Has our profile of midfielder changed?

[Walters_19_MuFc]

When ten Hag came to United, he identified straight away that United needed a holding midfielder. Not a ball winner, but a player who could really take our build up phase to the next level. His comments were "We are looking for a player who can play in the holding midfield position, but it has to be the right one’’.

It seemed that the holding midfielder the was talking about, at the time, was Frenkie De Jong.

More often than not, De Jong was tasked with dropping into the backline and building play, with Schone playing the ‘’1’’ in what would have been a 3+1 in the first phase.

This is the formation ten Hag mainly set up with in the 18/19 season.





Below show a few illustrations of De Jong and Schone’s heat map and average positioning.

Vs Real Madrid












Vs Feyenoord











As you can see, this was very much a double pivot, with the two working in tandem with each other to facilitate play.

This is reminiscent to what we saw the other day with Bruno and McTominay against Brentford and Everton, respectively. Again, if you look at the heat map and average positioning (bear in mind Bruno was moved to the right late on against Everton) it clearly shows Bruno and McTominay as a 6 pivot.

Vs. Brentford












Vs Everton



https://imgur.com/aGw1YSp


https://imgur.com/OrtddO1


https://imgur.com/b73IBNX


Average position slightly skewed due to Bruno moving to the right wing.


Going back to De Jong, ten Hag identified that he went with a double pivot 6 because De Jong likes to roam out of position. Therefore, he needed someone next to him to cover for him, and vice versa in Schone, as neither one of these were specialist holding midfielders.

"His quality is that he makes the forwards perform better. He is a wanderer, an adventurer, he’s always on the move, like a shark. With the ball, often, but also without the ball. So if you put him on 6 [defensive midfield], he’s away too often. But you need to give him freedom, otherwise you can’t the best out of him.

"It wasn’t an easy puzzle, so I decided to play with two number 6s and only one attacking mid. And in this way, we can also dominate the half space, and force opponents to choose."

Therefore, it begs the question as to whether ten Hag always wanted Casemiro?

I’m led to believe ten Hag only wanted de Jong, and wanted to partner him with Fred or McTominay (at least for this season anyway). Neither of them specialist holding midfielders, but both working in tandem with each other like we saw with the pivot of Schone/De Jong and Bruno/McTominay, for example.

However, this changed in 19/20 and 20/21. Erik ten Hag decided to allow his number 8 to get much more involved in the final phase. This was due to having a specialist holding midfielder like Martinez (19/20) and Alvarez (20/21) as his single pivot.



Below are a few examples.

Vs Benfica

https://imgur.com/yvCRsNk

https://imgur.com/yvCRsNk

https://imgur.com/UBwFOjH

Vs PSV

https://imgur.com/4ADh27E

https://imgur.com/CAgBZvT

https://imgur.com/Q6t8Eso



You can quite clearly see that this is more of a 433, with Gravenberch pushing on and Alvarez being tasked to sit as a single pivot.

Now, with the eventual addition of Casemiro instead of De Jong, it seems ten Hag has gone more towards his 4231 we saw in his 19/20 and 20/21 season, as opposed to the one we saw in 18/19 season.

When Casemiro plays, you can see from the heat maps and average position, that we use more of a 433.

Vs Fulham

https://imgur.com/6lrXDnZ


https://imgur.com/IVgrT9x


https://imgur.com/5Ln4wvh


Vs Notts Forest

https://imgur.com/ePM1842


https://imgur.com/wAeC4cs


https://imgur.com/oNNT1Oa


Again, positioning will be slightly misleading because ten Hag tends push Eriksen forward late on in games and bring on Fred or McTominay to try and sure things up. However, you will be able to see from watching the games that Eriksen gets involved in all phases of our play.

Ten Hag on Eriksen. "I think the balance in the midfield was good with Casemiro, Eriksen and Bruno. Casemiro the balance player, the line up player, Eriksen can support him but also go to the final part of the game, can create chances with key passes."


My question is, now that we have Casemiro, can ten Hag afford to go with a midfielder who has better offensive attributes than De Jong? Whilst I think De Jong is a tremendous player, and they’ll be countless posts of me saying he’s my dream signing, he’s more of a deep-lying playmaker than a box to box player who will run in behind and provide off the ball movement in the final third. This was a big feature of ten Hag’s team in the way he set up his team in 20/21. This is something Gravenberch did relentlessly, as he had the energy to get up and down the pitch. Whilst Eriksen does this at times, he doesn’t have the legs to do it all the time. I look at players like Xhaka and Gundogan. Along with being very competent on the ball, they also provide a relentless energy, which is why City and Arsenal have the ability to peg teams back.

Of course, ten Hag could get ten Hag De Jong or a players similar to him, and we could see a pivot, but I just think having a specialist in Casemiro can allow us to have that midfielder push further forward. It could then mean our full backs have more responsibility in our build play, i.e. Zinchenko/Stones, which is why the links of Timber playing as a right back could make sense.

So, what profile of midfielder would you go with? Deeplying playmaker, box to box, etc?


(Some of the links are showing up on here, but feel free to click on them to view the illustration. Nothing dodgy - I promise)

 

[OL29]

I think we need both, but a deep lying playmaker should be the priority. When we get pinned back, we have no one who can get out of tight spaces and build play from deep. We’ve made good progress this season but in order to dominate against the better teams we need more press resistant players in midfield.

 

[DWelbz19]

Absolutely not. We have a bunch of central midfielders who treat the ball like it’s a hot potato. This team is crying out for a Frenkie de Jong midfielder who understands what retaining possession of a football is

 

[NZT-One]

Good post, thanks for putting all that together. My feeling is, right now this question can't really be answered as it is so interconnected. I mean, we know that we have nobody to replace Bruno, nobody to replace Eriksen (even though those two can take over for each other to a degree) and we have absolutely nobody to replace Casemiro. So for me personally, I'd make sure to bring in defensive capability. If that is partnered with more traits even better but defensive positioning would be the first priority for me when looking for a midfielder. 2nd priority probably being press-resistence by either very good one touch passing or by very good dribbling. Personally I'd favor dribbling because we don't have any of that at the minute. And it leads to people talking about McTominay as a good dribbler. That has to stop.

If I had to choose, I'd go with a with defensively capable midfielder, who is covering lots of space, is able to inject energy into the team and is capable of moving the ball quickly. Deep lying playmaker sounds sexy of course but to me, it is the cherry on the cake and in my eyes, we are not there yet.

 

[bosnian_red]

I think a midfielder who is comfortable when receiving the ball under pressure, can carry the ball through midfield or pass it through the lines, and be the first guy to pick the ball up off the CB's is still the key target. Casemiro is class and just allows whoever we get to be able to roam more often, but in the build up they still drop deep. That deep playmaker is absolutely vital for Ten Hag, which is why he's been using Bruno there more and more without Eriksen.