Ralf’s 4-2-2-2

Worst formation we could possibly play right now with how limited our midfield options are.
 
There's no way this can be considered a good modern tactic.... well maybe Pep could pull it off with 6 midfielders.... but trying to pull it off with 4 forwards, it's insane and mad, and just whatever.

Legit no 2 midfielders playing would be able to do much with the 4 players Ralf continually lobbing in front of them. Pep's doing vaguely similar at City - except his top 2 are both false 9 midfielders(Graelish/Foden/KdB/Silva mostly), who rotate into midfield and wide. Expecting Ronaldo AND Cavani to do that :lol:
 
Whether it doesn’t suit our players, or doesn’t suit English football, I don’t know.

But it isn’t working and he needs to change it
 
It is not working. Only the Palace match could you say we were good.

Cavani and Ronaldo isnt working as well. Cavani is not a ten.

Mctominah isnt good enough in MF as well. Neves was miles better tonight. When Bruno came on he showed glimpses of what a good MF can do.

We have to sign a MF in this window.

Not sure why Dalot was dropped for AWB. AWB was terrible today.
 
For a club that is infamous for it's wingplay, it's an odd choice. And clearly not working.
 
Our midfield gets easily overrun, our attackers start way too deep. We don't have the quality in our wingbacks to provide width. Our strikers are way too slow to get advantage of the counters.

I don't see a single advantage for this squad with this system.

Rangnick seems to be really inflexible about it but unless we change 4-5 starting players I don't see how this set up will work.
 
Why wasn't this considered before we signed him up? Every single decision this club make is the wrong one. No doubt we'll hire another spoofer in the summer.
 
To be honest I don't think midfield is THE problem in that formation. It's everything we have higher up the pitch in that formation offers no threat. So we end up breaking every attack, what gives the opposition confidence we can't hurt them.
Defending was never a thing for us, and that's not changing until we get more control in midfield. So yeah, that's not changing anytime soon.
 
I will come in here every week and repeat this…

There is nothing a formation can do to sort out the amount of bad passes and touches our players have on a consistent basis.
 
All that's going to happen is that we are going to run out of formations before realising that it is only one small part of a much bigger problem.
 
I really want to see a 4-3-3 with Bruno on the left wing.

---------------------------------De Gea--------------------------------
Dalot------------Verane-------------Maguire-----------Shaw
---------------------------------DM----------------------------------
--------------VdB-------------------------#8------------------
Sancho--------------------Ronaldo-----------------Bruno

But the biggest thing is I really want to see VdB given a chance and I want to see Bruno played in the front 3.
 
3 in midfield is absolute necessity I don’t know why we haven’t done it for nearly 3 years
 
I mean it's definitely not working when the players refuse to move and link up.

It's basically two deep lying midfielders, two wingers that stay wide and two strikers that stay up top at the minute. No passing options.
 
It's shit . Why is Cavani deep? His touch is too loose for that. I want him in the box or in South America.

We have 2 of the best poachers in football. Why don't we play for control so we can knock it around the box to get our strikers on the end of things?
 
It might work with different players, but the ones he's using or we have, nah, I don't think it's it. Maybe it needs more time, but it just seems so disjointed.
 
Well we start with a 4-2-2-2 but do we even play that in game ? I swear it was 5-1-4 at one point. then sancho was in LB for a bit. We never seem to have players in the middle of the pitch during a transition. only when defending or when we are passing in front of 10 players we have someone there and that too to assist for the side to side passing because everyone else is just standing and hoping someone bangs it in from 30 yards. Watching city and liverpool pass it around with easeand then watching united is torture

Formation is shit and would never work for us with the midfield option we have. Praying he bins it for next game and goes 4231 or 433
 
The stupid part is that we have very little time to train so far, why try to do something different with issues with covid and the busy fixtures. Just go with what the players are used to and try to improve that in the short term. Right now we just look clueless.
 
It’s 4-4-2 isn’t it? You can get as hipster as you like calling it 4-2-2-2 …
 
SadlerMUFC said:
I really want to see a 4-3-3 with Bruno on the left wing.

---------------------------------De Gea--------------------------------
Dalot------------Verane-------------Maguire-----------Shaw
---------------------------------DM----------------------------------
--------------VdB-------------------------#8------------------
Sancho--------------------Ronaldo-----------------Bruno

But the biggest thing is I really want to see VdB given a chance and I want to see Bruno played in the front 3.
Click to expand...
I’d like to see this as well, play Fred as the 8, his energy will help with the press and go box to box.
 
SadlerMUFC said:
I really want to see a 4-3-3 with Bruno on the left wing.

---------------------------------De Gea--------------------------------
Dalot------------Verane-------------Maguire-----------Shaw
---------------------------------DM----------------------------------
--------------VdB-------------------------#8------------------
Sancho--------------------Ronaldo-----------------Bruno

But the biggest thing is I really want to see VdB given a chance and I want to see Bruno played in the front 3.
Click to expand...

This looks good. I also think Bruno as a false nine could be an option. RR must know we are struggling in midfield and can’t keep being open as we currently are.
 
There’s been a severe incremental decreases in performance since RRs first game. During that time there’s been not one semblance of change of tactics, strategy, team selection, formation and more importantly “philosophy”, so how many more games is acceptable to wait for the appearance of an improvement in approach? Im not knee jerking (or trying), but let’s be honest there’s little obvious confidence here that an interim with no track record of adapting a “philosophy” to suit this specific situation has the ability to turn this round. Wrong man for the job?, possibly, wrong man for the role at this time, absolutely!
 
One thing that baffles me is how deep our strikers are, watching the wolves game both Cristiano and Cavani were so deep that whenever we got the ball they needed to run 60-65 meters to get into the opposition's box. Also everytime we got the ball it was as if we wanted to play lighting fast counterattacking football...with a 37 year old Cristiano and a 35 year old Cavani, it makes no sense.
 
The good thing is that Ralf isn't welded to 4222. He said post game they now have a week of training to work on the best formation and balance.
 
Stop messing around with this 4-2-2-2 rubbish. The team should be
4-3-3
DDG
Dalot Varane Lindelof Shaw
McTominay Fred Bruno
Greenwood Ronaldo Sancho
 
OT_United said:
Stop messing around with this 4-2-2-2 rubbish. The team should be
4-3-3
DDG
Dalot Varane Lindelof Shaw
McTominay Fred Bruno
Greenwood Ronaldo Sancho
Click to expand...

I agree. I mean by all means keep the pressing philosophy to force turnovers but we need to also play to our strengths. Is Ralf's view that you can't use 433 and press effectively?
 
Get back to last season's formation:

Cavani
Rashford--Bruno--Greenwood
McTominay--Fred
Shaw--Maguire--Varane--AWB
DDG​


Varane can keep his place because he's been good so far. And although Rashford has been poor, Sancho has been worse. Plus, MR's pace in behind was a major part of what made United so difficult to defend against last season (even if he ended up offside more often than you'd want).

Let that XI rediscover the same form that got us 2nd place last season and the togetherness that saw United break all sorts of records for away wins and comeback goals.

Then the likes of Ronaldo and Sancho can work their way into the side based on performances rather than reputations. The new pressing system can be worked on after that.

At the moment, Rangnick is trying to change too much, and nobody seems to know what they're supposed to be doing in relation to their teammates.
 
Started with his shitty 4-2-2-2. That didn’t work. Over run in midfield. Ok, move to a back 3, 3-5-2, then later on a 3-4-3. Nothing worked. The high press “savant” isn’t using a high press. Clown.

I predict mid table, 6th-10th somewhere. Sadly, we outsmarted ourselves again when Conte was there for the taking. Now he’s doing a job with Spurs, and we are stuck with this ass hat.
 
Regardless of the formation one thing about Ralf's style is the pressing. His football will never work without that. I've been wondering for a while why we dropped the pressing after Palace. We looked amazing in that first half and that's it. Once we dropped the pressing we started to look like shit in the last matches.

@Idxomer said it's because Ronaldo looked out of breath by the end of that Palace game. Imo it's probably the only possible explanation. Any other idea?
 
kouroux said:
If we had two young and very mobile strikers with a good midfield to back them this formation would be good
Click to expand...
Problem is we have them and one would think that with Donny, Bruno, Fred and a DM we could conjure up a good midfield. But we won't play the young mobile strikers we have because Ronaldo has got to play and I don't whatever happened with VDB.

In the 4-2-2-2 you need more from your front four especially the two behind the strikers but we are playing them as wingers in a classic 4-4-2. There is no interplay, no cohesion whatsoever because we aren't playing with playmakers but shoehorning wingers into playmaker roles so it begins to look like a 4-2-4 and we get overrun.
 
AneRu said:
Problem is we have them and one would think that with Donny, Bruno, Fred and a DM we could conjure up a good midfield. But we won't play the young mobile strikers we have because Ronaldo has got to play and I don't whatever happened with VDB.

In the 4-2-2-2 you need more from your front four especially the two behind the strikers but we are playing them as wingers in a classic 4-4-2. There is no interplay, no cohesion whatsoever because we aren't playing with playmakers but shoehorning wingers into playmaker roles so it begins to look like a 4-2-4 and we get overrun.
Click to expand...
I agree 100%. Since we have a bit of time till the Villa game, will we see a new approach ?
 
AneRu said:
Problem is we have them and one would think that with Donny, Bruno, Fred and a DM we could conjure up a good midfield. But we won't play the young mobile strikers we have because Ronaldo has got to play and I don't whatever happened with VDB.

In the 4-2-2-2 you need more from your front four especially the two behind the strikers but we are playing them as wingers in a classic 4-4-2. There is no interplay, no cohesion whatsoever because we aren't playing with playmakers but shoehorning wingers into playmaker roles so it begins to look like a 4-2-4 and we get overrun.
Click to expand...

But is that a formation issue or that the players do not fully understand their roles yet? I think Rangnick deserves some time to implement his ideas and find the right players for each role. In the 2nd half against Wolves you could see that he had reacted quite a bit tactically and we ended up dominating most of that half. Greenwood moved around all over the pitch which Wolves really struggled with and Shaw stayed back and almost played a third CB role which shut down the left flank for most of the 2nd half. But I agree that the "10s" seemed to play to wide in the first half. That combined with Ronaldo and Cavani as strikers makes it almost impossible to win the midfield battle. However, I think the biggest problem is that the team seems to have a massive mentality issue. Feels like it's been years since we physically dominated another side. We barely fight for the 2nd balls some games.
 
Ralf acknowledged what Wolves did yesterday in the presser. Packed midfield and used the wingbacks to find space. He changed things second half. I doubt we will see 4-4-2 in defence again.

plus, Sancho and greenwood are not wingers. Jesus, imagine asking Mane and Salah to stay out wide and stretch the pitch and cross...how much value you lose...their control, running at defenders, passing in tight spaces. I though with Marital, Rashford, Amad, Sancho, Greenwood, DVB, Bruno, we were headed toward possession, taking care of the ball, fluid interchanges...with Cavani as a plan b if we couldn’t break teams down. Now it’s gone to shit tbh.
 
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