Yeah, of course you need a plan. But if you watched the Villa game, it was basic passing, movement and spacial awareness that was the problem. Villa were able to pen Utd into because every player bar Ronaldo was within 30 yards of the ball. As a group of players on the pitch they should be able to identify and resolve issues like that.
Yes, but on the pitch you are still relying on the players to know the triggers. Which requires those players to be able to identify and react. When you have players with poor football brains and general on field awareness, like Pogba, Fred, AWB, McT, Maguire, Bruno then this is going to break down more often than not.
Not at all. Modern players are over coached from the age of 6. They enter academies at ten or younger and are further coached into the systems. They do not develop the ability to think and learn for themselves on the pitch.
It's the equivalent of someone learning everything from a book and having to apply in the real world. As soon as something that wasn't in the book happens, they'll be lost. A lot of these Utd players look lost too often.
Players need instruction, of course they do, but they also need to have some awareness and ability to adapt to situations on the pitch. As a group they should be able to resolve little things in the game, players not making the right runs or not finding space or playing bad passes. These are all things thst should be picked up and communicated during the game. They cannot be totally controlled by the managers instructions.
Remember how much stick Mourinho got for saying Luke Shaw was playing with his brain?
