Erik Ten Hag's Defensive Tactics
"None of us here can explain what Manchester United try to do in terms of how they play"
Jamie Carragher had a go at Erik Ten Hag and Manchester United following their 0-3 defeat at home to Manchester City this past weekend. The criticism has been mostly aimed at United’s offensive play; which is difficult to defend.
Manchester United under Ten Hag, especially this season, have gone for a counterattack, transitional offensive setup. Why United have decided to setup this way is not totally clear. What Ten Hag has alluded at is that this setup is a consequence of the players at his disposal. Meaning, Ten Hag himself does not necessarily believe in playing this style of football, and instead he’s forcing this setup because he believes it’s what will get his team results, but it has not.
Traditionally, the successful teams that are setup to play on the transition have rock solid defenses. Think of Jose Mourinho’s league winning teams.
The evolution and upgrade of Jose Mourinho’s philosophy involves a higher press in the opposition’s half. Where Mourinho’s teams would sit back and park the bus, your Jurgen Klopp’s of the world keep an incredibly high defensive line.
Mourinho is fine with his center-backs being parked in their own box while Klopp needs his center-backs on the halfway line ready to crash the opposition when they make a lose touch and are close to losing the ball.
Manchester United does neither of these things. Ten Hag’s team is split into offensive players who press high and defensive players who drop deep. This is inconsistent with a successful transitional counter-attacking football philosophy but where the problems really start to rise is when basic defending routines are unclear.
Figure 1.0
Julián Álvarez is an incredibly talented player. Playing as a 10 this game, in Figure 1.0 we can see him initiate up his teams’ offense with a spectacular diagonal ball to the wide open Grealish. Passes like this by Álvarez are how teams score goals and win games.
Figure 2.0
The killer attribute of the diagonal pass is that it frees your team from an overload. Álvarez in Figure 1.0 should be trapped, stuck, and pressed into giving away possession thus in turn creating a United counter; but instead his incredible pass creates a 2v1 situation as seen in Figure 2.0.
Figure 3.0
Whether or not Ten Hag is forced to play transitional counter-attacking football should not affect which United player is responsible for defending the dangerous space in Figure 3.0.
Right-back Diogo Dalot is caught retreating to his own half with no Man United players covering his (justified) absence.
When we see multiple individual errors this becomes a structural and tactical problem for the coach. If McTominay commits to defending this space and this should allow his teammates to mark the City players crashing into the box, a goal might be avoided.
Figure 4.0
Instead of trusting their teammate McTominay to cover the space, presumably a defensive instruction that should’ve been drilled, the Manchester United defense is either ball-watching as in the case of Christian Eriksen or they allow themselves to be sucked into the ball like Maguire and Onana.
In Figure 3.0 the brilliant Jonny Evans checks for the best striker in the world in Haaland and has him marked.
Two seconds later in figure Figure 4.0, Maguire and Onana have both given up on defending players and instead decided to redundantly block a passing lane.
This shift by Maguire and inaction by Eriksen forces Evans to shift to the most dangerously positioned player in Rodri while Lindelof has had to pickup Foden because of the lack of trust in Eriksen to block the cut back.
Figure 5.0
This disorganization, unclear defensive routine and lack of trust in teammates allows for Bernardo Silva to show his brilliance once again.
This is not a one-off example, Ten Hag’s team have regularly conceded goals this season where the defense and midfield have looked out of shape and disheveled.
While the offensive issues at Man United are clear it’s the defensive ones that leave you wondering how long Erik Ten Hag has left as the coach of this team.