You can actually taste the condescension in that post.
You have spiked my curiosity, though. You imply that you know the reason why ETH plays with:
- A back line that defends deep
- AND a midfield that aggressively man marks
- AND a front line that constantly presses high
Leaving a gaping chasm in the heart of your team that Casemiro’s aging legs struggle to cover. Every. Single. Game.
Could you share the reason with us? And also, why the reason even matters?
If you mean my post, fair point, I don’t take well to giving a thorough and balanced reply to one poster, to get an answer from another poster that didn’t seem to read any of it but feels like calling me naive with no particular reasoning other than assuming they are obviously right and I am obviously wrong. I do think it’s naive to expect something very different from most of the options named so far, though.
Neither did I imply I know the answers, on the contrary, I think I specified in both posts that I don’t know, and don’t expect anyone to know looking from the outside. I am sceptical to anyone being very sure about the answers, is my point.
I do find your questions relevant and interesting, it’s just that I can only assemble some crude facts and half-intelligent guesswork about them:
1) Deep backline: I assume the plan A is for the backline to push higher faster (which I think both Ten Hag and several players have mentioned as well) and that the main obstacles are lack of cohesion, lack of continuity and lack of profiles. Plan A was Bissaka/Dalot - Varane - Martinez - Shaw, with Casemiro in front. They were on the right track last year, but have been injured (Martinez, Shaw, Bissaka, Varane), inconstant and surprisingly fast ageing (Varane, Casemiro). The backups lack the profile and/or quality and/or continuity. High backline demands confidence, coherence and the right profiles. I’m not assigning the blame for those factors cause I don’t know enough, but the factors are clearly there and contributing.
2) Man marking vs zonal in midfield: Ten Hag has been on record saying that is not how we are supposed to be playing, so it clearly is a question of not getting the balance and organization right. This is Ten Hag’s responsibility of course, made difficult by Casemiro injuries and general tempo loss, Eriksen free fall defensively nd physically, Mainoo inexperience, McTominay tactical weakness, Bruno despite high work ethic lacking disciplinary coolness when others waver, and Mount being injured. Again, I don’t know who is to blame for this confluence in each case, but the toral makes for a midfield that ends up chasing people way to much, shedding positional discipline way to easily.
3) Frontline press. Again, this worked much better last season. Again, an issue is that if one out of six players hestitate, it undermines the whole set up, spreading the hestitation to other players. When the front row is a 19-year old, a 20-year old and Marcus Rashford, and four attacking players struggling mentally for various reasons, it is likely to be vulnerable. Again, you could have a decent discussion about who is responsible for this situation, in either case, it can easily look different than planned.
So my guessing about your good questions, circulate mostly around the assumption that what we see is far from what is planned, and that there are so many factors that Ten Hag has changed from saying ‘this is not the plan, we didn’t follow the principles’ to ‘the players fought hard, this wasn’t bad’ in order to deflect criticism and protect the general mood and confidence in the squad from the press.
Again, I don’t claim to know all of this, or at least not the extent to which it explains how we look, and I’m no expert at all, but I’m not really surprised we look thoroughly disjointed for large parts of the games. I know Ten Hag has put out very different teams over several seasons which have not looked like that though.
