Last week’s Monday Night Football was Liverpool v Newcastle.
Liverpool won 2-0 with good goals by Raheem and Joe Allen.
Before the kick-off MNF analysed Manchester derby, which United had won 4-2.
It was the best match analysis Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville have ever done.
Carra said, “City’s team can’t last 90 minutes in a high-intensity game against a big team. They can’t actually do the running.”
He said that we never saw Michael Carrick in the first 15 minutes because Milner pressed him effectively. After that, Carrick had more touches, and even more touches as the game went on, and controlled his team’s tempo.
Gary Neville talked about coaches mostly concentrating on defensive shapes, and the positioning of individual defenders.
He said that Don Howe, once a right back for England himself, was always telling him to adjust his position by two or three yards, coming a bit narrower at times, and wider at other times.
“But you very rarely get coaches who would do exactly the same thing in an attacking sense. It always seems a bit more like freedom of expression. If you play a position and you move 10 yards one way, or 15 yards another way, it’ll be OK. Not Louis van Gaal. It’s a structured attacking as it is defending when you watch his team.”
Neville showed a clip when the game was restarting at 2-1 and United had a high line and only three players were not near the centre circle. He asked, “How do you get a from a really good defensive shape into a really good attacking shape?”
It’s done, not surprisingly, by squeezing and unsqueezing.
“For Manchester United, it depends on spread, particularly these two – Fellaini and Mata, into those pockets, and the width of Young.”
He pointed out that United practice that shape in every warm-up before a game.
“The players make these exact movements. Just watch what Herrera does, it’s subtle, it’s clever. Watch what Young does, he’s on his bike wide. They know exactly the jobs and what’s expected of them.”
On his big blue board Neville showed how the lateral movement of midfielders opened up a pathway between Yaya Toure and Fernandinho. They dismantled Manchester City through structured attacking, through Fellaini being in the right position all the time, through Young being in the right position and through Mata being in the right position.
On Wayne Rooney: “I came away from that game yesterday thinking: Was he doing enough? How did he play? We never mentioned him much during the game. We never really talked about him that much.”
Neville then explained the benefits of Rooney’s new-found positional discipline.
“We talked a lot yesterday about the triangle out on the left hand side, Blind, Fellaini and Young, the impact that it’s having.”
He showed Rooney pulling infield towards the penalty area, obliging Kompany to mark him, which allowed Young to be free in a nice little area: “Rooney’s in between Demichelis and Kompany all the time. It means Kompany is never quite getting out and covering as much as he would like into that channel. We saw it with Dier and Vertonghen the other week, same again here now. Kompany’s mind is to watch the back of his shoulder. I have to say, having played with Wayne Rooney for ten or twelve years, having worked with him for England for three or four years, this clip just sums it up for me. He’s a street football player who can chase the ball, wants to get involved, wants to be everywhere on the pitch.”
He showed us Rooney out wide on the right flank, near the centre circle. He passed infield and, instead of racing down the right and screaming for a return pass, Rooney jogged diagonally forward into his position between Kompany and Demichelis.
Gary Neville said, “I think Louis van Gaal must have him on a leash in training.”
“That is a big achievement by Louis van Gaal, trust me. To get that player to play like that, the way he plays the game. You used to see him charging down channels, you used to see him dropping back into midfield. If he doesn’t get the ball for more than five minutes, he’ll go and get the ball, cos that’s the kind of player he is. It’s a fantastic achievement by Louis van Gaal. Watching him yesterday, it really did become a silent domination of City’s centrebacks.”
Neville then showed United’s third goal, where Demichelis followed Fellaini into a wide area, allowing Blind to find an easy pass forward to Rooney, who played in Mata, who nutmegged Joe Hart for 3-1.
A few months ago The Sunday Mirror’s Andy Dunn rightly noted that they were boring us to tears by passing the ball sideways and backwards more than any Manchester United team ever.
And Andy didn’t say that because he’s a Liverpudlian.
Only last week I was insisting than Manchester United’s DNA was spectacle, tempo and momentum.
But United’s tactics are now measured and continental, based on a very compact pattern of play which works when they have the ball and when they lose it.
If this cerebral, tactical style continues to work, if they beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge today, who knows?
Maybe King Louis will build an unstoppable Manchester machine.
Let’s get serious here : Man United are an ambitious club. They don’t just need to be back in the Champion’s League, they need to be winning the Champions League.
Really hope you saw MNF last week and enjoyed it. If you saw the show, you didn’t need to read these 950 words.
Have a superb weekend, wherever you are.
It’s a really nice football day in London.