off to the final whistle,
03:30and Manchester United fans,
03:32I cannot even begin to imagine how frustrating that must be to watch.
03:38And we're just going to show you the goal they conceded first, right?
03:41Because I think in all of the analysis,
03:42they somehow managed to miss just how bad a goal to concede this really was.
03:48It all comes from Jordan Pickford just punting the ball downfield,
03:52and just hang on a second here, lads, right?
03:55You're a man up.
03:56Granted, this is sort of the second phase from a set-piece that happened a couple of seconds ago,
04:00but just why are you letting the goalkeeper have that ball there for free?
04:07This is maybe as adventurous as Everton are going to be for the rest of the game,
04:11and there's not an ounce of pressure on him.
04:14The fact they've left Keane and Tarkovsky up the field means they do have to drop into a back five,
04:19so no criticism there,
04:20but just look at what is in front of that back five.
04:25Man United win the header,
04:27and Everton can pick up the second ball as easy as you like.
04:31You've got your only four attacking players,
04:34high but not pressing,
04:36and your six defensive players incredibly deep,
04:39and just nothing in between.
04:43And that is honestly about as badly organised as you can possibly look as a football team.
04:49These four didn't press,
04:51they didn't rush Pickford,
04:52they didn't cut off any options he was ever likely to take,
04:55they just stopped defending.
04:57And that's fine if the rest of the team push up with them,
05:01and they squeeze,
05:02and they keep the spaces quite narrow,
05:04but they don't.
05:05They see the long ball coming,
05:07and they all get into a back five and drop off.
05:10And granted, yes,
05:11it does sort of go around the houses a bit before the actual chance,
05:14but it's from this situation that they just never properly reset or recover from.
05:19Dewsbury Hall gets the ball between the lines,
05:21can turn,
05:21jumps through two nothing challenges,
05:24and lashes it in.
05:25And just also,
05:27are we saying if that's Onana,
05:29you'd be getting criticism for not saving the shot?
05:32I like Lamons, mate,
05:34don't get me wrong,
05:34I think he's a very good goalkeeper,
05:35but that is a wrist made of wheatabix, my friend.
05:38You should do better.
05:39But anyway,
05:39regardless,
05:40you go back to this moment from the long ball,
05:42you look at that,
05:43and the question you have to ask is,
05:45so what is the plan here?
05:47What is it they're supposed to be doing?
05:49And for the entire rest of the game,
05:51the answer was definitely,
05:54don't know.
05:55Because the thing is,
05:56right,
05:57playing against 10 men,
05:58there are a few core fundamentals you need to do in order to make the extra man count,
06:04right?
06:04And the most important one is width.
06:07You need two genuine wide players who'll get right on the touchline to try and stretch the opposition defense out.
06:14Because either they will do that,
06:16and the defense will stretch trying to cover them,
06:18which creates more space,
06:20and if they can win 1v1s,
06:21all the better,
06:22or the defense will ignore them entirely,
06:25wish to stay compact,
06:26and at that point,
06:27they both have space in which to operate.
06:30And from there,
06:31it's pretty much all about patience.
06:33You've just got to play those extra passes around the edge of the box to see where the openings start
06:40to appear.
06:40Maybe you have a fullback who isn't tracked by the winger,
06:43and you end up with a 2v1 on one side.
06:46That could be really good.
06:47Maybe you've got a midfielder who arrives in the box unmarked,
06:50and you can find him with a through ball or something over the top.
06:53Maybe you just keep finding yourself with really good crossing options.
06:57Whatever it is,
06:58the openings can come from absolutely any situation.
07:01You need to force the opposition to show you what mistake they're going to make.
07:08But for any of that to happen,
07:09you have to work them.
07:11You have to force them to run,
07:13to cover ground.
07:14You have to exhaust them,
07:15both physically and mentally.
07:17And the only way you can do that
07:18is by getting numbers and getting players inside and around their block.
07:23Make them uncomfortable.
07:25And just to go back to the very start of the video,
07:27Man United, at all times in this game,
07:29had three centre-backs not being pressured.
07:32Meaning, at most,
07:34they had seven players trying to disrupt Everton's block of nine.
07:40And you just don't have any sort of numerical advantage in that situation.
07:44You are somehow allowing yourself to still be outnumbered.
07:49And just to show you why that's a problem, right,
07:50these are the entire second-half passes from Luke Shaw and Lenny Yarrow.
07:56They were the two outside centre-backs.
07:58And if you watch this game on telly,
08:00Gary Neville was doing his nut at this.
08:03Now, because of how deep Everton eventually got,
08:05they were both pushed up into these areas here, right?
08:08Which, if you had a back four,
08:10then, OK, you'd want your full-backs to be starting there before,
08:14right, pushing on.
08:15But let's just highlight what actually is the danger area
08:19for a deep defensive team here.
08:21These are the places where you might be able to get one of those overlaps
08:25or one of those 2v1s
08:26or something that would unsettle Everton's defensive shape.
08:30And they are just the pair of them not there.
08:33This was as far as Yarrow got.
08:35And if you actually look at that in the game,
08:37you can see that Everton are more or less on their own touchline.
08:39So, no penetration there.
08:42And this was the one time Shaw got in behind.
08:45And Dye tracks him.
08:46He does his job there.
08:47But that is exactly what you want
08:49because you've pulled a player out of position
08:51and you've left some room for the left winger, haven't you?
08:54So, Shaw rolls it back to him.
08:57But the left winger now is right-back Diogo Dalo.
09:01So, nothing happens.
09:02But the point is,
09:03these two outside centre-backs,
09:06they were your three men.
09:08And Dye and Grealish, by and large,
09:11stuck with the two wing-backs,
09:13meaning that they could do pretty much what they wanted.
09:16Man United had to use them both
09:18to get round the outside and stretch Everton.
09:21But because they're both seen as centre-backs in this system,
09:25neither of them did that.
09:26Now, OK, maybe your worry is that
09:29if you push them on too much,
09:30you leave Barry 1v1 on a counter-attack.
09:34And just, yeah, that's fair enough, OK?
09:36But if you might just humour me for one second here, right?
09:39If I was a manager who was not so wedded
09:42to this idea of having three at the back,
09:45and OK, I've not exactly got the best bench in the world,
09:48but what I would probably do, right,
09:51is I do Dalo for Shaw,
09:53and I would do Mount for Maserari, right?
09:56And now, all of a sudden,
09:58you've got two genuine wide threats, right,
10:01with two full-backs who can comfortably overlap them.
10:05You've still got a 2v1 at the back,
10:08if you really want it.
10:09You've got two midfielders in front of that,
10:10and you've got Mason Mount,
10:11who can arrive and likes to do so,
10:13late in the box to support Joshua Xerxes.
10:17I think that, look at all the players you've now got in this block,
10:20would unsettle Everton a lot better.
10:23Or if you want, you could have even done
10:24Cobby Maynou instead of Mason Mount,
10:27and allowed Bruno Fernandes to float in these pockets
10:30between the defenders and the midfielders,
10:32and do what he does best,
10:33which is find players in and around the box.
10:36Just a thought.
10:37And I don't feel like I'm proposing anything
10:39majorly drastic with any of that.
10:41Like, I'm not a manager.
10:42It still might not have worked,
10:44but it would have categorically stopped
10:47this situation here,
10:49where you've got three surplus centre-backs,
10:52none of which are even that good
10:53at dictating the tempo of the game,
10:55forcing your best creative player in Fernandes
10:58to come out of the shape himself
11:01to get the ball to start making things happen.
11:03And every time he did,
11:05it's like, just look,
11:05what's he got in front of him here?
11:07Like, Dorgu, who is both blocked off
11:09and being keenly watched.
11:10You've got Casemiro,
11:11who does not really want it in that situation,
11:14and Mount, who he can't get the ball to,
11:17and then just nothing else.
11:20And now you've got four players
11:21outside of Everton's shape,
11:22so you're trying to disrupt nine with six.
11:24In the end here,
11:25he just gives it back to Shaw,
11:27who gives it to De Ligt,
11:28and predictably, nothing happens.
11:30And just this repeated pattern of the game,
11:32where you've got these three doing nothing,
11:34Fernandes having to come out and get on the ball,
11:36and then Man United wondering
11:37why these five players,
11:40because Casemiro's obviously not going to do it,
11:42were somehow unable to dislodge this wall of nine bodies.
11:47Like, I thought this Everton team
11:48worked really, really hard to go and get this result,
11:50but the reality is,
11:52when there are eight of you
11:53up against basically five,
11:56you don't actually have to work that hard.
11:58And I just want to talk about Bruno Fernandes for a second, right?
12:01Because I've never personally felt like
12:03he's a brilliant, deep tempo setter.
12:06I think he's far too good in the final third,
12:09around the edge of the box,
12:10to really be playing slow,
12:13ponderous passes in his own half.
12:15But this was his entire pass map from this game.
12:19And keep in mind that Everton were,
12:20on average,
12:21defending from about,
12:22let's say,
12:24this line here, okay?
12:25That means that every single one of these here
12:27is actually him
12:28taking the ball off one of the centre-backs,
12:31so they're not doing anything, really,
12:33to try and dislodge Everton,
12:35and then trying to make something happen himself.
12:38He does get in his favoured left half space,
12:40that's really good.
12:40He floats around to find other pockets,
12:43excellent,
12:43but just really, like,
12:45count,
12:46count how many of these
12:48end up in the actual box.
12:50With so few actual options in front of him,
12:53he manages,
12:54by the letter of the law here,
12:56two.
12:57Just two.
12:58That's it.
12:59A player as good as that
13:00can find a teammate in the box
13:02twice when you're playing
13:0470, 80 minutes against 10 men.
13:06That is...
13:08That's bad.
13:09But do you know what it is?
13:10Give him his due, right?
13:11This mad big switch here,
13:13which ends up just outside the box,
13:15was to Ahmad,
13:15and it was
13:16the one and only time
13:18in this entire game
13:20Man United moved Everton around,
13:22stretched them out of position,
13:24and found an opening.
13:25But I bet
13:26you don't remember it.
13:27It's a great ball,
13:28he rifles it out,
13:29it's brilliantly controlled
13:30and brought down,
13:31it's a big left to right,
13:33which,
13:33say it with me,
13:35stretches Everton.
13:36Ahmad takes it,
13:37he cuts inside,
13:38he goes for the cross,
13:39and just stop it there,
13:40there is
13:41a four
13:42versus two
13:43at the back post.
13:45What did I say before?
13:46You have to let the opposition
13:48show you
13:49what mistake they're going to make,
13:50and the mistake was
13:51they all came over
13:53to the left-hand side
13:54too readily,
13:55left space at the back,
13:56and did not
13:57track the runners in there.
13:59This is textbook
14:00how to play against 10 men,
14:03but nothing comes of it.
14:05The cross,
14:06no shade on Ahmad,
14:07just isn't quite right
14:08to take advantage of this,
14:09but the whole idea here
14:10is that you'll do that again,
14:11you'll repeat it,
14:13you'll keep finding
14:14that sort of space
14:15until Everton stop
14:16you having it,
14:16and space opens up
14:18somewhere else.
14:19But this, honestly,
14:20I went back through
14:20and watched it.
14:21This was it.
14:22They never moved them around
14:24like this again.
14:25And honestly,
14:25I could stand here
14:27like all day
14:28just bringing out
14:29little examples
14:29of when they could have
14:30moved someone around
14:31and didn't,
14:31but it all just fundamentally
14:33comes back to
14:34this one still
14:35of so many players
14:37sitting off
14:38and not getting involved
14:39with trying to break
14:40Everton down.
14:41this idea
14:41of trying to dislodge
14:43two banks of four
14:45or eight
14:46as it's more commonly known
14:47with like five
14:48or six players.
14:49You no longer
14:50have a man advantage
14:52so the sending off
14:52is irrelevant.
14:53Don't get me wrong,
14:54Kobi Maynou,
14:55he helped,
14:55he got into areas
14:56that Casemiro didn't,
14:57but this obsession
14:58with staying in this shape
14:59just looks deranged
15:02during games like this.
15:03When we did
15:04the Europa League final,
15:05one of the main points
15:06I wanted to make
15:07was that at this point
15:08in the game
15:08like the 89th minute
15:10or something,
15:11you are 1-0 down
15:12in a cup final
15:13with a chance
15:14to save both your season
15:15and it felt at the time
15:17maybe your job
15:18and from a Spurs goal kick
15:20you are still
15:21in this flat back five.
15:23That is so risk averse
15:25as to almost be negligent
15:27as a manager.
15:28And then
15:29against Grimsby,
15:30League 2 opposition
15:31on the very precipice
15:33of what might go down
15:34in history
15:35as the worst result
15:36in your club's
15:37recent history,
15:37there it is
15:39again.
15:40The same shape,
15:41no compromise,
15:42no adaptation.
15:44And I'm not going
15:45to shock you here,
15:46but 1-0 down
15:46at home
15:47against 10 men
15:48with the dangling carrot
15:49of jumping into fourth
15:51heading into December,
15:53Everton take a goal kick
15:55and look
15:56what we have here.
15:58Five players
15:59marking nobody.
16:01And I know
16:02Amorim always says
16:04like it's not the shape
16:05that's really important,
16:06it's the players
16:06that are in it
16:07and what roles
16:07they have
16:08and what you're
16:08trying to do
16:09with them
16:09and yeah,
16:10alright,
16:11there is something
16:11in that,
16:12but also
16:14no,
16:15no there's not.
16:16When the shape
16:17means that your
16:18default defensive structure
16:19is a flat back five,
16:21when you do not
16:22need five defenders
16:23on the pitch,
16:24then it is the shape.
16:26If you just change
16:27the shape,
16:28that doesn't happen.
16:29Like,
16:30Ruben,
16:30if you're watching this,
16:31right,
16:32I absolutely promise you,
16:34you can change that.
16:35Like,
16:35there's five players here
16:37because you've got
16:37a back five.
16:38If you change to a back four,
16:40you would only have four.
16:41That is how that works.
16:43And just to soften the edges
16:45very,
16:45very quickly
16:46before we leave,
16:46because I do feel like
16:47I'm giving Amorim
16:47a fucking one in the ribs here
16:49and I don't really
16:49like doing that.
16:50Man United have been
16:51a lot better this season.
16:53Like,
16:53statistically,
16:54visually,
16:54everything,
16:54it checks out,
16:55they have improved
16:57and that's because
16:57he has made them
16:59a resilient,
16:59very direct team.
17:01But there are only
17:02certain games
17:03in which that's going to work
17:05and against
17:05two banks of four,
17:07a team desperately
17:08hanging on to a 1-0 lead,
17:10you can't be direct.
17:11They've taken away
17:12all the space
17:13that requires.
17:15So you need,
17:16and I know we're all
17:16sick of saying this
17:17because everybody said it
17:18last season,
17:19you need to show
17:20more adaptability.
17:21There need to be situations
17:22in which you just cope
17:24with what they're doing,
17:25not what you believe
17:27you should be doing.
17:28So,
17:29it's been a better season
17:31but things like this
17:32will keep happening
17:33if he's so,
17:35it's a word I want,
17:36stubborn.
17:37But yes,
17:37that's it for today
17:38and again,
17:39sorry this is a whole day late
17:40but as you see,
17:40we've been doing some
17:42wonderful home improvements.
17:43Please do subscribe
17:44to us here at ACFC
17:45if you haven't already.
17:46To misquote Mariah Carey,
17:48all I want for Christmas
17:50is two
17:52hundred thousand subscribers
17:53and yes,
17:54I will be doing that joke
17:55in every single video
17:56because I don't know
17:56how many people watch
17:57everything and how many.
17:58A club specific,
17:59leave me alone.
18:00You can get me across
18:01all the social medias
18:02at Adam Cleary,
18:03C-L-E-R-Y
18:04which is obviously not
18:05leaving me alone.
18:06And the shirts
18:06are finally,
18:08finally on sale.
18:09So if you'd like
18:10one of those for Christmas
18:11and you do,
18:12whoo,
18:12Hypno Toad,
18:13go and buy one.
18:14That would be,
18:15that would be great.
18:16I'm going to go now
18:17because we have
18:19other things to do.
18:20This isn't my only job,
18:21you know.
18:21Sometimes I email.
18:23Goodbye.
18:23Goodbye.
18:24Goodbye.
18:25Goodbye.
18:25Goodbye.
Comments