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Welcome back guys, today we will see how I replicate Erik Ten Hag's tactic on FM 24 with some fixes that in my opinion should work better and suit better the Red Devils's current squad. As you know, both left wing-back are injured, especially Luke Shaw, who is a great wing-back both in attacking phase and defensive phase. After watching many videos and highlights and reading many essays about what is wrong with Man Utd, what Ten Hag wants to do (and he could do last season or at least for a part of it) and what he is not able to do, I came to the following conclusions.
1. Despite buying a goalkeeper like Onana, who is really great with the ball and in building from defense (just listen to Guardiola's thoughts about Inter and Onana before UEFA Champions League final last June), the Red Devils build up from the back does not work. In some highlights we saw that when Onana has the ball, the two central defenders are one at his left and one at his right, while the two wing-backs do not move forward and stay wide on the flanks to offer a pass option to Onana or to the central defenders. But when Onana gives the ball to one of the two central defenders the opponent forward presses him and the central defender is forced to give the ball to his nearest wing-back who is immediately pressed and he has no time to move forward with the ball, this forces him to give the ball back to Onana or even to play a long ball that is easily won by the opponent who can launch a fast counter-attack from the midfield. How to fix this: in other teams such as Manchester City, the two wing-backs stay much higher while building from the back, so the opponent player who must press them must stay back, this allows more space for the two central defenders to move with the ball and try to pass it to the wing-backs only when they are undre pressing. You can watch the highlights for the derby Man Utd vs Man City to understand what I am saying. Here is where Luke Shaw would help a lot and this is one of the reason why build from the defense is not working at Man Utd now. The other reason is that Man Utd lacks of synchronization, the players do not move together like a single unit, and this can be reached only with continous and hard training. Guardiola for example wants his players to memorize each moves so they really move all together like a single unit, each player knows what to do when his teammates move.
2. Attacking moves: run into spaces created by other teammates. In teams like Arsenal, we often see that wingers stay much wider to stretch the oppsition and this creates spaces in the central area for the midfielders to run forward. Why we don't see this in Manchester Utd? Because Manchester Utd winger often do not stay that wide to create those spaces they often attack with 4 or 5 players who are too close one to each other, and they lose the ball. When the opponent wins the ball back, they can easily counter-attack with many players who outnumber the Red Devils defense.
3. Another problem connected with this is the defensive formation. Manchester Utd does not press like a single unit with all the players together like many other teams do but leaving only 4 players to press the opponent team when they are building from the back. This 4 line can be easily overcome by the opponent by passing the ball to the wing-backs who stay very wide and then to the wingers who drop down. The other 6 players stay back in defense and this creates a big gap between the lines which can be exploited by the opponent once they avoided the first pressing.
4. How Manchester Utd conceeds goals: most of the time we see that opponent score from the center part of the box after entering the box from the edge. Why does this happen? One reason maybe that the two defensive midfielders are too far one from each other and one is Eriksen, who does not have the physical qualities (stamina, strength, durance, pace, quickness) to press and cover and when two players enter the box both Eriksen and Casemiro does not know who to follow.
One way to fix it could be a great change of formation for Man Utd, a 4-3-3 (or we can call it a 4-2-1-3) exactly the same tactic Ten Hag used at Ajax which could develop into a 4-2-3-1 with Van de Beek moving forward between the two wingers Ziyech and Neres, The 2 midfienders in front of the defense, Schone and De Jong were closer to each other than the duo Eriksen-Casemiro and working well with Van de Beek, this could help more covering the box.
Another way to fix Man Utd issues is to ask our defense to stay higher or much higher to reduce as more as possible the space between the lines and this is what I did on Football Manager.
The other thing I did is creating a more attacking version of ETH 4231 with the left wing back on attack, this is meant to be used when Shaw will be back from his injury.
Hope you enjoy this video, A hug from your Tikitaka Master
Thanks everyone!
