- 2 hours ago
Michael Carrick has been appointed 'Interim Head Coach' at Manchester United until the end of the season. But what tactics will he use? And what does that mean for the likes of Kobbie Mainoo, Bruno Fernandes, and others. Adam Clery looks at his time at Middlesbrough, and his previous stint at Manchester United, to understand how he'll set the team up.
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00:00Right, hello everybody, welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel, where Michael Carrick is the new Manchester United manager for
00:08a bit.
00:08And if you are a Manchester United fan, you're hoping that's going to make things better for a bit.
00:14So, the question is, will it? And what will it eventually end up looking like?
00:20Well, straight in here, I want you to take a look at this situation from Middlesbrough vs Hull a few
00:26months after Carrick took that job.
00:29First off, you've got five in the forward line here, albeit these two are slightly deeper, but there's nothing doing
00:34for them.
00:34So, they recycle the ball, and when they do, you can see they're building with a 3-2 at the
00:40back.
00:41And that is all very straightforward. You see the top clubs in the Premier League do that all the time.
00:45But a few seconds, after probing down the left, getting nowhere and trying the right instead,
00:50the centre forward drops to get on the ball, turns and plays in the left winger with this gorgeous pass
00:58into the space.
00:59He advances on goal and duly scores.
01:02Now, yes, you're right, that is maybe the worst piece of goalkeeping you've ever seen.
01:07And also, yes, you're right, it was absolutely, probably a cross.
01:10But regardless, it does neatly illustrate the major thing Carrick is going to try and do at Manchester United.
01:17So, just for now, remember that clip.
01:21Now, to start with the fundamentals, Michael Carrick has almost exclusively used,
01:25both at Middlesbrough and his very brief stint at Manchester United,
01:29a 4-2-3-1 shape that, as you've already seen, morphs into a 3-2-5 when they are
01:36in possession.
01:37And this is a system that has become very, very popular in the last couple of years
01:41because, if you take a look at it here, it allows you to be dominant on the ball and have
01:46high possession
01:46because you've got four central midfielders in this area of the pitch,
01:50but at the same time, still five in the attacking line, which will normally outnumber a back four.
01:56And crucially, if you lose the ball, you've got lots of different ways you can go and get it back,
02:01or, if you can't get through, you can recycle it very easily with the players in this part of the
02:06pitch.
02:06And, as a result, in his first season at Middlesbrough, they had some of the highest possession in the league,
02:12and in his last, it was only marginally down from that.
02:15In fact, even though he failed to get them promoted across three consecutive seasons
02:20where they were loosely, if not largely, fancy to do so,
02:24all of their underlying numbers suggested that they should comfortably have gotten into the playoffs.
02:29They were just maybe a little bit unlucky.
02:32Only Leeds, who were on a mad one last season, created more chances or had more shots on target.
02:38Their XG was third, which is really, really good.
02:42And, obviously, it's a 40-odd game season, so it's considerably more complicated than this,
02:46but in really simple terms, what let Middlesbrough down last year was shot conversion.
02:52They were down to 18th for goals per shot, so they weren't being clinical,
02:56and their XG differential was negative, so they should have had at least five or six more goals.
03:02And if you remember that they're only, like, four points outside the playoffs,
03:06that's two or three more results across a season,
03:08and five or six more goals almost certainly gets you two or three more results,
03:14so they can feel a little bit unlucky.
03:16But if not getting Middlesbrough promoted feels like a little bit of a red flag to you, right,
03:21keep in mind he's doing this on about half the budget Leeds and Burnley had.
03:26So 10th last year was about what's expected,
03:29and the two seasons before that, actually pretty impressive in that context.
03:34But anyway, yes, back to the system, right?
03:36What tended to work pretty consistently well for Middlesbrough
03:39was when they got these five players in the attacking line.
03:43And the reason I showed you that goal at the very start
03:46is because this man here is not the left winger.
03:50That is, in actual fact, the left back, Ryan Giles.
03:53And when Middlesbrough were at their best in that first season,
03:56he is what made them sing.
03:58He got 11 assists that season, nearly twice as many as any other player in the team,
04:03and this super aggressive full-back play
04:05is pretty much the core component of how Michael Carrick builds his teams.
04:10But he doesn't start immediately in the forward line
04:13the way you might necessarily expect.
04:15He takes more of a conservative starting position,
04:18and as the play builds through the thirds,
04:21he waits for his moment for the left forward
04:23to take the defender inside and then bursts into the space.
04:28So here, Borough get forward,
04:29and it goes into the feet of Riley McGee, who's the left winger,
04:32and you will note that Giles is not currently in the shot until, bang, he is.
04:38But the full-back is locked on to the man in front of him here.
04:41He can't just leave him and go and cover a cross,
04:43even though for some reason the centre-back is pointing
04:46and telling him to do that,
04:48even though they're both, like, 10, 15 yards away, which is odd.
04:52Anyway, steams in, hits a first-time early cross,
04:55and Middlesbrough get one of the 11 goals he assisted from that.
04:59Likewise against Reading, twice in the same game,
05:02he gets in behind a full-back that's preoccupied with the winger,
05:06delivers early, and both of these situations wind up being goals again.
05:12And the two major things you'll notice about all of those situations, right,
05:16are that A, one, he is not in the last line, the attacking line,
05:20when the move is starting,
05:21and B, two, right, he does not hold on to the ball unnecessarily.
05:26He does not try and get additional yards by cutting into the box
05:29or waiting to see what's available.
05:31He hits it early.
05:33And the reason he delivers it so early is because it stops the defence getting set
05:37and, more often than not, can wind up catching them out.
05:41And those 11 assists, by the way,
05:43they should have been, like, 20 or 25.
05:45If you go back and watch Middlesbrough that season,
05:48there are so many examples of them manufacturing this exact situation
05:53and just being wasteful with the finishing.
05:56Now, the thing is, Giles was only on loan and left at the end of that season.
06:01So Carrick, instead, decided to tweak it and try and do the same thing.
06:06But this time, with Luke Ayling, the right back.
06:09He encouraged him to get all the way up the pitch and try and do a similar job.
06:13It did not work anywhere near as well.
06:15They tried a few different things across the season.
06:17But lo and behold, Ayling was still the team's top assister
06:21and had more crosses into the box that season than any two other players.
06:27And what you can take from that, as a Man United fan,
06:30is that there is a level of pragmatism in terms of how you go about things,
06:34but still a really strong belief that you should be getting aggressive play
06:39from at least one of the full-backs.
06:41And, in fact, if you go back far enough to his time at Man United,
06:45that three-game run he had,
06:46which, by the way, that's unbeaten against Emery, Arteta and Tuchel,
06:50just FYI, it coincided with the best run of form Alex Tellez ever had in the shirt.
06:58And, obviously, he scored that absolute worldie against Villarreal.
07:01But if you go and look at Manchester United's attack map from that game,
07:05so which areas of the pitch were they most dominant when they were attacking,
07:09and then, just to take that in for a second,
07:12you overlay his personal heat map from that match,
07:16you can see that he was pretty much playing as the left-sided forward
07:19when Jadon Sancho tucked in.
07:21Alex Tellez put in eight crosses in this match all by himself,
07:25and the next highest player anywhere on the pitch
07:28was Bruno Fernandes with three.
07:31So, this is almost exactly the same thing
07:33as he was having Giles do at Middlesbrough.
07:36You can see the vision.
07:37Now, look, obviously, there's a lot more to Michael Carrick's Middlesbrough
07:40than just they push one of the full-backs really high,
07:43and that's how they create their chances.
07:45Like, for example, they are unusually adept
07:48at switching to counter-attacking play
07:50when things are not going their own way.
07:53Small example of what I mean here,
07:54like, last season they played Luton,
07:56were not at all at it in possession,
07:58and Luton actually wound up having more of the ball in the first half.
08:02So, like, midway through that game,
08:03they adapted what they were doing to just sit a lot deeper
08:06and start trying to hit balls in behind.
08:09Ailing should score from this cutback from Doak,
08:11they get another one later from the exact same situation
08:14where they do score, and then they hit a fourth
08:16by just doing it right through the centre of the pitch.
08:19And they're also very rigid about wanting to play out from the back,
08:22and that was one of the major criticisms he got
08:26while he was at the club.
08:28I went to double-check this with Borough Breakdown's Dana Malt.
08:32Hi, Dana.
08:33And she said what ultimately undid Carrick at Middlesbrough was,
08:37and I'm quoting here,
08:38we conceded so many pig-shit goals.
08:42Like, in particular, she pointed out they took a 1-0 lead to Chelsea
08:45in the Carabao Cup semi-finals,
08:47and instead of being as solid as possible
08:50to make the game really tight and difficult for Chelsea,
08:53they just kept trying to play out from the back
08:56and got hammered.
08:57Early on, there's two nothing challenges here
09:00that allow Chelsea in to score,
09:02and then, in both halves,
09:04they managed to get caught in possession really, really deep.
09:08Like, that first one there is for Cole Palmer,
09:11and this one, even worse, I think, is for Madweke.
09:14So, yeah, nowhere near as uncompromising as Ruben Amorim was,
09:19but still a degree of stubbornness
09:22in terms of doing what he wants to do,
09:24regardless of the opposition.
09:26Now, some people call that having a philosophy.
09:29Others call it really fucking annoying,
09:32so I'll leave that to you.
09:34But, yes, anyway, my point is that there was a lot
09:36to his Middlesbrough side and thus to him as a manager,
09:39but the reason I am hyper-fixating on this full-back thing
09:43is because it's the most pertinent element
09:46of his managerial style
09:48when it comes to working out what he's going to do
09:51at Man United,
09:52which is what we're going to look at now.
09:54Because out of all of Man United's current full-back options,
09:58the thing you need to strike between the two
10:00is a balance.
10:01If you want one of them to be spending most of the game
10:04at the very top end of the pitch in this attacking line,
10:08then they don't just need the engine
10:09to be able to get up and down,
10:11but they need to genuinely be able to make things happen.
10:15They can't just be a body all that way up the pitch.
10:18They need to have proved they can create things
10:20in the Premier League.
10:22But for that to work,
10:22you need somebody on the other side
10:24who is very comfortable tucking in as a three
10:27when needs be,
10:28but at the same time can still play as a proper full-back
10:31getting up the pitch
10:32when the situation demands it.
10:35You can't just stick a centre-back in there
10:37who's got nothing else to their game.
10:39If I'm trying to imagine, right,
10:40that I'm Michael Carrick,
10:42which is not that difficult
10:43because he's from Wildsend
10:45and I'm from North Shields
10:46and it's like four or five stops on the Metro,
10:49something like that.
10:49If I'm trying to imagine I'm him,
10:51I think there's two really good options here.
10:54Either Patrick Dorgou at left-back,
10:57hear me out here, right,
10:58and Yoro or Mas Rauri at right-back,
11:01or Luke Shaw at left-back
11:03with Ahmad at right-back.
11:06Now, both of those ideas,
11:07yeah, I can already see the face you're pulling,
11:09both of those ideas have positives and negatives,
11:12but the main positive amongst all of them
11:14is that one of them keeps Ahmad in the team.
11:18And don't get me wrong,
11:19I think Dorgou was quite unfairly maligned
11:21given he's still only 21.
11:23Like, these are his numbers here
11:24from just this season.
11:26And, yeah, all right,
11:27this is the full-backs category
11:28and he's been playing more as a wing-backs.
11:30There's a slight, slight advantage there,
11:32but just go with it.
11:33He still gets through a lot of work going forward.
11:36His carries are excellent.
11:37His passes into the final third
11:38and penalty area are excellent.
11:40His crosses are excellent.
11:41And he's no slouch defensively either.
11:44And granted, yes, when you watch him,
11:46the eye test tells you
11:47that while a lot of the stuff he does
11:48might be high volume,
11:50it's not necessarily high quality,
11:52but I would imagine
11:54if this was the only option available to Michael Carrick,
11:57he would be very happy to try and use him
11:59in that Ryan Giles capacity.
12:01He'd be quite excited about that.
12:03You could then use Mason Mount in front of him
12:05as he's very adept at that start-wide
12:07and coming to the central area.
12:08You've got Bruno Fernandes in the 10,
12:10keeps him in at the final third.
12:12And I think it's not perfect,
12:14but that is still an attacking line
12:16that could cause a lot of teams in the Premier League
12:19a number of problems.
12:21You'd probably then have Maynou and Casemiro
12:23behind all of that.
12:24And just to agree with the quite literally
12:28millions of Manchester United fans
12:29who think this team needs a like dominant
12:32in both boxes, all action,
12:35really physical, really technical central midfielder.
12:39Yes, yes, you do.
12:41But the issue with this system is the personnel.
12:44You now cannot have Ahmad unless you drop Umbermo.
12:48You cannot have Cunha unless you drop Sesco.
12:51And yes, obviously, it's a squad game these days.
12:54You need to think beyond just having 11 players.
12:57But Man Utd are now famously in a 40-game season.
13:01They have nothing else going on in their week.
13:04They should be able to go into every single Premier League game
13:08with their strongest 11.
13:10And if two players who are very good are not in that,
13:13they're barely going to feature.
13:15So with that in mind, I think, honestly,
13:20there is a world where Michael Carrick may attempt this.
13:25You go with Luke Shaw at left back,
13:26so he can tuck across and give you a nice back three.
13:29Ahmad now at right back,
13:31so he can be that player that plays at both ends of the pitch,
13:34which allows Umbermo to play more centrally as he tucks across.
13:38Bruno Fernandes also in the tent.
13:40And Cunha out on the left,
13:43which gives you, when you're in your attacking phase,
13:46your five best attacking players all in that line.
13:50And it is mad, obviously.
13:52Like, that is how eight-year-olds play FIFA,
13:54rather than how actual football managers manage actual football teams.
13:58But I do think, at certain times or in certain games,
14:01you will see it.
14:03Like, it puts all of your best players in that attacking line.
14:05It allows Bruno Fernandes onto his preferred side in the final third.
14:09And he can rotate with Cunha a little bit
14:11to allow him nearer to the goal.
14:14I think, yeah, it's nuts, but it is doable.
14:18And don't get me wrong, if this is me,
14:20I'd probably go with Mount from the start rather than Cunha,
14:24because he can rotate with Fernandes in that sort of position as well,
14:27offers you a box threat,
14:28and is, I'll be kind and generous here,
14:32slightly harder working out of possession.
14:35And also, the glaring issue with this team,
14:37just to rewind it a bit,
14:38is I have literally said in videos about Ruben Amorim
14:42that if you are forcing Ahmad to be a defensive player,
14:46then it is not his fault what happens when he's defending,
14:50it's yours.
14:51In any game where he winds up getting forced back,
14:53that is going to be a massive weak spot that other teams will target.
14:57But, the difference here is that by having Umbermo
15:00directly in front of him,
15:01rather than one of two tens who's playing a lot more centrally,
15:05that will give you, and him, a little bit more protection.
15:09And also, just Matthias De Ligt being back in the team
15:11will help everybody around him,
15:13regardless of how natural they are in their position.
15:16So, I do think there is more defensive stability to be had,
15:21even if you're playing it on, like, super duper max attacking mode.
15:26So yes, I think if you're Michael Carrick,
15:28you know exactly how you want this team to operate.
15:30The only decision you have to really make
15:32is are you more comfortable asking a defender
15:36to be a member of your attacking line,
15:38or asking an attacker to be a part of your back four.
15:42Whichever one he thinks will work better,
15:44who knows he might change it between games,
15:46I think that dictates the rest of the selection.
15:49But what about Kabi Mainu?
15:51Adam, he's a central midfielder,
15:53and Michael Carrick was a central midfielder.
15:55Do you think he's going to get more games under this manager now?
15:58Because we all just, we all think he's so great.
16:00And yes, yes, I do think that.
16:02I think Kabi Mainu will start every single game under Michael Carrick,
16:06because Kabi Mainu is amazing,
16:08and Michael Carrick, as far as I'm aware,
16:11has never been kicked in the head by a horse.
16:14I think things in general will just get immediately better for Manchester United,
16:18but the one area of concern I would have,
16:21if I was you, Mr. or Mrs. Manchester United fan,
16:25is that Michael Carrick has proved he's a manager
16:27who can get a really effective and ambitious attacking game plan off,
16:31but there is very little evidence to suggest he's as good at coaching his teams off the ball.
16:38Like, as I showed you, last season they created enough chances to get into the playoffs,
16:43but when you look at the shots on target and the XG against,
16:46they were way, way down in mid-table.
16:50They had almost the same XG against as Luton,
16:54and Luton got relegated,
16:57so that's not great.
16:59So yeah, there is a lot to like about what he's going to do with this team,
17:03especially in an attacking sense,
17:05like go and look up Chupa Akpom's career
17:08before Michael Carrick,
17:10during Michael Carrick,
17:11and after Michael Carrick,
17:12and tell me that does not bode extremely well for Benjamin Szeszko,
17:17but this is still a team with a lot of frailties,
17:20especially defensively,
17:22and if he can't get things going at this end of the pitch,
17:24he's going to really struggle to improve things at this end
17:27in the time he's got.
17:28But, as ever, that's just what I think, isn't it?
17:32I'm far more interested in your opinion,
17:34again, Mr. or Mrs. Manchester United fan.
17:36Are you excited about Carrick getting a couple of months?
17:40Would you rather have had Oli?
17:43You could have had Rude.
17:43Would you rather have actually gone and got your proper manager
17:46immediately to give them the rest of the season?
17:48Are you a little bit sort of put out
17:50that they've said definitely 100% no matter what he does,
17:53he is not getting the job?
17:55Is that a bit unfair?
17:56What if he wins every single game 11-0?
18:00Would they still not give him the job then?
18:01All thoughts, all feelings, all, like, songs of your heart welcome.
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18:41Until next time, though,
18:42that is simply just what is happening at Manchester United this week.
18:45Boy, am I glad I'm never going to have to do another
18:48why the 3-4-2-1 system does not work for them video.
18:53Late Christmas present from Ruben Amarum,
18:55that's getting the sack.
18:57I hope he's doing well.
18:58He always strikes me as a very nice chap,
19:00and I've heard that he is,
19:01so I'm rambling now.
19:02Goodbye.
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