I believe his point was that Martial should have made the diagonal run and attack the space behind the defenders after he had created the space for Mata to get on the ball in an advanced position. He's saying that Martial did only half the job right. You start wide in order to open up spaces for the midfielders and then you try to spot spaces in the box and make yourself available for a pass. Once Martial saw that Mata had turned around and he was looking for options, he should have made the run in the box. Staying wide throughout the whole move would have made sense if, instead of Mata, we had someone like Matuidi who would get on the ball and "bulldoze" his way into the box. Our wide forwards must be able to spot these runs because we can't just pass them the ball in the wide areas and expect them to dribble their way in the box all the time. It hasn't worked out well till now and it's one of the reasons we look so static.
Are United slow due to initiating moves from a stationary position?
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I believe his point was that Martial should have made the diagonal run and attack the space behind the defenders after he had created the space for Mata to get on the ball in an advanced position. He's saying that Martial did only half the job right. You start wide in order to open up spaces for the midfielders and then you try to spot spaces in the box and make yourself available for a pass. Once Martial saw that Mata had turned around and he was looking for options, he should have made the run in the box. Staying wide throughout the whole move would have made sense if, instead of Mata, we had someone like Matuidi who would get on the ball and "bulldoze" his way into the box. Our wide forwards must be able to spot these runs because we can't just pass them the ball in the wide areas and expect them to dribble their way in the box all the time. It hasn't worked out well till now and it's one of the reasons we look so static.
Right me too. Its very easy to see the poor players when playing possesion football and so in my eyes; very easy to improve. Whether that be dropping players or buying new ones; it's easy to spot players who drop out of form because ultimately we have the ball in majority.
When i look at barcelona or bayern play, whenever one of the front 3 get the ball; be that neymar, robben, messi, suarez, lewandowski etc - they all attack together. It becomes very hard to defend against because 3 attackers vs 4defenders are usually one piece of skill or a pass away from being one on one.
Right now, i see memphis lacking any confidence on the left to take on a player, mata not staying wide and cuts in without the ball and martial has been good but not interlinking the front 3 either.
For me, mata is so easy to mark out the game in wide positions that the rest of the defence can handle depay and martial fine.
Right now, i see memphis lacking any confidence on the left to take on a player, mata not staying wide and cuts in without the ball and martial has been good but not interlinking the front 3 either.
For me, mata is so easy to mark out the game in wide positions that the rest of the defence can handle depay and martial fine.
It makes sense to have more of the ball than your opponent, but not just for the sake of it, which is what we seem to do.
Haven't even finished reading all the posts but great thread. 
Excellent analysis on Guardiola by Henry.
Watching that video, it is very similar to the way Van Gaal expects his team to play, I would even go as far as saying there's very little difference.
However, I noticed that in the final third, those Barcelona players made excellent runs.
I have heard Van Gaal in his post match interview, complain many times that not enough players were running in behind. It leads me to speculate that a huge part of the problem is our players failure to learn how to make runs and the timing of those runs.
Henry has said many times that Guardiola was always obsesing about players positions on the pitch. He once said it was drilled into them so much so that he went to bet dreaming about tactical position.
That sounds as rigid as Van Gaal.
You're correct, we look so out of sync when we have possession in the final third that is painful to watch. The teams you mentioned possess abilities up front we can only dream of with our squad.
Firstly, good positioning/off the ball movement, great vision and quality on the ball in narrow spaces/under pressure. Whenever one of Barca's or Bayern's players receives the ball in between the lines, that's the cue for the others to start making runs and attacking spaces. But they are confident enough that the player on the ball will not concede possession but he will find the right pass in most cases. With Rooney passing the ball backwards the moment he receives it, with Mata always moving sideways/backwards under pressure cause he can't turn his man and with Memphis and Martial rarely raising their heads to see where their teammates are but always trying to punch through the wall, we won't see much improvement soon.
Secondly, creativity from what LvG has described as "half spaces", the spaces between the opponent's defense and midfield and in the two channels between the FBs and CBs. This is right at the core of LvG's philosophy because if you get your good passers in those areas, they can spot all the runs in the box and especially the diagonal run on the other side that aims to exploit the space behind the opposition FB and CB. Henry shows that in the two Barca videos and when you look at our video with Martial, you can see what's wrong with our players. No quality of possession in between the lines and wide forwards who don't look for spaces to exploit but just wait for the ball to come at their feet.
This is why I don't want Pep to take over. I maintain that thus style of football is not suited to England
LvG has had time to assess the squad and bring in his own players, decide their tactics and coach them.
No amount of explaining how triangles have three points and we should attack the space (again) excuses our slow, negative and boring, boring play.
He needs to go.
No amount of explaining how triangles have three points and we should attack the space (again) excuses our slow, negative and boring, boring play.
He needs to go.
Ultimately I dont blame the players for this. I know we have some horribly underperforming because they are past it but our style and system of play is being dictated by the manager and I think he has misread the EPL, how he has us set up just doesnt work in terms of satisfying both attractive football and effective football.
In a possession system, the key to good, effective movement is having top draw technicians.
If the attacking players (and midfielders/defenders to a lesser extent) aren't confident or skilled enough to receive/play the ball in tight spaces and under pressure, then they'll always need to move into deeper, less threatening spaces on the pitch. The best players are able to play high up the pitch, no mater how tight the marking is and no matter how congested things are.
The majority of the squad aren't anywhere near being top draw technicians. Most of them need to run out of any type of congestion in order to receive the ball and do anything with it. Better quality is needed. Or a shift to a less possession-based system, which favours less skilled players.
If the attacking players (and midfielders/defenders to a lesser extent) aren't confident or skilled enough to receive/play the ball in tight spaces and under pressure, then they'll always need to move into deeper, less threatening spaces on the pitch. The best players are able to play high up the pitch, no mater how tight the marking is and no matter how congested things are.
The majority of the squad aren't anywhere near being top draw technicians. Most of them need to run out of any type of congestion in order to receive the ball and do anything with it. Better quality is needed. Or a shift to a less possession-based system, which favours less skilled players.
The players already know how to make those runs, they have shown that under previous managers they have played for. They dont need to learn how to make those runs. I think they are following instruction, I blame LVG
Making those runs in a possesion team is completely different to making those runs in a countering team, which is where (to varying extents) most of the current attacking options have played their best football (Young, Rooney, Mata, Memphis)
Ultimately, the forwards lack the technical ability to make a possession system work to a high standard. They aren't skilled enough to receive the ball in dangerous areas, or do anything useful with it. And that hinders their movement. They always want that bit of space that isn't there, so they either drop into useless areas, or lose the ball.
yeah, this right here is probably the crux of it all.
This.
We have a decent squad that is struggling with this system because it doesn't suit our players. We could argue about their failure to make runs and whether the fault lies with the players or the coach, we could ship them all out and bring in new players more suited to the system, or do the more logical thing and build a system around the good players that we do have.
At AZ Alkmaar LvG eventually adopted a counter attacking game before they won the Eredivisie. Unfortunately it took him three years before he figured that one out, which is too long, seeing as his contract here will be up by then.
The discussion about possession vs counter-attacking football is a theoretical discussion about extremes. SAF's sides played attacking football but were more balanced. They usually ended up with more possession, as most sides would sit back when playing Man Utd. especially at Old Trafford, but they knew how to take advantage and punish teams that were reckless enough to push forward.
Possession in itself has no intrinsic value. It should increase a team's chances of winning, or at least not losing, by depriving opposition of the ball. It does not guarantee beautiful, exciting football or winning, as we have seen here. It's a means to an end, and that end is winning. Let's not make a dogma out of it; a win is a win, and having higher possession stats does not make it any more righteous.
At AZ Alkmaar LvG eventually adopted a counter attacking game before they won the Eredivisie. Unfortunately it took him three years before he figured that one out, which is too long, seeing as his contract here will be up by then.
The discussion about possession vs counter-attacking football is a theoretical discussion about extremes. SAF's sides played attacking football but were more balanced. They usually ended up with more possession, as most sides would sit back when playing Man Utd. especially at Old Trafford, but they knew how to take advantage and punish teams that were reckless enough to push forward.
Possession in itself has no intrinsic value. It should increase a team's chances of winning, or at least not losing, by depriving opposition of the ball. It does not guarantee beautiful, exciting football or winning, as we have seen here. It's a means to an end, and that end is winning. Let's not make a dogma out of it; a win is a win, and having higher possession stats does not make it any more righteous.
Mata had one player close to him, I think it was Rooney, he played it to him instead of to Martial who was out wide. If Rooney had played it one touch to the edge of the box, Martial coulde have run to it and been in acres of space, where he could hit it first time, dribble it and put it past the keeper, or crossed it. The space was there, because the defenders were all around Rooney and Mata. Yes, Martial could have gone behind the defenders immediately, but he also could have get in behind the defenders as the third man, not to recieve the ball from Mata, but later from Rooney. In this case that would have been a difficult pass for Rooney because he was closed down very quickly from that direction, but the space was still there for Martial and even greater. So in this case it would have been better if he would gotten in behind immediately instead of staying out wide a bit longer. But in general they should attack more in three, because it's more difficult to defend and creates more space. Mata also could have played it to Martial immediately, and Martial could have played it to Rooney. The problem is that both Mata and Rooney are not trying to attack with the three of them, but only with two.
We didn't look static to the same degree the whole seen, there has been improvement.
No, that he didn't win the Eredivisie with his more possession oriented 4-3-3 in his first season was just because they lost it on the last match day due to nerves. Things like that happen, and often happen to a club that has no experience in winning titles. Didn't have anything to do with tactics. In between he saw a lot of players going and new players coming, as a Dutch club will always have to sell and buy, tactics were changed but not because the initial tactics weren't working. If a title isn't won because of the last match, it doesn't mean the tactics were wrong.
There ar intrinsic advantages to possession football. The main advantage is that if you know what to with the ball to create chances, you should have as much of it as you can to exploit that. Knowing what to do with it has been a problem, but not a problem that has not been adressed.
It's bizarre reading these type of threads (and there's a lot of them) that so many people think this is how Van Gaal wants us to play. He doesn't want us to play tumescent, uninspiring football, he's just struggling to get the players to adapt to his style.
Rooney's definitely had a problem adapting to the system. Roll back 18 Months and Rooney was always a player who chased the ball all over the pitch. Under this system, he's asked to keep his position and been a shadow of a player he was prior to this system.
Good observation
It is a Dutch philosophy. Why it doesnt work for us currently is the speed of our ball circulation and the lack of pace or work rate upfront when we have Mata, Rooney and Fellaini in attack....
AZ had already been doing rather well under Co Adriaanse, who took them from 10th to 5th to 3rd. If LvG's achievement was winning the league with AZ, then it should be noted that he did so only after changing tactics. From the horses mouth in a 2009 interview:
The interview can be read here (behind pay wall) or here
Like at AZ Alkmaar, LVG's most recent successes, be it with the national team, or here in the second half of last season, happened when he was forced to change his preferred style and adopt a more pragmatic approach. Make what you will of that.
The aim of the game is to win, preferably in style. At the end of the day a win is worth 3 points. Different people will enjoy different aspects of the game. There is no moral high ground, only different approaches and preferences.
Each style has it's strong and weak points. Possession football over-complicates things needlessly and requires a very high quality of players, especially in the final third. Teams like Barcelona and Bayern make it look easy because they have Neymar, Suarez and Messi or Robben, Lewandowski and Muller to break down defenses. Guess what? With players like that a team could play any style of football and would still come out on top.
Co Adriaanse and Louis van Gaal were two of a kind, they're 'soul mates', brain mates actually, they think alike, they worked closely together. Co Adriaanse also could make not so very good players look like very good players who play very well. Adriaanse took Willem II to the CL and even scored a few points in the CL, you can google how small a club Willem II is yourself. It's not such a big name because it's a very difficult character to work with, but if a club lets him work under his own conditions, he can do special things, and he did it again at AZ. Compared to him Van Gaal is easy going, laid back, extremely flexible and nice and polite to the press. That might explain why he isn't an internationally known manager, it's not because what he can do with a group of players. AZ was such a club, and he really overachieved. His footballl with AZ was as gorgeous as it comes without players with the special skills of Messi etc.
Adriaanse put on a great show of attacking football, Van Gaal made them title contenders. He did that before he changed tactics, he changed tactics because it suited those players he had a couple of years later better, he had signed young Pelle, but he was going trough a difficult spell in which nothing worked for him, his back up signing Ari suddenly did very well, and he made a line up that suited his players best. He has always done that, but most tactical changes were within the bounderies of 4-3-3, 3-4-3, pointing forward, pointing backward, centre forward behind the wide forwards, centre forward up top. But he never had to sacrifice 4-3-3 in any form to suit the players because Ajax and Barcelona can make sure he has the players who are suited by some form of 4-3-3.
I'm not taking a moral high ground. I'm pointing out that possession football gives you the initiative, and that's a very practical advantage. For example last spring, when Liverpool had to score a goal in the last 10 minutes, and United was just having possesion and had them chasing the ball without any succes. Or when you for some reason find your self behind 2 goals after 4 minutes. Any counter attacking team would feel a bit of panic, but if you're playing the possession game well, it only means you have 86 minutes left to score 3 goals and you can just start doing what you do best.
No, they don't. Barcelona was a mess before Enrique took over, Guardiola didn't always come out on top with Barcelona either, and with Bayern we've also seen that Enrique did a better job than him with very good players.
Especially players like that can profit from a complicated organization where there's not relied on their individual brilliance. There's an advantage to be gained from having those players really playing together well. This could be either possession football or counter football, the difference is that possession football only exists with a complicated organization and players playing together well, and counter football could do without it. In that case it's not as good as it could have been, but can still be good.
Counter football is just more suitable for mid and lower table clubs, because if you have to win every match, you can't afford waiting for the other team to attack to make goals.