we're playing with a high line and (lack of) creating chances

Longshanks said:
Because when Ronaldo plays all the chances get funneled towards him ASAP and we lose any sense of patience and common sense. Players in much better posistions being ignored to try impossible passes to Ronaldo who isn't actually in that good a position and Ronaldo taking pot shots at any half sight of goal he gets rather than trying to work better opportunities.

There is a marked difference in our attacking play when Ronaldo plays and when Ronaldo dosent.
Click to expand...

People keep repeating this but it just isn't happening. Our players are routinely picking other options over Ronaldo as we've seen in the last few games.

People are just annoyed when the ball goes to Ronaldo forgetting strikers are obviously the focal point. His touches in the final third are below many other strikers in the league so he can't be that much of a one man target can he.

As for the thread question we simply don't have a striker on form and our wide forwards aren't as productive as we need. They rarely take people on and apart from Rashford rarely make runs in behind.
 
The high line doesn't help create chances. The high line isn't defenders standing on the half way line when we've got possession - that was always part of football.

It's when you lose it, and don't drop back to the edge of your box quickly. You instead hold it "relatively" high in the different phases of the opposition's possession. Obviously once the opposition's territory is established in your box, that line still drops back to the edge of the box.
 
Smores said:
People keep repeating this but it just isn't happening. Our players are routinely picking other options over Ronaldo as we've seen in the last few games.

People are just annoyed when the ball goes to Ronaldo forgetting strikers are obviously the focal point. His touches in the final third are below many other strikers in the league so he can't be that much of a one man target can he.

As for the thread question we simply don't have a striker on form and our wide forwards aren't as productive as we need. They rarely take people on and apart from Rashford rarely make runs in behind.
Click to expand...

His touches in the final third are below many other strikers because his involvement in build up is minimal and any time he gets the ball with even a very small view of the goal, he is taking a shot. Also we give the ball away and waste good positions consistently trying to force balls to Ronaldo which quite often don't hit there target meaning In alot of attacks Ronaldo doesn't touch the ball at all because it's given away trying to force stupid passes and crosses to him.
 
Borys said:
Which of our forwards doesn't have technical ability? This comments is so 2019. I think the impatience is still a thing, but also there are clear improvements.

I think this will take time to work out some patterns in the final third. It's clear we've been working on isolating fullback 1on1 vs our winger, but they aren't explosive dribblers so we need to get more cohesion.

It's also very difficult to play with Ronaldo up front, but not much easier with Rashford. We need a striker to build attack around him, now whoever plays that role seems detached from the rest of the team. Martial is different and that's why he's been so good in 75mins he played this season.

We don't create clear, high xG chances, that is the only problem we have. If we have a lot of low quality chances we should expect 0-0 result now and then.
I believe we have not lost points due to bad finishing this season. You can always say "we should convert more chances", but that's not a big thing for us at the moment - and will be until we get a really standout striker. So yes, creating clear chances is what takes us to next level.
Click to expand...
Chelsea and Newcastle games.
 
AltiUn said:
I think a lot of it is down to playing a natural LW at striker and having to play out of form attackers due to injuries.
Click to expand...

Exactly this. Yet despite this, it's all coming together quite nicely. I'd love to see us go three games in a row with Rashford, Martial and Antony in their right positions. Can Martial ever go on a run of games again or do we have another Saha on our hands? Either way, a new striker in the summer, please.
 
elmo said:
Chelsea and Newcastle games.
Click to expand...
But it's not like we had chances and the opposition didn't. Draw was a fair result against Newcastle, a lot of low quality chances result in 0-0 result every now and then like I said before. Against Chelsea we did score a goal like it's expected based on our xG.
IMO too many on here focus on converting chances while creating better chances is what we can control.
When we get a new striker, I suppose he will make it easier to accumulate good chances but we will still moan about converting them, because there aren't any Haalands out there available (strikers which convert every second half-chance). This is out of our control.
 
wangyu said:
According to Stephen Howson this should help us creating chances because the field is narrow and compact and it makes it easier to hit easy passes so we have games and possession under control.

Sounds logical enough BUT why don't we create chances then?

Before you guys think I'm nuts. I'm talking about the games vs west ham and Newcastle etc not Spurs, that was bloody epic. I think everyone can agree that our attack has been very underwhelming in most games this season despite having very expensive talents.
Click to expand...


We need a striker who can link up well with players around him as well as lots of players running behind. Else we will just be knocking the ball around. With confidence, this can be achieved because I believe we have the right players and a quality midfield
 
Because our attack is predictable. Our wingers/wide forwards dont go on the outside and put a cross in. They will come inside and play to someone at the edge of the box. We are really low in the league for number of crosses. Improved last two games but generally crossing and heading has been shit. We lack a midfielder that drives forward. We are missing a top striker. We need to beat a man more - Sancho/Antony especially

Basically we are missing key elements in attack. We generally just move the ball from side to side and then try a magical pin point through ball. If you keep doing the same thing and if the defense is really good and so deep then can easily read it and block you off. We are brilliant at a lot of things but we need more variety. Up the other forms of attack. More crosses. More going on the outside. More trying to beat a man. More driving from midfield. etc The last few games we started upping our crossing and surprisingly we are good at it. Now we need to work on going on the outside/cutbacks/driving from midfield etc
 
Last edited:
Borys said:
Which of our forwards doesn't have technical ability? This comments is so 2019. I think the impatience is still a thing, but also there are clear improvements.

I think this will take time to work out some patterns in the final third. It's clear we've been working on isolating fullback 1on1 vs our winger, but they aren't explosive dribblers so we need to get more cohesion.

It's also very difficult to play with Ronaldo up front, but not much easier with Rashford. We need a striker to build attack around him, now whoever plays that role seems detached from the rest of the team. Martial is different and that's why he's been so good in 75mins he played this season.

We don't create clear, high xG chances, that is the only problem we have. If we have a lot of low quality chances we should expect 0-0 result now and then.
I believe we have not lost points due to bad finishing this season. You can always say "we should convert more chances", but that's not a big thing for us at the moment - and will be until we get a really standout striker. So yes, creating clear chances is what takes us to next level.
Click to expand...
None of our forwards are stand out technically, Bruno and Sancho are pretty good, while Rashford is notably lacking in technical ability.
 
United's chance creation against West Ham wasnt great for two reasons

Slow build up play and passing

Lack of technical ability/sloppy passing - we need more Ericksen and less Elanga level players

this seems to be a common issue where we've struggled this season
 
I disagree with the lack of chances angle. We create a fair number of high pressure situations. People often erroneously associate a lack of chances with lack of shots on target or failing to test the keeper. I disagree. We create a lot of situations where we should test the keeper if better decisions are made.
The truth is that we have a very poor combination of attackers. Individually, they aren't bad but they are bad combination who do not make up for each other's weaknesses. This situation is made worse when Sancho and especially Martial do not play.
Regardless of what kind of striker it is, the most important part of the attack is the person that plays centrally. Quite often, we have had either Ronaldo or Rashford playing there. These are two players with a hold-up play and link of play of 0. Their entire instinct on the pitch is to get their shot away no matter the phase of play. How many times have we seen Ronnie forcing his teammate wide so he can make a central run? What you get is a central point man who doesn't bother to bring his wide teammates into play. It makes it easier to defend against.
We are going to witness another example of this tonight.
 
Hammondo said:
None of our forwards are stand out technically, Bruno and Sancho are pretty good, while Rashford is notably lacking in technical ability.
Click to expand...
I disagree. They might not be on Silva level, but we can do much better even with the players we already have. IMO our biggest problem is the hesitation on the ball, we don't have those patterns worked out yet. No one playing back to his goal also makes us worse, as we look for runs from Ronaldo which don't come or are just not dynamic enough.

Also, that is very very unlikely we will be getting players significantly better at tight spaces than Sancho, Antony and Rashford. Bruno IMO isn't suited to that small game at all.

Adisa said:
I disagree with the lack of chances angle. We create a fair number of high pressure situations. People often erroneously associate a lack of chances with lack of shots on target or failing to test the keeper. I disagree. We create a lot of situations where we should test the keeper if better decisions are made.
The truth is that we have a very poor combination of attackers. Individually, they aren't bad but they are bad combination who do not make up for each other's weaknesses. This situation is made worse when Sancho and especially Martial do not play.
Regardless of what kind of striker it is, the most important part of the attack is the person that plays centrally. Quite often, we have had either Ronaldo or Rashford playing there. These are two players with a hold-up play and link of play of 0. Their entire instinct on the pitch is to get their shot away no matter the phase of play. How many times have we seen Ronnie forcing his teammate wide so he can make a central run? What you get is a central point man who doesn't bother to bring his wide teammates into play. It makes it easier to defend against.
We are going to witness another example of this tonight.
Click to expand...
That is spot on. We will bring a striker to improve our link-up play in final 3rd and generate more good chances. Hopefully he will be a better finisher than current Ronaldo but I wouldn't count on that aspect improving massively.
 
Last edited:
Lack of 1v1 ability is making it too easy to defend against us, and then the lack of Antony Martial is costing us too.
 
Borys said:
But it's not like we had chances and the opposition didn't. Draw was a fair result against Newcastle, a lot of low quality chances result in 0-0 result every now and then like I said before. Against Chelsea we did score a goal like it's expected based on our xG.
IMO too many on here focus on converting chances while creating better chances is what we can control.
When we get a new striker, I suppose he will make it easier to accumulate good chances but we will still moan about converting them, because there aren't any Haalands out there available (strikers which convert every second half-chance). This is out of our control.
Click to expand...
That’s just changing the subject. You said we didn’t drop points in any games due to bad finishing and I pointed out 2 games which we did.

With better finishing we would have won the Chelsea game by halftime and the Newcastle game should have also been won if it weren’t for that terrible finishing by Rashford and Fred in injury time.

You can argue about fairness and all that bollocks, but the truth is that we literally dropped points due to bad finishing unlike what you claimed.
 
Borys said:
I disagree. They might not be on Silva level, but we can do much better even with the players we already have. IMO our biggest problem is the hesitation on the ball, we don't have those patterns worked out yet. No one playing back to his goal also makes us worse, as we look for runs from Ronaldo which don't come or are just not dynamic enough.

Also, that is very very unlikely we will be getting players significantly better at tight spaces than Sancho, Antony and Rashford. Bruno IMO isn't suited to that small game at all.


That is spot on. We will bring a striker to improve our link-up play in final 3rd and generate more good chances. Hopefully he will be a better finisher than current Ronaldo but I wouldn't count on that aspect improving massively.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't say Rashford is good in tight spaces. His strength lies elsewhere, where there is space and such. Sancho and Antony I agree, they do operate well in tight spaces and know how to keep the ball, though Sancho has uncharacteristically been loose with the ball in his last 2 outings.

The central player has to be very good with the ball to unable flowing football in attack in this ETG system and we haven't really had that this season. Ronaldo and Rashford don't provide that at CF. Rashford strength is in space, while Ronaldo is clearly done as an elite player. This is why Martial's return will give us a huge boost. All those forward passes into our strikers that couldn't be controlled or misplaced by either Ronaldo or Rashford when they had their back to goal with a body behind pressurizing them will finally start finding our own players and attacks won't be getting routinely broken.

We've had a taste of that in pre season and few games Martial has played this season(turned Van Dirk non stop against Liverpool) but his fitness has to improve first for that to happen.
 
elmo said:
That’s just changing the subject. You said we didn’t drop points in any games due to bad finishing and I pointed out 2 games which we did.

With better finishing we would have won the Chelsea game by halftime and the Newcastle game should have also been won if it weren’t for that terrible finishing by Rashford and Fred in injury time.

You can argue about fairness and all that bollocks, but the truth is that we literally dropped points due to bad finishing unlike what you claimed.
Click to expand...
Ok I will give you Newcastle, we had two big chances which we didn't score. Chelsea we did score 1 goal, what is about right to what we created. Obviously it would've been easier to score every first chance but finishing isn't really costing us this season, we're fine overall. I stick to my point that creating chances is far the bigger issue than converting them as you suggested.
 
Borys said:
I disagree. They might not be on Silva level, but we can do much better even with the players we already have. IMO our biggest problem is the hesitation on the ball, we don't have those patterns worked out yet. No one playing back to his goal also makes us worse, as we look for runs from Ronaldo which don't come or are just not dynamic enough.

Also, that is very very unlikely we will be getting players significantly better at tight spaces than Sancho, Antony and Rashford. Bruno IMO isn't suited to that small game at all.


That is spot on. We will bring a striker to improve our link-up play in final 3rd and generate more good chances. Hopefully he will be a better finisher than current Ronaldo but I wouldn't count on that aspect improving massively.
Click to expand...
There are plenty of players better in tight areas, city find many with ease.
 
Pep struggled in his first two seasons too. Until he spent billions to buy FBs.
We dont attack the space and stretch team enough.
 
Hammondo said:
There are plenty of players better in tight areas, city find many with ease.
Click to expand...
You don't get much better than Sancho though, and he's not exactly pulling up trees. All I say is players with high quality on the ball skills are very difficult to get as we're not replacing Rashford, Antony, Sancho anytime soon. What we need is a system and more cohesion. New striker also is a step up for the whole team.
 
I think we’ve started creating more chances but haven’t been clinical enough. On point to the OP, probably a combination of trying to understand the managers formation; getting used to one another; no CF & our fullbacks needing to push a little higher up to create more overloads.

Take last season as an example, we didn’t play a high line but still struggled to create chances. So it’s not particularly a “high line = chances” equation. Lots of variables. Overall, I expect inconsistent performances this season as EtH gets used to the league. West Ham (away) and Newcastle are also no mugs in fairness.
 
Ignoring the four matches against Sheriff and Omonia (who are so far below the standard of anyone else we will face in the PL or Europe), in our 14 relevant matches we have 18 goals from 17.6 expected.

We’re going to drop a lot of points over our next run of matches unless this picks up, or we manage to score early and rely on our defence to close out games. For whatever reason, it really isn’t getting better.
 
I think number one when you play a high line and trying to be dominant, is to keep constant pressure on. Won back the ball quickly and new attack. Don’t let the opponent get to our half of the pitch. Our team doesn’t apply enough press imo.
 
The highline isnt the problem it's how united should play shows dominance.

What I am struggling to believe is how few of our players can actually cross a ball.

I have seen a few posts saying how everything's direct to Ronaldo that's bullshit. We have the greatest goalscorer of all time one of the best leaps and headers of a ball in history. Yet you can count on one hand how many decent crosses go in.

Throughout fergies time he had multiple players on the pitch near at all time who can cross even remember Gary pallister and David may being able to cross a ball when needed. We have maybe eriksen and shaw who can cross. Id like to see eriksen with a bit of a free role popping up on whatever side he sees fit and giving ronaldo something to feed on.

Seems the game has moved on from that which is a pity.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.