Slow coach: Jose Mourinho must shoulder blame for Manchester United’s dreary football
Mourinho must take responsibility for the way his expensively-assembled side, who host Tottenham tomorrow, are playing.
Nemanja Vidic, heading. Cristiano Ronaldo’s back-heel to Park Ji-sung. Park, across halfway before releasing Wayne Rooney. Rooney controls, another touch, then the crisp, low, centre. Ronaldo — bang — top corner. United have gone from their goalmouth to Arsenal’s in 13 seconds and the ball ripples *Arsenal’s net. The looser shirts and more modest haircuts speak of football from a slightly different time, but the footage — from a Champions League semi-final — is only nine years old and yet United might as well be in black and white, because this is United from what now seems a bygone age. Of all the changes post Sir Alex *Ferguson one of the most disorientating involves a football fundamental. Speed of play. How did Fergie’s flashing, thrilling, lightning attackers become so darned ponderous?
Jose Mourinho may not last, the way he and Ed Woodward are going, and Mourinho must shoulder blame for the dreary, deliberate, watching-paint-dry way United often move the ball these days. But the problem goes beyond him because under Louis van Gaal it was worse, and it’s not as if United lack *footballers with footspeed: state-of-mind, inhibition appears as big a driver as anything.
The club’s shirt sponsor should not be a carmaker but a pedestrian sign. United’s laboriousness seemed to reach some kind of apotheosis in defeat at Brighton where, after going 3-1 down in the 44th minute, and having 72% possession from that point, Mourinho’s team mustered just four goal attempts before a 95th-minute penalty. “I expected the Premier League to be quicker,” said Brighton newcomer Leon Balogun, “but the lads told me this is always the game Manchester United play. They like to slow it down . . . Liverpool [who beat Brighton 1-0 last night] is going to be completely different.”
Those are words far more damning than Paul Pogba’s concession that his team had poor attitude, for they cut to the quick of why United, for all the talent they have invested in, are seen increasingly by smaller teams as easy to neutralise.
When Rene Meulensteen became first-team coach Ferguson took him into his office and showed him a flipchart; our principles, Ferguson said: “When we attack I want to see pace, power, penetration, unpredictability.” Why abandon such a part of your DNA? And why are United going in such a staid direction when Manchester City, Liverpool, Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea — as well as Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain — play such breakneck attacking games? These are not impressions. You have to go beyond run-of-the-mill stats to delve into a topic like this, but specialist analytics help reveal United’s lack of incision and speed. Thom Lawrence of StatsBomb Services, which provides niche data to a professional client-base, has done fascinating work profiling how teams attack.
He measured the pace sides move towards the opposition goal in possession before shooting. United did this more slowly than anyone in the Premier League in the first two weeks of 2018-19, and in 2017-18 Mourinho was fourth-slowest of the 35 permanent and caretaker managers of Premier League clubs, in terms of build-up before a shot. His United moved at about 2.3 metres per second — that famous 2009 counterattack v Arsenal was at 7m/sec pace.
A caveat is that long-ball teams score highly in the speed-of-build-up metric and Pep Guardiola’s overall number is not dramatically higher than Mourinho’s. Another is that Mourinho has always liked his teams to take the sting out of games once they go ahead, and this tactic has served him well. The crux of Lawrence’s analysis is this: when United go behind they are even slower to generate goal efforts; significantly slower, in 2017-18, than City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham (struggling Arsenal were worse). And after completing a pass in the final third, United were on average 260 seconds away from taking a shot, the worst of the top six and also behind Crystal Palace, Newcastle and Southampton. That said, in 2014-15 and 2015-16 Lawrence did similar analysis for his blog, Deep XG, and found that in both seasons United — under Van Gaal — had the slowest attacking pace in Europe.
Also revelatory is data from IMPECT, a German company who are branching out from the Bundesliga to provide data for a growing number of Premier League clubs. They have a new way of analysing football, through “packing” — a measure of the number of opponents teams move past when they have the ball. The more effective a pass, cross, or dribble, the more opponents are taken out of the game or “packed” away.
Their analysis shows United sixth in the 2018-19 Premier League for bypassing opponents, but a dismal 17th for bypassing defenders — revealing how little goal threat Mourinho’s team have mustered despite reasonable dominance of games. Top of the packing stats? Liverpool, Spurs, Chelsea, City. How come Mourinho’s United were second last season and remain very likely, this year, to be top six? Lawrence points out the enormous contribution of David de Gea in 2017-18, with United conceding just 27 of 43 expected goals. Meanwhile the packing data shows United to have the best bypassed-defenders-per-goal rating after City. “Luckily for Manchester United, they have good strikers who do not need a lot of chances,” observes IMPECT’s CEO, Lukas Keppler. A top keeper and efficient finishing: even for Mourinho, that’s a sparing, pragmatic approach. One reason United move around slowly in possession is his determination the team should stay in shape, in case of counterattacks, which militates against taking risks with passing or off-ball movement. The sullen persona exuded even for long spells last season during good runs of results, and which peaked on Friday during a 259-second press conference (at least United are still quick at something) seems to be mirrored by the muted state of his team. “It was comfortable for us, there’s no one stretching you and though they’ve loads of talent up front they need to get the ball to them,” said the key assistant of an experienced Premier League manager whose side beat United last year. There is much that is destabilising United and in uncertain times it is sense of identity that anchors a club. United seem so adrift from the one they used to have. Candidates to become Old Trafford’s first director of football are being sounded out. Reasserting some old principles in terms of playing approach should figure prominently in any appointee’s in-tray. He can start by getting out the tapes and watching nearly any performance over a span of 26 years. Ferguson didn’t always win, but he always penetrated the opposition. “Pace,” he once said, “it terrifies defenders.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...-manchester-uniteds-dreary-football-5cv97b083