Ten Hag - Positioning / Shape analysis

[mintyred]

The most interesting thing about it was carragher suggesting it would cause players to be injured playing this way due to the tactics forcing so many of our players to sprint back to our own goal so often when the opposition easily bypass a non existent midfield and they are trying to play catch up and considering our ridiculous injuries there could be something to it.

Every team has lots of injuries this season, if this was the case we'd have loads of injuries every season.

 

[M16Red]

The most interesting thing about it was carragher suggesting it would cause players to be injured playing this way due to the tactics forcing so many of our players to spit back so often, they are trying to play catch up and considering our ridiculous injuries there could be something to it.

That's better.

 

[Grande]

So whose fault is that? okay so one match the players get it wrong, but match, after match, after match.... if it is very obviously not the plan then why has ETH not been able to train the team to follow the plan, or if the players he has are incapable of doing this, playing a system that doesn't disintegrate

Players can be blamed for individual bad performances and/or mistakes, but when it comes to repeated abject failures against teams circling the drain, then the buck stops at one place and one place only.

I think you are too focused on finding who to blame here. I was writing about what our issues this year as regards to tactic and team shape look like, not trying to find someone to blame or absolve. This is also the point of the thread. There are other threads for fining out where bucks stop.

 

[Garnacho's Shoelaces]

He's clearly a very untalented coach.

That's why he's a TV presenter

 

[Lash]

The most interesting thing about it was carragher suggesting it would cause players to be injured playing this way due to the tactics forcing so many of our players to sprint back to our own goal so often when the opposition easily bypass a non existent midfield and they are trying to play catch up and considering our ridiculous injuries there could be something to it.

High turnovers makes sense with this point, not the fact they're sprinting back. If you're careless in possession, you have to work harder off the ball. Tottenham don't have the same injury levels as us and they're constantly sprinting back.

 

[mav_9me]

He has seen it, and commented upon it. It is an obvious problem. We had the same problem under Solskjær and Rangnik as well. We had less of that problem last season. It was evident vs Man City and Aston Villa in I think Octobre, but evidently got dealt with relatively succesfully for most parts of most games. This was a point of enthusiasm for me last season, as I was doubtful that we had enough players at the club capable of playing that way at all for more than 20 mins, and Ten Hag was the first coach overseing a fairly well functioning high press at United ever.

This season, it’s back to how it looked when Solaskjær or Rangnik (and even Mourinho for a very short period of time) tried to implement variants of high press. It looks good for 20 mins here, 15 mins there, but as soon as something doesn’t function, one player, then two, then three and four falls out of the cohesion.

Cohesion in high press is partly having a good plan with established variants to suit different match situations, partly a question of having players suited to the challenges that high press gives, partly a question of well drilled and established relations, and one very big part of belief and confidence in the collective. What ruins it is one overeager/desperate player pressing too early, or one insecure defender pulling too slowly upfield. Then the others are fecked, and the next time one more will hold back too long or go into press too early, or fall back too late.

If it hadn’t been for last season, and the fact that he has had two different versions of Ajax developping that cohesion on a very high level, I would worry that Ten Hag doesn’t have the tactical know how. I don’t worry about that so much.

The fact that the press cohesion is such a repetitive problem this season, for me points to the other three factors: Player profiles, relations and confidence/belief.

We have several players that more or less doesn’t suit the profile of cohesive high press: Rashford doesn’t press well, is slow to fall back, and is quick to leave the team when going on deep runs (a strength of his, but will regularily stretch the team). Bruno is eager and hardworking, but easily overeager or takes impulsive individual decisions, Garnacho has the work ethic, but is only developing the positional understanding and sometimes switches off when we lose the ball, Martial presses intelligently and diligently, but without intensity, McTominay isn’t positionally smart enough, Mainoo see Garnacho, Amrabat is slow, Casemiro is slow, Maguire, Varane 2.0 and Lindelöf aren’t fast enough, strong enough or sure enough to fancy the high line. The players of a right profile (Onana, Martinez, Shaw, Antony, Mount, Højlund) are either young, new, not of required quality and/or injured too much. To have the right player profiles for high pressing cohesive football will take at least two more windows, to get players of the right profile with the right quality might take longer.

Relations: This is easy and obvious, the injuries and other forced rotations all since during preseason had us with less well established player relations all over the pitch. Players lack the inbetween flow and timing that is the difference between tight cohesion or looser structure. To which degree this is coaching related is debated, but it’s certainly a relevant factor to why we lack cohesion and look as if we have an inexplicable game plan.

Belief/confidence: this is huge for a defender/DM faced with the splitsecond decision of going full sprint away from goal or moving more cautiously. If a defender isn’t certain the attacking players can snuff out or pressure the opponents ball players enough, they will be naturally hestitant to open up acres of space behund themselves. If the defender is not the fastest, or of a pensive type, this will double it up. Likewise if one attacker isn’t adamant the midfield andd defense aren’t tightening the hole behind them, they might hestitate to push forward in pressure, and if some of the other attackers stick to plan but one or two doesn’t do it fullheartedly, we are easily bypassed, and the defenders are running homewards.

The one point is that a non-functioning high press will often look like we do, as if we play 4-1-5 by plan and have huge stretch between defense and attack as default, or fall back and soak up pressure even against inferior teams. This is very obviously not the plan, nor the probably endlessly repeated and rehearsed instructions, but weak execution (due to above factors) makes it look that way. iMO

Great post.

The overeager player would be Bruno. The slow defender would be Maguire. So point taken.

Having said that there has to be a way to to mitigate things/be more compact...without completely becoming pragmatic and low blockish, no?

It might be that Ten Hag thinks the only way to implement it is by continuously playing it in matches to develop the routines, even to the detriment of results. Of course for that he needs the backing of INEOS, (which he might have). That's the only thing I can think as to why he continues with this set up.

The only other thing I'd say he probably should have gone for a proper back up CB or CM or a proper CM or CB to takeover from Casemiro or Varane. (Which may be on the club rather than ETH, but then he could have prioritized that over Mount)

And yeah the other thing we don't do, and not sure why, is we don't value the ball, and don't rest in possession. That's squarely on ETH

 

[Grande]

Great post.

The overeager player would be Bruno. The slow defender would be Maguire. So point taken.

Having said that there has to be a way to to mitigate things/be more compact...without completely becoming pragmatic and low blockish, no?

It might be that Ten Hag thinks the only way to implement it is by continuously playing it in matches to develop the routines, even to the detriment of results. Of course for that he needs the backing of INEOS, (which he might have). That's the only thing I can think as to why he continues with this set up.

The only other thing I'd say he probably should have gone for a proper back up CB or CM or a proper CM or CB to takeover from Casemiro or Varane. (Which may be on the club rather than ETH, but then he could have prioritized that over Mount)

And yeah the other thing we don't do, and not sure why, is we don't value the ball, and don't rest in possession. That's squarely on ETH

I don’t profess to know who has done what behind the scenes to be the causes of how we play. And to specify, Bruno is not the only one guilty of overrunning into press, and Maguire not the only one slow/hestitant to pull out. I’d say that goes for Varane, Evans and Lindelöf as well, in fact Maguire has been better than them in this since he came back from his last injury, IMO.

i think it’s hard for us outsiders to tell what is the right moves to make, and even what are the reasonable expectations to have for this season, with how it’s panned out. We fans often like to dream high, and when disappointed, we often like aclear and simple solitioneven if there isn’t one.

United is at a point where every level of the club has undergone big changes, and is in the midst of a new round of upheavals. Tbf I think anyone who claims to know ‘what obviously needs to be done’ at this point is talking out of their arse.

 

[Juice Juiced]

Erik ten Hag on Jamie Carragher's criticism:

“First of all, some analysts are very objective in their comments and very good advice, while some are very subjective. Jamie Carragher, from the first moment on, has criticised, and now he wants to make his point. Probably in the first half an hour, yeah, he had a point. Fulham in their midfield set up surprised us a little bit and then we have to find the solutions. After half an hour we found the solutions."

so as far as he saw, we only suffered in the first 30 mins - which is a lie. He goes on to say…

"I was not pleased with the performance [against Fulham] with the defending, especially on the left side, how we did the pressing because they came out, especially in the first half an hour. Several times on the left side and that can't happen and that has to do with willingness, spirit, passion. That was in the previous weeks very good for this team and therefore, we won football games."

Now he says that we have been very good in the past weeks, another lie we have been bad all 2024 and have won games by small margins.

He also says…

Erik ten Hag: "When you are unbeaten for January and February, then you lose one game...Obviously it was a poor performance, poor defeat. We want to stay in every competiton. That doesn't change our approach, because that is for every match."

So this is why we are so bad. Our manager wont change.

Only explanation is that he "cheks out" during a match and only see a results at the end.

In his head he probably ride bycicle trough some tulip fields while we got destroyed on the pitch.

 

[acid_fuji]

Only explanation is that he "cheks out" during a match and only see a results at the end.

In his head he probably ride bycicle trough some tulip fields while we got destroyed on the pitch.

Are you trolling or being serious? How can anyone thinks he doesn’t see what is going on. I assume he don’t want to throw players under the bus publicly. What exactly you would like him to say?

 

[Zed is not dead]

I don’t profess to know who has done what behind the scenes to be the causes of how we play. And to specify, Bruno is not the only one guilty of overrunning into press, and Maguire not the only one slow/hestitant to pull out. I’d say that goes for Varane, Evans and Lindelöf as well, in fact Maguire has been better than them in this since he came back from his last injury, IMO.

i think it’s hard for us outsiders to tell what is the right moves to make, and even what are the reasonable expectations to have for this season, with how it’s panned out. We fans often like to dream high, and when disappointed, we often like aclear and simple solitioneven if there isn’t one.

United is at a point where every level of the club has undergone big changes, and is in the midst of a new round of upheavals. Tbf I think anyone who claims to know ‘what obviously needs to be done’ at this point is talking out of their arse.

I think your point about confidence in your first point has been seriously underestimated.

I’ve played as CB and CDM, and even at extremely low level of football, the football played is very shite if there’s no trust between the players and confidence in the collective.
Each player will revert to his own default setting, which results in breaking the collective unit.

To what extent it is on Ten Hag that there’s low confidence, I don’t know, because I remember seeing the same team shot down on confidence under Ole and Rangnick.
If anything, he didn’t manage to raise the spirits apart from the good period after the WC last season.

 

[mav_9me]

I don’t profess to know who has done what behind the scenes to be the causes of how we play. And to specify, Bruno is not the only one guilty of overrunning into press, and Maguire not the only one slow/hestitant to pull out. I’d say that goes for Varane, Evans and Lindelöf as well, in fact Maguire has been better than them in this since he came back from his last injury, IMO.

i think it’s hard for us outsiders to tell what is the right moves to make, and even what are the reasonable expectations to have for this season, with how it’s panned out. We fans often like to dream high, and when disappointed, we often like aclear and simple solitioneven if there isn’t one.

United is at a point where every level of the club has undergone big changes, and is in the midst of a new round of upheavals. Tbf I think anyone who claims to know ‘what obviously needs to be done’ at this point is talking out of their arse.

In general yes.

i personally am not so worried about the results. I'm more interested in our performances, whats happening on the pitch right now, how to fix this set up without giving up the pressing....there may not be a way with the players we have. But we could be more patient on the ball. Anyway I'm just trying to understand why we play the way we play, what can we do about it.

 

[Maurice Setters Training]

I agree with this. The Devils in the Details podcast has been banging on about this all season, even during our recent winning run.

It’s the main thing I listen to about Utd: a couple of North American Techies willing to do the work I won’t and rewatch matches multiple times to isolate and explore individual issues.

 

[MDFC Manager]

There is a huge gap between our defence and the rest of the team

Especially annoying after spending a handsome amount on a keeper who is supposedly a sweeper with good on the ball skills. Makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[Zen86]

I'd say his face is fairly oval.

His hair is out of position though

 

[RedDevilCanuck]

Our attack has a lazy one trick pony, a teenager, an early 20s striker and Bruno who loses the ball all game and doesn't produce the numbers he is famous for.

A midfield can't function with that.

 

[Grande]

I think your point about confidence in your first point has been seriously underestimated.

I’ve played as CB and CDM, and even at extremely low level of football, the football played is very shite if there’s no trust between the players and confidence in the collective.
Each player will revert to his own default setting, which results in breaking the collective unit.

To what extent it is on Ten Hag that there’s low confidence, I don’t know, because I remember seeing the same team shot down on confidence under Ole and Rangnick.
If anything, he didn’t manage to raise the spirits apart from the good period after the WC last season.

That’s a very good description of a huge point. I mean, even for individual athletes, 99% will be so affected by their confidence, their trust in the flow that it can propell them upwards or down in the results list in a very short time, because at the very highest level most actions are so fine grained that a split second of overthinking, hestitation, awkwardness will leave big losses in comparison with the level of competitors. Only a select few are really very consistently good over several years. To think, then, how much more fragile the confidence or flow that exists between a group of changing people, were for example the hestitation of one sets of a ripple effect of reactions in the others every time.

Even Mourinho pointed out this consistently, even when most of the players then are not here now, and even if he was partially responsible for it himself, at least towards the end.

What is onvious to me, is that for a group who are supposed to change places all the time, and still work like a well oiled superfast intuitive machine continuosly pushing their limits more than all the other hardworking competitors, confidence is super important, and what is the effect of anyones confidence if they are criticized and scrutinized by millions daily, and always in the news, it will have strong effects on their confidence. That means us the fans, and the pundits, who make their money playing to the sound of the feelings of us, the fans.

 

[Grande]

In general yes.

i personally am not so worried about the results. I'm more interested in our performances, whats happening on the pitch right now, how to fix this set up without giving up the pressing....there may not be a way with the players we have. But we could be more patient on the ball. Anyway I'm just trying to understand why we play the way we play, what can we do about it.

Yea, me too. I’d want more possesion ability in the team, all the while I don’t know how much training would have to get diverted from defensive patterns before we would see real results of it, and without making us into the kind of predictable medium good possession based team who have the ball alot in midfield and get picked on the counter thrice every game to lose most games 1-0. With the players we currently have and are forced to play, I suspect it would take a whole lot of time on the training ground (which there isn’t much of in season) that would come at a heavy cost in other areas.

 

[Lentwood]

People talking about the defensive line but they can't really get much higher, they're on the halfway line in most of those clips!

If you want to play that way, there's only really one solution and that's to have one of the two CBs step out of the line and onto the Fulham AMC. I don't know if that's part of the plan. I assume it must be, because the numbers just don't work otherwise.

That would leave you with a two vs two at the back, but you're banking on your defenders being good enough to deal with it, the opponents not having the quality to hit a 60-yard switch and your press disrupting their effort to get the ball forward.

The issue then becomes which of our defenders does that? In this scenario, it looks like Maguire could do it...but do we really want Maguire stepping into a CDM position? EtH could point to a lack of suitable CBs but he signed Martinez, and he suffers from the same lack of pace as Maguire, Varane and Evans.

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

I marvel how a number of our fans believe a back 4 and center midfield pair that has literally changed for all but two rounds of the EPL season to date. Without the best combos ever available more than once, can produce consistently defensive, let alone coherent pressing routines on any decent basis. Let alone a consistent team shape out of possession. With the problems we have had we should objectively be lower than a Chelsea has been most of the season if the current manager was the clueless dunce many are pretending him to be. One doesn't even have to be a super fan of Ten Hag to see something that obvious.

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

People talking about the defensive line but they can't really get much higher, they're on the halfway line in most of those clips!

If you want to play that way, there's only really one solution and that's to have one of the two CBs step out of the line and onto the Fulham AMC. I don't know if that's part of the plan. I assume it must be, because the numbers just don't work otherwise.

That would leave you with a two vs two at the back, but you're banking on your defenders being good enough to deal with it, the opponents not having the quality to hit a 60-yard switch and your press disrupting their effort to get the ball forward.

The issue then becomes which of our defenders does that? In this scenario, it looks like Maguire could do it...but do we really want Maguire stepping into a CDM position? EtH could point to a lack of suitable CBs but he signed Martinez, and he suffers from the same lack of pace as Maguire, Varane and Evans.

Martinez is pro active and aggressive. Thats why he has handled high line work with ease a decent chunk of his career.

 

[mintyred]

I marvel how a number of our fans believe a back 4 and center midfield pair that has literally changed for all but two rounds of the EPL season to date. Without the best combos ever available more than once, can produce consistently defensive, let alone coherent pressing routines on any decent basis. Let alone a consistent team shape out of possession. With the problems we have had we should objectively be lower than a Chelsea has been most of the season if the current manager was the clueless dunce many are pretending him to be. One doesn't even have to be a super fan of Ten Hag to see something that obvious.

It doesn't matter if you're coached properly. De Zerbi rotates all the time but the players know what they're doing as they do it all the time in training and there are clear instructions. liverpool just won the league cup whilst playing youth players, some of whom have never played for them before. Rotation and injuries don't matter if what you're doing is drilled into you.

 

[FerociousCorgis]

It doesn't matter if you're coached properly. De Zerbi rotates all the time but the players know what they're doing as they do it all the time in training and there are clear instructions. liverpool just won the league cup whilst playing youth players, some of whom have never played for them before. Rotation and injuries don't matter if what you're doing is drilled into you.

exactly. Weve seen enough to know how EtH is trying to set this team up in the midfield area to see just how tactically clueless he is at this level. The lack of control we seem to be fine with shows quite clearly that we will never be a top team with him. I cant imagine how consistently you'd get the results to win the league, barring just a leicester title like year when the overall quality of the rest is just that damn poor. Even when weve had most of our starting 11 you'd want, we still look the same disjointed group.

 

[mintyred]

exactly. Weve seen enough to know how EtH is trying to set this team up in the midfield area to see just how tactically clueless he is at this level. The lack of control we seem to be fine with shows quite clearly that we will never be a top team with him. I cant imagine how consistently you'd get the results to win the league, barring just a leicester title like year when the overall quality of the rest is just that damn poor. Even when weve had most of our starting 11 you'd want, we still look the same disjointed group.

We're supposed to be a transition (counterattacking) team. It looks like we've got no idea what we're supposed to be doing when we've got all the possession or when teams are turning over the ball on us, which is a lot. The most concerning thing is that there is no attempt to change anything and this looks like the final product.