From what I have seen from Louis at Bayern (albeit on a very few occassions), at the world cup and with us so far: he is inherently a defensive coach inspite of all this talk of "attacking football". If we play two CM's sitting back, the full backs restricted in attack - we are essentially playing with six players with a defensive mindset and very little attacking input. The onus is on the four atacking players to produce the goods with little offensive help from the others. Against teams content to sit back and defend, these four attacking players will be overloaded and find it hard to break them down. Someone like Depay, or if we can get that "special player", will have to produce magical moments for us on a consistent basis.
I cannot write pages filled with words on philosophy or tactics but that is what I have noticed from his teams so far.
Yes, there will be games where we will score a couple of early goals, force the opposition to break from their mould and provide us more spaces to operate in, or there will be opposition who will not only sit back and want to attack us, but most games will see this slow, plodding football with very few chances and goals.
The hope is that this approach will allow us to win enough games to win trophies. If you are looking for weekend entertainment, then you'd be disappointed most of the time.
He scored 72 goals in 34 Bundesliga matches in his first season in charge for Bayern, the next season prior to his sacking his team scored 61 goals in 29 Bundesliga matches (then he was sacked) for purposes of comparison across 34 matches that is about 72 goals, Klopp in his four good seasons (so excluding last year's struggles and starting with their title win) Dortmund averaged about 77 goals.
I'd say he isn't attacking but he isn't defensive either, he uses possession as a means of defence the idea being if we have the ball the opposition can't score but to attack he uses a sudden change in tempo and switches play to the other flank a lot, if done quickly there is space to exploit but if the pass isn't spot on or the winger who receives the ball hesitates then that space to attack disappears as we keep seeing. He likes to have two wide inverted wingers, get the opposition onto one side of the pitch and suddenly switch play to Memphis or hopefully Pedro who can take on their man and attack the space on the other flank.
The defensive side of things he'll have down this season, we will be excellent at keeping the ball and also well organised without it, the attack depends on the attacking four and the support from the rest of the team, Schweinsteiger or Carrick will still play direct forward passes when the attackers find space, Schneiderlin as we have seen ventures into the final third if there is space to attack, the full backs will get high up to offer the overlap, Shaw has overlapped but Darmian hasn't so much (false winger is harder to overlap) and also the centre backs especially Blind as we have seen will dribble into the midfield line and play forward passes with one of the two DM's covering the defensive line for him.
I don't know if the attack will come together this season but if it does I'd expect a well balanced team not a defensive team.
In his first season at Barcelona he scored 78 goals in 38 with Real Madrid scoring 63 that season, in his second season he scored 87 with Real Madrid scoring 77, the following season he didn't win it and scored 70 goals, the champions Deportivo scored 66, Real Madrid managed 58.
Ferguson scored at United in 38 games from his first league win, 67, 80, 77, 73, 76, 73, 80, 97, 79, 87, 74, 64, 58, 72, 83, 80, 68, 86, 78, 89, 86.
That's an average of 77.5 goals (or median of 76) and in his last 10 seasons average of 76.4 goals, I think if LVG was here for 21 premier league seasons he'd probably have teams where it all came together and they scored 80+ but also like he is now in his building a team phase where he gets in the low 70s and drops into the 60s.
The dutch league isn't as good of a measure but in 34 matches he managed from his first season 83, 87, 86, 106, 83 and 55 goals being the league's highest scoring team each season except for his last where they were a flop.
I'd say as opposed to looking at it as 6 with a defensive mindset it's 6 players who support the 4 attacking players, Blind is expected to dribble with the ball into the space that's free ahead of him and play a forward pass for example, I wouldn't say he is defensive in possession of the ball, Shaw and Darmian to push right up to offer the overlap etc.
This season we are still building the attack so it will be more defensive but we should see signs of the attacking phase getting more fluid, more switches of play, sudden change in tempo whether it be the deep lying play makers pass or one of the three behind the striker running with the ball into space. And then next season I'd think as the quality of passes improve and the three behind the striker get into their groove taking players on it should be entertaining watching us play.
