Talking Tactically

Didn't really see a thread regarding what we'd like to see from our team tactically. Sorry if there is a thread like that. I wrote a fairly long piece for my blog relating to this which I'll post. For those of you who don't have the time to read it, I'll summarize the points at the end.

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Given that we start pre-season today, I felt now would be a pretty decent time to talk tactically about what I want and don’t want to see next season. And when I say speaking tactically, I don’t mean whether we’ll play a 4-4-2, or a 4-4-1-1, or a 4-2-3-1, or a 1-3-2-10, but rather things I’d like to see on the field. The amount of fluidity you see in offense makes the actual formation irrelevant a lot of the times because one can so easily become another. While attacking, if you have players working hard to create space, make passing lanes and trying to score, more often than not it is they who decide the formation and not what was put in place in the line-up. Also, I find that a lot of formations have affiliations that I don’t believe to be necessarily true. e.g. 4-4-2 is dead. So now that I’ve explained why I don’t like bringing in formations, let us begin.

The most desired type of football by most United fans was the type we played in the beginning of the past season–quick, slick and incisive. And for good reason. Fans want to see their teams win, and almost as importantly, win in style. But the only problem I had with how we were playing was that it lacked that bit of discipline needed. There would be times when we’d have no midfield because Anderson and Cleverley were caught so far forward. When we played that memorable match against Arsenal at Old Traford, the only thing that trumped our awful defensive performance was one of the most memorable offensive ones. Cleverley and Anderson’s desire to get forward really showed and hurt us defensively (albeit much less than it helped us offensively that match). The game where we really should have been punished was against Chelsea at home during the second half, but because they weren’t able to take their chances, Ferguson didn’t install that bit of discipline until we got embarrassed by City. People often point to the fact that the Evans red card changed everything that match, and up until that point, we were equally matched, but as shown in the two aforementioned games, if our defensive negligence wasn’t going to show against Man City, it would’ve shown up eventually.

So in essence, I’d like to see what I’ve seen from every United team under Alex Ferguson: defensive discipline. I want to see our two center midfielders sprinting from box-to-box, our defenders keeping their concentration, and communication between the defense and De Gea which will now hopefully be improved if the language barrier has been broken slightly. None of this is new. It’s what we’ve seen in every memorable, title-winning United team and it was just about all that the team from the beginning of the past season lacked.

Another thing that’s common to many Alex Ferguson teams that I’d like to see disappear is the reliance on one player. Our first genuine spell of success under Ferguson had a lot to do with our reliance in Cantona. It became so apparent the season of his suspension, where we looked lost without him. However, when he came back, we instantly found form because we now had that player we relied on. It’s also one of the reasons why the team that dominated the premier league in early years never managed to win the Champions League since Cantona often failed to impress in that competition. This isn’t a unilateral case. The same thing happened with Ronaldo. An example could be how he bailed us out of the Champions League encounter with Porto with that miraculous shot, but that’s the type of climate where you look for a bit of magic to pull your team through. Personally, I always think about our games against Portsmouth and how dull we looked. The only thing that got us the win in those games were his free kicks. Now our reliance seems to be on Rooney.

Two very notable seasons that were exceptions to this rule, however, were the treble winning and 2006/2007 season. In my opinion, these were probably the two strongest teams under Ferguson. 1999 obviously ended up in the treble, and all we lacked in 2007 was a bit of luck with injuries and experience. One of the biggest reasons as to why I think they were our strongest teams is that neither of them had a reliance on one player. It’s the reason why we were able to field a midfield without Keane and Scholes in the Champions League final and still come through, and the reason why we could look to Ronaldo when Saha wasn’t scoring, and if Ronaldo didn’t come up, we could look to Rooney. Last season, I think we began seeing glimpses of us returning to that type of play with Valencia taking a lot of responsibility off Rooney’s back. And the signing of Kagawa only makes me more hopeful that we’ll return to a game where we don’t just look to a bit of inspiration from our star player every game.

Kagawa’s signing also makes me very hopeful of how we’ll implement Rooney. Last season, he was the man to connect midfield and attack while playing behind Welbeck or Hernandez. But that’s what Kagawa’s been brought to do, as confirmed by Alex Ferguson ( ”Shinji plays in behind the striker.”) What this means is that Rooney will be moved up forward as the line leader, a position that he occupied in 2009/10, his best season to date. That season, he finally took the responsibility left behind by Ronaldo and showed consistency throughout the entire campaign. Before his unfortunate injury against Bayern, it looked like he was carrying us to another Champions League final and Premier League title, and some thought he was on track to break Ronaldo’s 42 goal campaign the season prior. It might not be his most natural, but by what I’ve seen, leading the line is damn well his best position. The only reservation about this that I have is that in that season, we played three flat center midfielders in Carrick, Scholes and Fletcher. I’m not sure what kind of effect playing an advanced midfielder would do to the system we implemented in 2009/10, especially since Rooney was playing the false nine role.

Who knows? I think that’s generally the question that every United fan is asking ahead of our pre-season. In all this talk over a new midfielder, it’s important to remember that we’re dealing with a manager who, contrary to popular belief, isn’t a tactical dinosaur. He’s assembled some pretty devastating teams in the past, and this team looks like it has the potential to be another one if Ferguson gets all the little tactics and details right. But for now, we’re all on that same boat, waiting to see what this magician has up his sleeve.

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Basically:
-Play with defensive discipline (as in, not all CMs go forward, defenders keep their concentration, and communication between De Gea and defenders improves with the language barrier hopefully being broken a bit more).
-Don't 'rely' on a single star player like we've done in the past.
-I'm excited to see Rooney return to leading the line like he did in 2009/10.
Wow. I used a lot of words just to say all that, huh? So if it doesn't exist already, use this thread to discuss everything you'd like to see from our team next year. Personally, as I expressed in the article, I'm not too big on formation talk, but I know many people do like it.