ETH: "We want to be the best transition team in the world"

BusbyMalone said:
Has to be. We simply can't leave all that workload on Cas, and the drop off when we play Fred is pretty big. Not to mention when he inevitably gets his three match suspension, we're gonna need proper depth.
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This season I'd like to see Casemiro take on more of a pure DM role, which he hasn't really played since arriving. He tends to get sluggish later in games, but that could be down to him joining in with the attacking too much. With Bruno and Mount ahead of him he has two high energy players so we can afford to have Casemiro sit deeper.
 
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Yep, ETH is all about quick and vertical positional play. The biggest difference with Ajax is that the players there did it using very strict patterns of the progression of the ball and their movement with and without it. Here at United it seems he is willing to use more the individual quality of the players for such goals. The biggest risk wich Ten Hag is obviously ready to take is that United will not be all about the control of the game, instead it will thrive on the chaos on the pitch. Its a big risk imho lets see how it goes..
 
RuudTom83 said:
This season I'd like to see Casemiro take on more of a pure DM role, which is hasn't really played since arriving. He tends to get sluggish later in games, but that could be down to him joining in with the attacking too much. With Bruno and Mount ahead of him he has two high energy players so we can afford to have Casemiro sit deeper.
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Casemiro can do that, and Mount and Bruno may be high energy, but they're also gonna leave him exposed, as we saw today. Playing like that I fear that Casemiro is going to be dead by the time November rolls around. I'm not sold on this set-up yet. We definitely need some cover for Cas. And preferably not someone called Fred.
 
To make a lazy comparison, this sounds like Klopp style football? His Dortmund and Liverpool teams were rapid on the transition, but they were also very good on the ball and in possession? If that's what we're aiming for then that sounds good to me?
 
I think you have to appreciate the reciprocal nature of getting the fans on side. Match going fans love nothing more than lightning quick transitional play (in my experience), and giving the fans what they want will only benefit the team when it comes to atmosphere and match day support at Old Trafford. I think the manager values the role the fans will have to play to bring success back to the club.
 
What he’s saying is that he wants to bring back and up hold United’s traditional way of playing with flair and excitement, from the days of the Busby Babes or Best & co., and that he’s actually done his homework to figure it out. At least that’s what I take from the interview.
 
All ETH's quotes really mean is that if we're looking to see signs of improvement this season, the first place we should be looking is in those transition moments. Or more specifically how well we press/counter-press and create chances directly off the back of that. It doesn't mean we don't want to improve in possession too, just that those transition parts of the game are where we're focused on excelling at the moment.

And if we do become an elite side in that regard it will mark a hell of a lot of progress from the season before he arrived, where we were chronically unable to press effectively and Rangnick was lamenting a side that weren't built for that job:

In order to play that kind of football you need all the players in their best possible positions who can play like that. You can’t blame the group here because they have not been signed on the basis of: ‘How do we want to play, do we want that kind of football?’ If you look into City or Liverpool, and the changes in the last six years, all the players signed were on the premise of ‘How does Jürgen [Klopp] or Pep [Guardiola] want to play?’ That is what has to happen in the future here.
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With Antony, Mount and Hojlund added to our starting front five, we should now be starting to see a team that are built to work and press that way.
 
Solius said:
I worry basically playing with two 8s in Bruno and Mount will cause Casemiro to be isolated and let opponents cut through us way too easily.
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I said this repeatedly in Mount's transfer thread. I was hoping EtH would play him deeper but the suggestion was we'd play two attacking 8s pushed high and I was not a fan of this idea. In my opinion, its too risky especially with how loose Casemiro is in possession.

I said that one of the reasons we were on the end of some spankings last season was because of how we played and we probably will be on the end of a couple this season too.

I believe we don't have the players to cover the gaps that would be left open. We don't have a Walker, VVD or Saliba who can pretty much close spaces left open behind. Peak Varane could but he doesn't have that pace anymore. To play this style effectively, you need a 1 or 2 truly remarkable strong and athletic players and we don't have that in our back four or midfield.
 
united_99 said:
No, I meant in possession. I mean the new Arsenal combination hasn’t really been tried in competitive games yet so we will need to see. But as neither Case, nor Bruno/Mount are that good in possession we are “light/weak” in midfield. At Madrid Case was playing next to Modric/Kroos so got away with being not as good in possession. Here Bruno/Mount are different type of players.
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So you were making 2 separate points in your original post cuz you said

united_99 said:
We need to deal better with transitions ideally before the ball reaches our defence.
That was my main issue with the Mount signing, as Case, Bruno, Mount isn’t strong enough in possession. I am curious to see how ETH tackles this.
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Dealing with transitions before the ball reaches the defense is different from being weak in possession (possibly leading to turnovers), no? Unless I'm misunderstanding your point.
 
Quick transitions are good, but high risk of losing the ball, which is an issue when our goalkeeper is so far off his line.
 
mav_9me said:
So you were making 2 separate points in your original post cuz you said



Dealing with transitions before the ball reaches the defense is different from being weak in possession (possibly leading to turnovers), no? Unless I'm misunderstanding your point.
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You replied to another post by wondering / asking why we are easily overrun in midfield and if the reason may be that we don’t have someone like VvD/Saliba if I understood you correctly.
My point was that we do have Martinez and Shaw who help in transition and build up (and Varane isn’t bad either), but the defence can’t do it all on their own. A bit more composure in midfield would improve our build up but also make us even better in transition.
 
El Jefe said:
I said this repeatedly in Mount's transfer thread. I was hoping EtH would play him deeper but the suggestion was we'd play two attacking 8s pushed high and I was not a fan of this idea. In my opinion, its too risky especially with how loose Casemiro is in possession.

I said that one of the reasons we were on the end of some spankings last season was because of how we played and we probably will be on the end of a couple this season too.

I believe we don't have the players to cover the gaps that would be left open. We don't have a Walker, VVD or Saliba who can pretty much close spaces left open behind. Peak Varane could but he doesn't have that pace anymore. To play this style effectively, you need a 1 or 2 truly remarkable strong and athletic players and we don't have that in our back four or midfield.
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This is indeed a concern.

But then nobody ever said it would work perfectly this season. If we get caught out sometimes and suffer sometimes as a result as we try to adapt, that's just the way it is. There's a reason nobody was really expecting us to challenge City this season, there are going to be some flaws in our team that get punished.

But if we finish the season in the CL places having generally performed better than last season and are looking at the team saying "adding 1 or 2 really strong athletic players in those positions will really take us to another level again", then that's a fine place to be. We're looking for progress here, not perfection. And the teams we're competing with for the CL places aren't perfect either.

Take Liverpool, for example. They look to be trying to set up in the same shape as us except they don't actually have a DM at the moment. And the main one they've been linked with is the 19 year old kid Lavia. I'm much happier to be be going into the season with our midfield set-up than theirs. And they're a team who seem generally favoured to finish ahead of us this season.
 
PepG said:
Yep, ETH is all about quick and vertical positional play. The biggest difference with Ajax is that the players there did it using very strict patterns of the progression of the ball and their movement with and without it. Here at United it seems he is willing to use more the individual quality of the players for such goals. The biggest risk wich Ten Hag is obviously ready to take is that United will not be all about the control of the game, instead it will thrive on the chaos on the pitch. Its a big risk imho lets see how it goes..
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Agreed.

A new RB who could invert and provide midfield balance hasn't arrived like I thought. But signing Amrabat to play alongside Casemiro potentially goes a long way towards creating a natural balance in midfield.
 
Adnan said:
Agreed.

A new RB who could invert and provide midfield balance hasn't arrived like I thought. But signing Amrabat to play alongside Casemiro potentially goes a long way towards creating a natural balance in midfield.
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I think we need an overlapping RB, not an inverting one. Dalot is quite good at inverting and sitting in midfield.
 
georgipep said:
I think we need an overlapping RB, not an inverting one. Dalot is quite good at inverting and sitting in midfield.
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Not if the plan is to play with two high #8s like Bruno and Mount. And Dalot from what I've seen thus far hasn't shown the ability at the requisite level on a consistent basis to be a strong inverted fullback option.

Amrabat along with Casemiro would make more sense for us and would allow the fullback on the right to overlap and get high into the opponent's half.
 
Adnan said:
Not if the plan is to play with two high #8s like Bruno and Mount. And Dalot from what I've seen thus far hasn't shown the ability at the requisite level on a consistent basis to be a strong inverted fullback option.

Amrabat along with Casemiro would make more sense for us and would allow the fullback on the right to overlap and get high into the opponent's half.
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with Antony as inverted winger, he'd need an overlapped attacking RB. And yes, Amrabat type would then come handy. That's my preferred style, but probably i'm just not used to this "inverted" fullback thing.
 
Isotope said:
with Antony as inverted winger, he'd need an overlapped attacking RB. And yes, Amrabat type would then come handy. That's my preferred style, but probably i'm just not used to this "inverted" fullback thing.
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Antony doesn't really play as an inverted winger though. He is usually found on the touchline rather than starting at an inverted position. With him providing the width, you can have the fullback come into the midfield to provide an option. When we had Mata who would commonly be found coming into the 10 role, we needed a line hugging wingback to provide the width but with a wider winger we don't.
 
RuudTom83 said:
This season I'd like to see Casemiro take on more of a pure DM role, which he hasn't really played since arriving. He tends to get sluggish later in games, but that could be down to him joining in with the attacking too much. With Bruno and Mount ahead of him he has two high energy players so we can afford to have Casemiro sit deeper.
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I think he will be. I've seen in the last couple of games, he's been dropping almost into the defensive line to allow the centerbacks to move into the midfield. Particularly Martinez.
 
Howl said:
Antony doesn't really play as an inverted winger though. He is usually found on the touchline rather than starting at an inverted position. With him providing the width, you can have the fullback come into the midfield to provide an option. When we had Mata who would commonly be found coming into the 10 role, we needed a line hugging wingback to provide the width but with a wider winger we don't.
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He's hugging the line but always need to go inside because of his one footedness. He's not a crosser type winger.

But maybe he'll improve.
 
every top team aims to be good in transitions, it goes without saying nowadays

linking that with our history is just PR fluff for the fans
 
Jordi Cruyff 99 said:
Surely to go as far as "really fecking good (at it)" would require the team to score more than fifty-eight goals in a season, which is seven more than relegated Leicester, less than every other team in the top six, and on par with Brentford, who were newly promoted just the season prior. Yes, scoring goals is an essential part of being a "transition team", and being a good football team in general.
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We are poor at finishing... We are excellent at transitioning. Is that hard to square?
 
macheda14 said:
He wants to play more like Liverpool did when the won the league. Really regressive stuff that.
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Liverpool midfield had far more defensive nous than ours, it was a completely different setup and meant that they didn't get punished as much.

mav_9me said:
This is one of my 2 concerns. This happens too much to us imo, unlike say Arsenal. That's either because our counter pressing is not quite there get or because we lack a Saliba/VVD type who handles this stuff better?

The other big concern I have right now is our build up from the back, defense is excellent with that but I see serious problems in progressing the ball because of a lack of proper midfielders.
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Arsenal had a solid base in Xhaka and Pertey. They also had a RB that could tuck in to form a back three. Interestingly they're going the same route as us by losing one of their deeper midfielders for Havertz. I think they'll run into the same issue and bring Partey back in.

IrishRedDevil said:
What does that mean? Move the ball quickly from back to front?
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Yes, basically. People will try to dress it up as something that sounds better, but that's effectively what it is and has been on display all of last season and through pre season.

VP89 said:
Ole ball was just throwing players out there and hoping they work it out.
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At it's best it was quick transition football. But it had the same issues we still see now in that we can't break down a low block and it relies on physical abilities of your attackers, which can be dealt with by an equally quick back line or a well organised back line. It also means we take a lot of risks in our half as we position players further forward, if we lose the ball then it will be a scramble to recover.

I called it early with Ole in that it wasn't sustainable to rely on this. Hopefully that's not the case again.

noodlehair said:
That isn't what he says in the quotes where he specifically talks about how United have traditionally played is it? It's something you've invented entirely by yourself and are now being sarcastic about for some reason.



When we were winning the league most years players would still get criticised exactly the same. Nani got as much if not more shite than Antony gets. So don't buy that at all



My big concern in pre season is whenever ETH has his preferred 11 on the pitch, it doesn't have a midfield, and we just get cut through with ease every single time we lose the ball, which is often because we have no midfield so have to play percentage balls.

These comments about being overly concerned with transition kind of explain it and it's concerning me.

It's no good being the best team in the world at transition if it means letting every opponent run at your back 4 every 2 minutes.



They don't. The quotes he's banging on about how we used to play. He's literally talking about us going backwards.

I don't want to hear our manager concerning himself with stuff that is at best completely irrelevant.



Which is exactly what my concern is, because it is what will very obviously happen.

Every time we lose the ball the opposition have 1 player to beat to get at our centrebacks, and about 80 yards of space to play with in order to do it...and we will be losing the ball a lot because every other pass will have to be either a punt up the pitch or final ball.

This was the entire first half today. Yeah it's only a friendly but neither Mount or Fernandes are going to magically transform into a central midfielder by next weekend.

Really not getting how this is worth it for 2 nice counter attacks a half.
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I agree and have been concerned this would be the case since I heard we wanted Mount. I even said early doors last season that I thought this is the direction we were taking, only to be shot down by posters claiming were slowly going to become a possession team.

I think ETH is trying to play a percentage game and hope we outscore our opponents. He can't seriously believe we won't ship chances, there were so many games last season where we were exploited but often the quality of the opposition meant we got away with it. That's what he's banking on. But when you come up against a team that is comfortable under pressure, which a lot of PL teams are, and also have a threat in attack, then you can and will come unstuck. Also an issue when teams just kill our gamelan from the first whistle and also sit deep and play on the counter.

We'll win games through our individual quality, but it's not a gamelan that will be winning major honours often.
 
Isotope said:
He's hugging the line but always need to go inside because of his one footedness. He's not a crosser type winger.

But maybe he'll improve.
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He is the one who holds the width is what I was saying. Without that you would need your fullback to do it. A lot of the times he comes inside is when we are compressing the opposition into their box and usually have Bruno run the channel so the width is less necessary.
 
noodlehair said:
That isn't what he says in the quotes where he specifically talks about how United have traditionally played is it? It's something you've invented entirely by yourself and are now being sarcastic about for some reason.



When we were winning the league most years players would still get criticised exactly the same. Nani got as much if not more shite than Antony gets. So don't buy that at all



My big concern in pre season is whenever ETH has his preferred 11 on the pitch, it doesn't have a midfield, and we just get cut through with ease every single time we lose the ball, which is often because we have no midfield so have to play percentage balls.

These comments about being overly concerned with transition kind of explain it and it's concerning me.

It's no good being the best team in the world at transition if it means letting every opponent run at your back 4 every 2 minutes.



They don't. The quotes he's banging on about how we used to play. He's literally talking about us going backwards.

I don't want to hear our manager concerning himself with stuff that is at best completely irrelevant.



Which is exactly what my concern is, because it is what will very obviously happen.

Every time we lose the ball the opposition have 1 player to beat to get at our centrebacks, and about 80 yards of space to play with in order to do it...and we will be losing the ball a lot because every other pass will have to be either a punt up the pitch or final ball.

This was the entire first half today. Yeah it's only a friendly but neither Mount or Fernandes are going to magically transform into a central midfielder by next weekend.

Really not getting how this is worth it for 2 nice counter attacks a half.
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You talked about us playing without a midfield when we were getting to CL finals too. It’s fair to say your midfield ideal and the actual requirements of a successful midfield don’t entirely align.
 
All good possession sides were excellent in transition too.

People don't have to take the quote so literally. It doesn't mean we'll just play hoofball and cede possession constantly.

There was that 1 attack in the 2nd half where we kept recycling the ball back to Onana before we broke the lines and it led to a chance from Rashford.
 
It’s clear ETH is trying to develop a 4-1-2-3 type Total Football style which will counter at speed, we are a long way from L Shaw popping up on the right wing setting up Dalot moving into midfield. This style of fast transition team becomes 3-1-6 when you are attacking and your are trying to overload the oppositions pen box.

My take AWB/Dalot are not good enough to play this way however AWB is key to helping Varane and Martinez as he has the energy to drop in the 3 when Shaw attacks who does have the football intelligence and quality to be far more offensive.

Although, I’m no fan of Mason Mount, it’s clear why ETH is, Mount holds the shape and has ridiculous fitness to get up and down the pitch, having said that we will get caught out against the better teams playing in a fluid 4-1-2-3, Sancho, Martial and Rashford do not work hard enough when they play in the wide roll and I still don’t see a natural ball carrier in our midfield, not one.

Varane and Casemeiro are world class players but they are both just starting to slide, we might get 1 more great season out of both so we really do need a young scholes Ericsen Kross or Moderic type player to really make the club tick again. United need to find the best young creative midfielder around and go buy him in January. I say this also admiring I prefer Bruno as an 8 to a number 10.
 
Eddy_JukeZ said:
All good possession sides were excellent in transition too.

People don't have to take the quote so literally. It doesn't mean we'll just play hoofball and cede possession constantly.

There was that 1 attack in the 2nd half where we kept recycling the ball back to Onana before we broke the lines and it led to a chance from Rashford.
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Exactly, when he says best transition team, it's more to do with pace of the attack. I think EtH's Ajax was usually called as 'Vertical possession' team' by few "analysts".


Before we dive in, it’s worth briefly summarising Ten Hag’s tactics and what we should be looking for. In broad terms, his Ajax team were about purposeful possession: Guardiola-like control with extremely detailed coaching of where players should position themselves, but with a greater emphasis on verticality and direct running in the final third. Ten Hag seeks to press from the front and pen teams in, but when building from the back wants to draw the opponent forward before breaking quickly into the spaces left behind.

Ten Hag might not want possession for possession’s sake, but he still wants his team to control the ball for long periods, especially at the back, before suddenly switching the tempo with direct football. Counter-intuitively, you cannot have the latter without the former, as Liverpool have shown over the years, because to attack with verticality at all times would create an amorphous formation that is exposed to opposition counters and end-to-end chaos
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One of the example from today's game.
 
pocco said:
Arsenal had a solid base in Xhaka and Pertey. They also had a RB that could tuck in to form a back three. Interestingly they're going the same route as us by losing one of their deeper midfielders for Havertz. I think they'll run into the same issue and bring Partey back in.
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I can guarantee you Xhaka never played at the base of CM with Partey. He played exactly where Mount is playing, where Havertz is playing. Now you can argue he is a natural CM, so he still helped out or whatever but it was mainly Zinchenko inverting inside into CM to help out Partey. And yes we are both in same boat, except maybe they have Saliba who is an exceptional defender, and their pressing works way better than us cuz they have been training longer.
 
Let’s just start with not passing the ball straight to opposition player under no real pressure.
 
It's also worth noting that being good on the transition doesn't mean mourinho 20% possession football. Pep's city and barcelona teams were both great on the transition, especially city
 
noodlehair said:
Don't like all this United identity stuff.

It's not progressive if you start factoring the history of the club and how it used to play in the past into your tactics and how you play now, is it? That's literally the exact opposite of being progressive.

I also don't like that he keeps playing Mount in place of a midfielder, because along with these quotes it suggests we're going to be back to every opponent just walking through on our back four about 30 times a half.

We made a lot if progress last season so wary of anything that sounds like going backwards again,which tbh this does.
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Completely agree. Not a fan of this counter attack United DNA stuff. Nearly every attack we do is counter attack, we are average in possession and there's no reason to see that changing. Quite the opposite
 
Cloud7 said:
It's also worth noting that being good on the transition doesn't mean mourinho 20% possession football. Pep's city and barcelona teams were both great on the transition, especially city
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This, I don’t know why people are struggling with what he said. Being effective on the transition doesn’t mean sitting back, it can also mean scoring directly from winning the ball high up the pitch.
 
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