It's a systemic problem and has been since Mourinho arrived. I'm not even sure he thinks it's a problem.
Workrate
- Thread starter Pogue Mahone
- Start date
At least 99 is a huge improvement from weekend and we're within 20% of every other team who played in the CL last night.
Interesting numbers. The small difference in distance covered and very low overall distance in the united game go a long way to show what a shite match it was.
Hoffenheim on the other hand with a textbook example of how to play a Pep team, outrunning them by impressive 7km.
PSG - 104
FK Crvena zvezda - 104
Lokomotiv Moskva - 106
Schalke - 109
Dortmund - 116
Monaco - 110
Atletico - 111
Club Brugge - 112
PSV - 111
Inter - 112
Spurs - 117
Barca - 108
Napoli - 112
Liverpool - 112
Porto - 105
Galatasaray - 103
Distance covered. In his game week, ManUtd covered the lowest distance and only club not to cover 100 KMs.
FK Crvena zvezda - 104
Lokomotiv Moskva - 106
Schalke - 109
Dortmund - 116
Monaco - 110
Atletico - 111
Club Brugge - 112
PSV - 111
Inter - 112
Spurs - 117
Barca - 108
Napoli - 112
Liverpool - 112
Porto - 105
Galatasaray - 103
Distance covered. In his game week, ManUtd covered the lowest distance and only club not to cover 100 KMs.
Anyone got any stats on how much distance our individual players cover?
That doesn't say a lot I'd say as I think it's pretty similar for a lot of PL teams when playing City. Yet they are unable to cause so many problems as Hoffenheim did with so many injuries. So hats off to them, but not because of their distances covered. Rather than how, when and where they ran.
99 sprints? Is that what we racked up against Valencia?
If anything, a big difference between that game and the one against West Ham is even more damning on the (lack of) effort from our players as that rules out tactics being the reason we run so little, seeing as there was zero evidence of any difference in the tactics used in those two matches.
EDIT: Just realised it's 99km. How many km did we run against West Ham?
No, it's 99 kms (distance covered) for entire team, which is very low.
Sprinted less than every other team in the PL at the weekend, covered less distance than every other team in the CL this week. Could the players be any more obviously on strike? What's next? Lining up outside OT shouting "scab" at the fans queuing to get in?
These are not sprints and rather total distance covered in KMs.
Someone posted a clip from Valencia game from few years back. There were a few striking differences but on of them was the intensity. Anderson, Cleverly, Nani, Berbatov, Rooney all ran. Now we usually have one runner...they guy with the ball.
Isn't the same issue dating back two years now? If so that's the managers instruction.
You don’t tend to run that far if your entire game plan is to sit back.
Weird, because I’ve feel the majority of the players we have would suit an intense pressing game. Mourinho won’t change his tactics though so we’ll always be way down on these lists.
Weird, because I’ve feel the majority of the players we have would suit an intense pressing game. Mourinho won’t change his tactics though so we’ll always be way down on these lists.
I and I suspect many others here played football at various levels (mine quite low unfortunately).
However, I never needed the coach to tell me whether to run or not. It is instinctive and a basic part of the game.
Now, at the elite level where you are a top professional playing in a top team are you suggesting that the manager/coach is responsible for controlling how much his players should run or sprint during a game ??
Of course not.
Wheather pressing or defending there are always players to mark and spaces to fill and balls to chase.
Anything less than 10km per player in over 90 minutes is pathetic and clearly shows the lack of effort most of our players are putting in.
Sorry but there are no excuses.
Distance covered is mostly done in defense when pressing the opponent.
A Mourinho team doesnt press the ball, it sits back and protect spaces. Its a purely tactical effect and has nothing to do with the players effort IMO.
A Mourinho team doesnt press the ball, it sits back and protect spaces. Its a purely tactical effect and has nothing to do with the players effort IMO.
I refuse to believe we run less than every other fecking team in the CL because our players are instructed to sit deeper than every other CL team. I could handle being “way down on these list” but right at the very bottom is a piss take.
Mind you, if that is the case, and they really did get instructions to sit deeper than every other team in the competitions. Against Valencia. At home. Then we’re doomed regardless.
I don't get why people are so surpised by our distance covered stat,
1. we don't press at all, not high up the pitch, not while in our low block defensive line.
2. Fellaini, Matic, Lukaku(when plays as a striker/targetman), our CBs don't run much.
3. We hoof it much more than all the clubs in the list.
1. we don't press at all, not high up the pitch, not while in our low block defensive line.
2. Fellaini, Matic, Lukaku(when plays as a striker/targetman), our CBs don't run much.
3. We hoof it much more than all the clubs in the list.
Matić and Fellaini are ones to cover the most distance for us year in year out so try again.
Interesting article from the 14/15 season. https://www.squawka.com/en/news/man...overed-this-season/365420#EGO4siQ8ei6eW6mv.97
According to that, we were fifth in the league for distance covered that season. Did everything change under Mourinho?
According to that, we were fifth in the league for distance covered that season. Did everything change under Mourinho?
The majority of distance covered in a team is done by the midfield. Ours is usually, Fellaini, Matic and a sometimes lazy Pogba. You are not going to get a lot of distance from them. Up front, we have another big guy.
I'd like to see the correlation between distance covered and the size of team.
I don't think our squad is inherently lazy. We might have some lazy players but I think this problem is multi-factored.
We have seen games were we played well and also didn't run much. We've been consistently near the bottom of this stat for Mourinho's period here. I'm not sure he sees it as an issue.
I'd like to see the correlation between distance covered and the size of team.
I don't think our squad is inherently lazy. We might have some lazy players but I think this problem is multi-factored.
We have seen games were we played well and also didn't run much. We've been consistently near the bottom of this stat for Mourinho's period here. I'm not sure he sees it as an issue.
Spurs have one of the tallest teams in the league and they are usually at top end when it comes to distance covered. I think it's do with how we set up and what coach demands.
Has anything changed though?
This has been the case since Mourinho arrived. Lots of people dismissed it as tactics and the fact we ended up 2nd meant we were doing fine.
It's clearly not 11 (or 22) men purposefully doing feck all out there. I mean, just think about it for a second - what's the easiest thing to do in football even if you're devoid of talent? Run around like a headless chicken.
I'm honestly shocked people think it's purely down to having lazy players or something.
This has been the case since Mourinho arrived. Lots of people dismissed it as tactics and the fact we ended up 2nd meant we were doing fine.
It's clearly not 11 (or 22) men purposefully doing feck all out there. I mean, just think about it for a second - what's the easiest thing to do in football even if you're devoid of talent? Run around like a headless chicken.
I'm honestly shocked people think it's purely down to having lazy players or something.
Plus, we have players like Sanchez, Herrera who love to run all day in a pressing system. Valencia pre-Mou despite his end product was constantly up and down the flank at pace, Shaw too before the injury.
Perriera likes to press, both Fred & Pogba look shit scared when asked to back off and defend deep in their own halfs.
Right now our personnel seriously don’t appear to fit with the managers tactics.
Perriera likes to press, both Fred & Pogba look shit scared when asked to back off and defend deep in their own halfs.
Right now our personnel seriously don’t appear to fit with the managers tactics.
It's just an angle. I don't think our squad is lazy. I just think Mourinho doesn't demand it.
He's more interested in players being in their positions, tracking runners...things like that.
Four random games Chelsea against Cardiff in 2013-2014, United against Young Boys 2017-2018, look at the heatmaps of areas occupied by the fullbacks in particular if you compare it to Liverpool against Chelsea this season and Liverpool against Southampton in 2016-2017.
You can see that even though there are 4 different sets of fullbacks, they follow the same patterns for each managers. It's not by luck, Klopp didn't magically stumble on players that occupies certain areas and make certain runs.
You can't have watched the match the other night and still think this?
Aside from Lukaku (and I'm still not convinced this is all down to him), most were working hard and looked up for it. Just a real lack of quality play on show.
Of course yes. How else are there are distinctive playstyles that different top level coaches are associated with and which their teams adopt and embody. The collective movement of the players on the pitch is what makes it, and that means you do not run or not run every time you think it's a good idea, but you and your team mates practice movements as instructed by the coach where basically every individual movement needs to be synced with the other guys.
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The other night when we ran less distance than every other team in the fecking competition? In match where they should have been desperate to give a good impression after the shit show against West Ham. That certainly didn’t shake any suspicions that the players have (consciously or subconsciously) downed tools.
Yes, plenty of effort and toil, but an almost complete lack of quality, to the extent it is practically embarrassing to watch for a club like United. As Paul Scholes said, 100% effort , commitment, workrate etc is the absolute bare minimum any player should give.
But we know for a fact that managers exist that dictate exactly what they want their players to do in each phase?
Hell, didn't United in the 2008 semi-final specifically train to stop Barcelona at Old Trafford by drilling the midfielders to rarely move apart from each other with respect to Iniesta/Xavi (or whoever the midfield was). Pretty certain Ferguson has stated it and it's been reported elsewhere. That's dictating the movement of a player.
But again, why are you convinced this is not due to how Mourinho wants the team to play (or stop the opposition)? Does Mourinho ever mention these numbers or even refer to 'work rate'?
I said it already - running around like a headless chicken is fecking easy. Working hard (alone) is not what players get paid big money for. I personally refuse to believe the entire team (including Mourinho's buys) are just a bunch of lazy sods.
As an aside, you should have known there would be no dramatic reaction anyway - West Ham was the reaction to losing to Derby.
Mourinho doesn't get reactions (at least with us) like other managers seem to get after bad results.
But again, why are you convinced this is not due to how Mourinho wants the team to play (or stop the opposition)? Does Mourinho ever mention these numbers or even refer to 'work rate'?
I said it already - running around like a headless chicken is fecking easy. Working hard (alone) is not what players get paid big money for. I personally refuse to believe the entire team (including Mourinho's buys) are just a bunch of lazy sods.
As an aside, you should have known there would be no dramatic reaction anyway - West Ham was the reaction to losing to Derby.
All you need to do is look when this thread was started to see that our players running less than most other teams is not a new phenomenon. And that has to be down to how the manager wants them to play. Earlier on we were discussing possible reasons. As well as his preference for a compact defensive shape it might be about protecting players considering how he rotates his first XI much less often than most other managers.
Whatever, the one thing I refuse to accept is that we can be in such an obvious crisis yet we're still fecking rock bottom. Even if we're being very compact and disciplined, I don't understand why players can't sprint back into position when they need to. Or why attacking player can't make more runs when we're in possession. If they were really digging deep to get us out of our current woes, surely we can't be still sprinting less and running less far than every other team out there?
I would agree mostly. Simply putting it down to players being lazy is just not true. I do think that some players may have had enough of the manager and are, perhaps unconsciously, half arsing it, but the lack of workrate or any sort of press is tactical. We always allow a team to play. Our default mode is to sit deep and wait for opposition to make a mistake, or tackle them on the edge of our box. This often leads to us being too deep to counter. It's been like this for 3 seasons now, so it's obviously a systemic problem.
I'm not sure if the stats will back me up on this or not, but going by what i see, when you watch nearly any other top team in the world the thing that separates them so much from us (apart from the obvious quality) is their workrate. That surely comes from the managers. There's a system in place that says go and win the ball back as fast as possible. I was saying earlier in this thread, that you can't even look at us and say "well, at least we work hard" 'cause we don't even do that, and that can't simply be the players saying "feck it".
Of course we can run and sprint less, it depends on how far players move from their defensive and attacking positions, since our set up demands that players don't leave their area much, no one has to make big distances. In order to make the system work, they need to perfectly and efficiently execute their respective roles not go outside of them.
We weren't known for covering much distance last season but it's even worse now simply down to the fact the players don't give a feck.
It's not even worse, it's in the same range. The difference is that last season people mitigated the glaring issues with the results.
That makes sense.
And if you have brilliant, creative attackers who can improvise attacks together - it's a brilliant system too. In terms of effectiveness anyway - maybe not enjoyment.
It was so apparent the other night against Valencia.
The players only started to try and run more in the 2nd half when the fans got restless and the shouts for attack was very loud. It then highlighted our weak setup in attack but at least it showed that players have more in their tank an they care a bit about the fans. It all seemed very forced though.
The players only started to try and run more in the 2nd half when the fans got restless and the shouts for attack was very loud. It then highlighted our weak setup in attack but at least it showed that players have more in their tank an they care a bit about the fans. It all seemed very forced though.
They might not to make big distances but surely they could make short distances quickly by, you know, sprinting?
It's not as though we have a brilliant shape anyway. West Ham and Valencia got loads of joy on our flanks. I refuse to believe that more effort/pace getting back into position couldn't have helped us in those scenarios.
We never played with intelligence. We'd have still lost, looking lile utterly headless chickens instead