Statman Dave

[NZT-One]

To be fair, I think both analysis are good and to the point, with lots of good examples, and both overlap and complement each other. Statman’s description of the rest defense organisation is more precise to me than Tifo, who again has a better analysis on Tottenham’s second half counterplay and how It affected United’s plan A. Tifo had a good description of Utd’s plan A press, while Statman better described the attacking organizations and how Utd actually got to so many good chances first half. Statman also points out the issues with directness when it’s too one sides, while Tifo adressed playing out from the back which tbh I think is partly a trope, and partly a problem only as the game drew on, because for a long time Utd got into the oppo’s half and even last third, for a long while Spurs only had the ball in their own half or on Statman’s noted transitions.

What none of them point out, is the uncertainty between what is Utd’s strategy for the game, and what is how it looks when players aren’t match sharp and fit enough to fully execute it. A plan A that might work a treat against the opponents tactics, might crumble badly if just two or three players are not physically or mentally up to speed. You might want a manager to revert to plan B and C then, but if he feels that they are closing in on how they are tarhetting to play, maybe it’s right to focus fully on plan A for the first few weeks to get it fully going, insted of confusing things. The next four games will show much better I think what Ten Hag’s plans with how we’ve set up aginst Wolves and Spurs really were.

I agree with most of what you say even if I have to admit that I didn't really compare the videos on such a level of detail. As I said, I think both of them analyzed the game pretty well. The thing I liked more in the tifo video was that it didn't "just" state that we fell apart in 2nd half. Like "United was great in 1st half but really bad in 2nd, thats why they lost unfortunately" which is something I read around here on a couple of occasions - this isn't what I saw (with all my obvious biases and perspectives of course).

I saw two decent to good teams in 1st half who played a relative open match with United having more striking scenes and a bit of an upper hand (don't really subscribe to the "battered them" or "had multiple sitters" thing, only thing I considered a really good chance was the Bruno header and the potential pen).
In 2nd half this ended somehow, I thought we lost grip and unfortunately, ours subs didn't have any impact on the match (don't think, the subs were wrong, just think there didn't impacted the game much, to swing it more in our favor). And tifo describes this by saying that in 1st half, Spurs shape helped our pressing structure (by having two narrow fullbacks) while in 2nd half, they were aware of that, adapted and our plan wasn't effective anymore. Which sounds like a plausible explanation to me and it fits my observation.

But as I said, there is a lot of biases and subjectivity involved. I think, such videos really help to get a feeling for the details, our and of course opponents managers have to prepare for. Can understand, why some fans don't like it, but thats ok. Everybody is in that thing for different reasons.

 

[tomaldinho1]

I don't look at stats regarding Bruno so I can tell you that's wrong for a start. I just know from watching us and other teams he is one of the best players in the league at creating chances. He also loses possession a lot but I think they go hand in hand. He tries passes other players either wouldn't attempt or wouldn't see, an he has the ability to do so quickly. I think we're going down a somewhat strange route if we're using a very basic and obvious problem with our formation and set up, to argue whether we can "accommodate" our only genuinely effective forward players. As if we'd somehow be doing any better if we swapped Rashford and Fernandes for VDB and Martial, for example.

We've created a problem by putting Mount in place of Eriksen/Fred, because he is a different player who plays a different position. Nitpicking at other players who we would never realistically be able to replace/improve on isn't going to do anything to fix it.

Casemiro was absolutely fine last season, in fact he was arguably our best player and excellent in general. He certainly didn't look sluggish to me, but he had a midfield partner last season. Everything you've just said about Eriksen I agree with, and even Fred although he was a madman, would at least be there. The problem is how often Fernandes and Mount end up behind the play as soon as the opposition play out, at which point it doesn't really matter how fast they move because its already too late. And IMO that is down to the positioning.

Having one midfielder out of three ahead of the play is not the end of the world as the other two can get across to plug a gap and will usually have one of the fullbacks there to help them. So if its a loose ball from a clearance they stand a decent chance of seeing and getting to it first, and if it they can't win the loose ball they can force the opposition to slow the attack. Having two out of three ahead of the play leaves Casemiro on his own to cover about half of the pitch, so he isn't getting to loose balls first unless they just happen to be near him purely through luck, and then when he doesn't he's left with massive gaps either side of him so can't do anything to slow an attack down either. You could attach rockets to his boots and he still wouldn't be able to do much.

But I really don't think it helps when we have 5 outfield players trying to box an opponent in, and the opponent just rolls one of them them struts through two others and ends up charging towards our box. I lost count of how often this happened in the second half vs Spurs and it was making the problem much worse.

I didn't mean that as a slight FYI, I just mean I feel like people will often not analyse a player critically if they pop up with a goal or assist but have been turd otherwise and Bruno really is such an enigma of a player in this regard. I think there's a clear argument to be had that "if" we want to play a possession based game swapping Bruno out for Mount, for example, at 10 would be worth a shot, I think that is fair? As said already Rashford is CF because there's no one else fit so I won't criticise him. I would personally like to see Rashford - Martial - Antony as the three with Mount as 10 and Case/Eriksen behind. I actually think Bruno is a better player than Mount but I would like to see the difference in how patient we are.

I guess we see football differently because I would rather avoid the situation you describe re countering through better decision making but keep allowing players forwards but my downside is we would inevitably get caught by a dangerous counter now and then. Your idea seems to me too cautious, to take players out of the attack when in possession gives me flashbacks of LVG and how risk adverse he was. I get you can then be in a better position to press but I'm not sure it is worth the lessening of attacking threat for.

Case was good last year but he had quite a few bad games and was generally quite weak when players ran at him, per Footystats he was in the 2nd bottom percentile for being dribbled past last year (to clarify how bad that is, it is 2/100), some of that is due to his position as a DM will usually get dribbled at more than some other positions and our tactics but it does not stack up well to other DMs like Rodri (33/100), Partey (22/100), Rice (57/100), Hojberg (17/100) even old man Fabinho was better with (13/100). Basically he is a great player but he needs a CM partner as you say which then creates the conundrum of ETH either dropping his idea of 2 x 8's or we replace Case with someone like that Onana guy at Everton who is incredibly fast and physical and will cover/screen but not contribute a huge amount else given he creates the platform for the 8's to get forward.

My personal preference is you sign a very strong passer to sit at the base of a midfield and then have two high energy technical players ahead. It will be interesting to see how Tonali does because he looks very good from first impressions.

 

[Crimson King]

I don't think it is true that Mount is playing the "exact same role" as Eriksen did last season. Maybe he is supposed to on paper but in practice he hasn't been taking up the same positions. He has been higher on average and less visible in the buildup. That can be seen from the touches/passes he is making. He is appearing to be unavailable to teammates at the moment. He also has quite a bit of ground to make up in recovery on counterattacks due to this higher positions so that's impacting our defensive shape too.

I'm not sure he is going much higher. Eriksen was going high to press and get involved a lot in build up around the box. He was certainly doing the latter more successfully I'll admit, but probably because he is a better creative passer.

I think when he returned from injury later in the season he generally sat a lot deeper, but I think that might be because we became more conservative at that point, for a number of reasons.

 

[Crimson King]

Sorry, but Mount is not playing the same role Eriksen did last season. In my opinion, this is pretty clear from watching the match, but it's also statistically obvious. For example, Eriksen hit more than 7 progressive passes/90, while Mount has a bit above 2/90. Other differences:

Passes attempted/90: Eriksen 65.1, Mount 25.3
Touches/90: Eriksen 72.1, Mount 32.9
Carries/90: Eriksen 42.4, Mount 17.6

Not gonna go more deeply into other areas because two games for Mount is obviously an extremely limited sample to compare with Eriksen's whole last season. But even considering that, those are all stats that are a good measure or how involved a player is on the ball, and the difference is so massively huge that there can be no question of reflecting a similar role. Or if they do, Mount's doing really dismally at it.

I think we need a much bigger sample, as you say. The team has been pretty poor in both games so far.

I do believe though that you'll see Mount's stats even out to reflect those of Eriksen, because he is by and large meant to be performing a very similar role. Except maybe progressive passes, I just think Eriksen is a better passer. His ball carries should be higher though, as he's a more athletic player. His defensive stats should also be an improvement for that same reason, as Eriksen is a very easy player to evade, especially right now.

It all depends on what EtH decides to do though. If he completely abandons this system and puts Mount to RW or something, then we'll never know... can't see it changing without signing another MF first, however.

 

[justsomebloke]

I think we need a much bigger sample, as you say. The team has been pretty poor in both games so far.

I do believe though that you'll see Mount's stats even out to reflect those of Eriksen, because he is by and large meant to be performing a very similar role. Except maybe progressive passes, I just think Eriksen is a better passer. His ball carries should be higher though, as he's a more athletic player. His defensive stats should also be an improvement for that same reason, as Eriksen is a very easy player to evade, especially right now.

It all depends on what EtH decides to do though. If he completely abandons this system and puts Mount to RW or something, then we'll never know... can't see it changing without signing another MF first, however.

I don't think we need a bigger sample to conclude that the Mount we've seen so far has provided something that is very, very different to what Christian Eriksen provided last year. Which means that either you're mistaken in assuming his role is similar, or Mount is doing a very bad job of filling it.

 

[Crimson King]

I don't think we need a bigger sample to conclude that the Mount we've seen so far has provided something that is very, very different to what Christian Eriksen provided last year. Which means that either you're mistaken in assuming his role is similar, or Mount is doing a very bad job of filling it.

I don't think he's been bad at fulfilling the role he's been asked to do. I think there have been some worrying issues with the rest of the team. Mainly in attack, where we've been awful with the ball. We've also made a worrying amount of defensive mistakes.

Edit: the role he's been asked to do might be contributing to how we defend, but I don't think it's because he's performing that role badly. It's certainly right to question the balance, particularly in the Wolves game. That was probably the more concerning performance, for me personally.

 

[justsomebloke]

I don't think he's been bad at fulfilling the role he's been asked to do. I think there have been some worrying issues with the rest of the team. Mainly in attack, where we've been awful with the ball. We've also made a worrying amount of defensive mistakes.

Edit: the role he's been asked to do might be contributing to how we defend, but I don't think it's because he's performing that role badly. It's certainly right to question the balance, particularly in the Wolves game. That was probably the more concerning performance, for me personally.

Sure. Just pointing out that if "the role he's been asked to do" is the same one as Christian Eriksen was asked to do last season, it's obviously not possible to see that as having gone well, given that the better part of Eriksens impact centered on involvement on the ball, of which he did 2-3 times more than Mount has been doing, across all categories. It's either one or the other really - different role or doing it badly.

 

[Acole9]

I'm pretty sure he made a video a while ago saying why Mount would be good for us. Make your mind up .

 

[slored1]

His Tweets are mostly useless but his video analysis is really engaging. Seems a good bloke as well. I like him.

 

[Crimson King]

Sure. Just pointing out that if "the role he's been asked to do" is the same one as Christian Eriksen was asked to do last season, it's obviously not possible to see that as having gone well, given that the better part of Eriksens impact centered on involvement on the ball, of which he did 2-3 times more than Mount has been doing, across all categories. It's either one or the other really - different role or doing it badly.

I think he's performing a similar role, and I don't think he's doing it badly. I'm sure we can find a couple of games from last season where Eriksen also scored low on those metrics, especially in all those away games against the top 8 we failed to win.

I believe that his impact will improve as the season goes on.

 

[justsomebloke]

I think he's performing a similar role, and I don't think he's doing it badly. I'm sure we can find a couple of games from last season where Eriksen also scored low on those metrics, especially in all those away games against the top 8 we failed to win.

I believe that his impact will improve as the season goes on.

Okay, I'm getting off at this stop.

 

[Crimson King]

Okay, I'm getting off at this stop.

See ya!

 

[gaffs]

His analysis is good. Same goes for the Tifo vids. They have both highlighted in recent videos how its the system that Ten Hag has put United into that seems to be causing the issues.

Would much rather spend my time watching these type of videos, than listen to mugs calling into TalkSport to pronounce that Casemiro is done, or that Bruno shouldn't be captain.

 

[Grande]

I agree with most of what you say even if I have to admit that I didn't really compare the videos on such a level of detail. As I said, I think both of them analyzed the game pretty well. The thing I liked more in the tifo video was that it didn't "just" state that we fell apart in 2nd half. Like "United was great in 1st half but really bad in 2nd, thats why they lost unfortunately" which is something I read around here on a couple of occasions - this isn't what I saw (with all my obvious biases and perspectives of course).

I saw two decent to good teams in 1st half who played a relative open match with United having more striking scenes and a bit of an upper hand (don't really subscribe to the "battered them" or "had multiple sitters" thing, only thing I considered a really good chance was the Bruno header and the potential pen).
In 2nd half this ended somehow, I thought we lost grip and unfortunately, ours subs didn't have any impact on the match (don't think, the subs were wrong, just think there didn't impacted the game much, to swing it more in our favor). And tifo describes this by saying that in 1st half, Spurs shape helped our pressing structure (by having two narrow fullbacks) while in 2nd half, they were aware of that, adapted and our plan wasn't effective anymore. Which sounds like a plausible explanation to me and it fits my observation.

But as I said, there is a lot of biases and subjectivity involved. I think, such videos really help to get a feeling for the details, our and of course opponents managers have to prepare for. Can understand, why some fans don't like it, but thats ok. Everybody is in that thing for different reasons.

Yea, it’s all fair, an extra interest in some sides of the game isn’t the only way to enjoy football. That’s part of the beauty of it, there are so many aspects to it: Individual - collective, tactical - intuitive, strategy interest - win/lose excitement, drama - nuance etc.

Ten years playing the game and ten years as a children’s coach opened my eyes to several nuances that I wasn’t so aware of, and it makes it very interesting to see different analytical takes on the same game.

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

Jesus Christ, how does anyone sit through his shite? He’s not a football tactician. He’s a stats guy that has idea above his station.

His graphics are static and awful. He’s talking about 30-120 second long passages of play and transitions and using static images to fit his narrative. It’s nothing like that simple and he probably knows it.

The overrating of gobby talking heads on YouTube is surely done, but somehow worth more money.

Where’s the value proposition? If he knew what he was talking about he’d be working in the game. He’s an armchair psychologist chasing YouTube grift.

 

[gaffs]

Jesus Christ, how does anyone sit through his shite? He’s not a football tactician. He’s a stats guy that has idea above his station.

His graphics are static and awful. He’s talking about 30-120 second long passages of play and transitions and using static images to fit his narrative. It’s nothing like that simple and he probably knows it.

The overrating of gobby talking heads on YouTube is surely done, but somehow worth more money.

To be fair, they cant use game video clips on YT because of rights issues.

I think he has summed up United's issues pretty well.

And just becasue one doesnt work it the

Where’s the value proposition? If he knew what he was talking about he’d be working in the game. He’s an armchair psychologist chasing YouTube grift.

Well if that is the bar for being able to pass comment, then you may as well close down The Caf!

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

he is brilliant

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

Well if that is the bar for being able to pass comment, then you may as well close down The Caf!

No problem in fans spouting shite. I do it enough.

But platforming a fan because they have the desire to monetise their opinions and record a video… it’s silly.

I’d be absolutely fine with anyone saying ‘Here are my insights’. But going beyond that to say ‘This is what Manchester United need to do’ is such a grossly overrating of self. The fella doesn’t have pro coaching badges. He’s a stats analyser. That level of ‘expertise’ doesn’t extend to shape and transition and trigger points.

There’s such a huge transition occurring between those taking specific highlights to say ‘this person should have been here in this scenario, it was a mistake’ to ‘I’m dragging these dots around a screen to show what internationally lauded coaches should be doing’. It’s hokum, and arrogant as feck tbh.

He’s a really nice fella. Was the best thing about The Peter Crouch Podcast (which is infinitely poorer for them recruiting another banterlord in Steve Sidwell). But he’s just not got enough rope to be given this level of attention and respect. It’s elevating fan above expert and happens so much now.

It’s grift. It’s everywhere.

 

[The Hilton]

His analysis is good. Same goes for the Tifo vids. They have both highlighted in recent videos how its the system that Ten Hag has put United into that seems to be causing the issues.

Would much rather spend my time watching these type of videos, than listen to mugs calling into TalkSport to pronounce that Casemiro is done, or that Bruno shouldn't be captain.

To be honest I've found the latest Tifo vids about us rubbish, barely scratching the surface and essentially just piling on. The one in the OP isn't bad, but I've found this video to be the best summary of our season so far:



It goes into what EtH is aiming for, what we did well, and what's holding us back from making the system work.

 

[noodlehair]

I agree with you somewhat, but I disagree about Mount. He's playing the exact same role that Eriksen did last season, and doing it fine. The bigger problem is that Casemiro has been nowhere near as good as last season, which helped Eriksen out a lot more than Eriksen helped out Casemiro. Mount isn't getting that same level of performance from his midfield partner at the moment. Swapping Mount for Eriksen won't really change anything.

The midfield shape hasn't been perfect, but it's been undermined by an out of sorts defence and really bad use of the ball from our attacking players. I mean REALLY bad...their use of the ball has been terrible so far this season. Even in the first half against Spurs, where we still managed to fashion good chances, the front 4 made so many wrong decisions.

Casemiro also isn't getting proper help from the fullbacks. One of those fullbacks is meant to sit in alongside Casemiro as part of the rest defence to try and quickly smother counter attacks, but too often against Spurs they didn't shift over quick enough. Although this was usually because we lost the ball in situations we really shouldn't have been losing it.

Casemiro's performance was still bad though. He kept getting higher up the pitch than Mount for some reason, and was often the wrong side of Maddison. Dave was right to highlight this in the vid. Maddison was pretty quiet first half, but second he was left with too much space a lot of the time.

I can't really agree with much of that. Well actually i sort of do agree, our perspectives/opinions of it are just different.

Mount isn’t playing the same role as Eriksen. If he was there wouldn't be a huge hole in our midfield because last season Eriksen would generally be there.

I think Mount was meant to be playing a similar or same role against Tottenham, but it wasn't how it panned out. Eriksen is a far better reader of the game and also has the ability to play on the turn amd pick forward passes from the middle of the pitch, which Mount doesn't (another thing that was painful obvious against Tottenham).

Basically Mount and Fernandes in the same team means either they're both at no10, which is suicidal, or one of them is being asked to sot furgher back and play in a role that they are ill suited to, which amounts to a similar outcome.

There's no way Casemiro was having to cover the same ground last season because there is no such thing as a midfielder who can screen 4-5 opposition players all on their own.

I do agree our forwards have been very poor the first two games. I don't agree that forwards having poor games when on the ball should excuse the team/system looking a shambles without it. I wouldn't be playing Rashford up top as he plays like he still thinks he's on the left and just runs blindly into dead ends, but then I guess it's either that or an unfit Martial.

I wouldn't put too much blame on the fullbacks simply because if there's only 1 midfielder there, they can't really do much. One will be forward anyway and the other can't commit inside if he has the opposition winger breaking forwards. City are probably the best example of a team making a similar system work and they a) always have at least one midfielder who can sit alongside their DM, and b) often play an extra centreback who cam step up into the same area. They would never leave Rodri there on his own with just one fullback. They tried similar stuff to that against us once and we ended up ripping them to pieces in their own stadium for 45 minutes.

Casemiro. Don't really agree. I think he's being asked to do the impossible and him and Mount are going to cop a whole lot of unwarranted shite as a result of ETH trying to turn a square peg into a circle instead of just using the circle peg.

I have never heard the term rest defence until this thread.

 

[Zed is not dead]

Should we just create a Tactics thread?

 

[Nicoseth]

To be honest I've found the latest Tifo vids about us rubbish, barely scratching the surface and essentially just piling on. The one in the OP isn't bad, but I've found this video to be the best summary of our season so far:



It goes into what EtH is aiming for, what we did well, and what's holding us back from making the system work.

Great video! Enjoyed that.

 

[gaffs]

No problem in fans spouting shite. I do it enough.

But platforming a fan because they have the desire to monetise their opinions and record a video… it’s silly.

I’d be absolutely fine with anyone saying ‘Here are my insights’. But going beyond that to say ‘This is what Manchester United need to do’ is such a grossly overrating of self. The fella doesn’t have pro coaching badges. He’s a stats analyser. That level of ‘expertise’ doesn’t extend to shape and transition and trigger points.

There’s such a huge transition occurring between those taking specific highlights to say ‘this person should have been here in this scenario, it was a mistake’ to ‘I’m dragging these dots around a screen to show what internationally lauded coaches should be doing’. It’s hokum, and arrogant as feck tbh.

He’s a really nice fella. Was the best thing about The Peter Crouch Podcast (which is infinitely poorer for them recruiting another banterlord in Steve Sidwell). But he’s just not got enough rope to be given this level of attention and respect. It’s elevating fan above expert and happens so much now.

It’s grift. It’s everywhere.

Fair comment. But is what he is saying true?