Sorry but I disagree with this. The golden rule of football when it comes to transitions, is that the ball can always move faster than a player. Meaning that you don’t have to be fleet of foot to be excellent in the transition. You just have to use the ball well. Obviously in forward positions you need pace to capitalise on this to a certain degree. During some of our finest transition years we had players like Carrick, and Cantona at the heart of our teams. Neither being particular fast. Especially Carrick. But their brains and passing made the transition flow.
In fact United had Carrick and Scholes through the middle, neither of whom are fast. But they used the ball quickly when the opportunity presented itself.
I think the much bigger issue is the movement of our front players. Fergie’s teams always stretched the pitch, made runs in behind and were typified by clever fluid movement of the front players. Mourinho’s United has been largely absent width and dynamic movement. Often Matic will get his head up and find both wide forwards have come deep to get the ball, and one will have to carry it up field, allowing teams time to regroup. That destroys the transition IMO.
My favourite examples of brilliant transitions were with Rooney and Ronaldo. They were both always aware of where the other was, and constantly making runs and space for each other. When Carrick or Scholes picked up the ball in a counterattacking situation, you knew he had options spreading and exploding in front of him. So he had 2 or 3 possible outlets. Now we have Sanchez or Mata standing around the center circle. Lukaku, and Rashford when he plays, are the only ones who ever go in behind. Lingard sometimes.
The other thing missing is synchronicity. I remember having Scholes and Keane in midfield - I’ll pause while you wipe the drool from your chin - and you could genuinely say that they didn’t have clearly defined roles such as DM and AM. Scholes was naturally more creative, and Keane naturally more energetic, but they had this innate understanding that “if you go up, I stay back” and vice versa. That typifies a well functioning unit. The same could be said for Rooney and Ronaldo, or Yorke and Cole. If one came deep, the other made the run. Naturally in those scenarios Yorke and Rooney came deep more often, due to their skill sets, but the innate synchronicity was still there.
We lack that all over the field, especially in midfield. And that makes it too predictable. I think the lack of dynamic movement from Matic is the last in a long list of transition problems, because his use of the ball when options are open, is generally fast and excellent.
What’s perplexing about all of this, is that earlier in his career, Mourinho was famous for emphasising the importance of the transitional phase, I.e. a team’s success is dependent on their ability to turn defense into attack as quickly as possible, and attack back into defense equally as fast. He still excels in regrouping the defensive shape better than any other coach, maybe Simeone aside, in the world IMO. But his attacking transitions look disconnected these days. Maybe he is being out coached, and out dated, but really these are time tested and simple principles. I think the truth is that he’s become increasingly conservative as a coach and just doesn’t do the work on the training ground required to build a cohesive counter attacking unit. Like all of all I am wondering if the addition of McKenna will help.
Finally, it explains Jose’s obsession with multi talented players. A player like Martial, who can be excellent in the attacking transition, doesn’t do the reverse transition anywhere near as well. Willian, in contrast does. It’s also why he loves Lingard. He has that balance to transition both ways very diligently. The problem for us, is that the type of player who is excellent at defensive transitions, is rarely the best at attacking ones.
We’ll have to see what this summer’s recruitment brings.
. I was trying to be funny here actually.
