So in case you guys missed it, Manchester United actually signed another new player yesterday. His name is Aidan Heaven, but who is this 18-year-old? So Aidan Heaven is another young star leaving Arsenal for Manchester United, despite representing his national team already at under-19 level.
He’s around 6’2 and has quite a lanky frame. Previously he was deemed very much a central midfielder, but in the past year or so he has been moved into more of a centre-back position, and apparently this is the role that he will be playing at Manchester United. And apparently he is actually already seen as a backup to Lissandra Martinez.
So how good is he actually? So of course when we are talking about a youngster who has changed really from a central midfielder to a centre-back, we are going to be focusing on this player in possession. What Aidan Heaven can actually do on the ball and what he could potentially bring to Manchester United.
The first thing which we need to point out is the fact that he is left-footed, and actually very left-footed. Also, I’m up here today instead of down there because I keep blocking the clips, so let me know if this works better for you guys. Let me know what you think.
But anyway, Aidan Heaven, left-footed, very left-footed. You can see in moments like this, when he’s controlling the ball, he is going to take pretty much every single touch with his left foot.
Not only is he left-footed, he’s actually somewhat one-footed. A lot of touches are like this, trying to manipulate the ball, but he’s using his left foot nearly all the time.
Now what he’s actually trying to do here is draw the opposition closer to him. You see when he takes a touch like this, putting his studs on the ball, it gives off this relaxed vibe in possession. And it makes the opposition think that they can get towards you and try and take the ball.
This is something that this young man does a lot. There is a lot of drag backs on the ball using his left foot. Perhaps this is because he used to be a midfielder. You know, he’s used to having lots of touches of the ball. He is very comfortable in these moments.
He wants to kind of roll the ball about, get lots of touches of the ball. He looks like one of those players who actually just enjoys having the ball at his feet, particularly his left foot.
Now in terms of what this brings to Manchester United, we know by now the importance of a left footer in the first phase. It opens up the pitch and allows you to play down both sides.
If you only have right footed players in your team, you always pass to the right hand side. If you only have left footed players in your team, you always pass to the left. When you’ve got a balance, a combination, it allows you to do both. It opens up both sides of the pitch.
And Heaven is no different in that aspect. He is a youngster who will allow us to play down both sides, but particularly down the left using his left foot.
Now not only does he allow us to play through the first phase in simple moments when we have time and space, but also when we are under pressure. Because this young man likes to take chances.
He likes to take risks. Now again, this is probably because he used to be a midfielder. You know, when you play as a central midfielder, you are used to receiving the ball under pressure. The opposition trying to tackle you, receiving with your back to goal.
A lot of press resistance is required. And this is generally something that he had as a central midfielder. Now put that into a centre-back, you’ve got a very comfortable ball player. Someone who at times is going to have you on the edge of your seat a little bit because he does take some unnecessary risks.
And that’s something that you probably want to iron out of his game over time. But also you don’t want to completely get rid of that personality.
You can see in moments like this in his own penalty area wanting to receive the ball. And when he does receive the ball, he’s quite deceptive with the way that he plays.
Not something that we associate with centre-backs. So you can see here he initially kind of drops the shoulder, collapses the hips towards the left-hand side. Then he changes direction again and shapes as though he’s going more towards the touchline.
And then again another drop of the shoulder to once again quickly change direction. And this is something that he looks to do all the time in the first phase. I’ve watched all of his senior minutes in friendlies and in the Carabao Cup at Arsenal.
And I’ve also seen three or four of his youth games now. And this is something that he is always looking to do. He wants to take chances on the ball because he’s confident.
Now in terms of more of a tactical role and a direct fit at Manchester United, this could actually be quite useful for us in the first phase. You see what a lot of teams like to try and do is at the moment press with one striker. Teams don’t straight away go man for man.
They eventually do it. So often we will see, for example, De Ligt having the ball and passing back to the goalkeeper. And the opposition striker at the moment is often responsible for pressing De Ligt, then curving the run towards Onana.
And then as the next pass goes, they’re going to continue bending their run, curving their run, applying pressure to the ball. This is something that Ahmad, for example, does for United quite a lot.
Now what you’re looking for in these moments from your centre-backs is someone that can take advantage of the fact that the striker has so much work to do. And the way to take advantage of this is actually to then push the ball forward into midfield.
If you move the ball quickly across the back from here, from here to here, as this player comes across, as he gets towards you, if you can then sort of accelerate, take a big touch forward, step into these positions, it can actually be really effective helping your team out from the back. And this is certainly something that the young Englishman wants to do.
He wants to take responsibility himself. Normally when we talk about a central midfielder dropping deeper, you might expect me to talk all about their passing range. But in this case, we are looking actually moreat the ball carrying, the driving into the middle of the pitch.
He was a ball carrying midfielder and is now very much a ball-carrying centre-back. And like I said, it can be useful in these sorts of moments. I’ve actually managed to still sort of be in the way a little bit.
But you can see the Chelsea striker is responsible for curving and pressing several different players at once here, and he sort of keeps curving. But by the time he actually gets into this position, he’s trying to catch up with play, right? He’s got ground to make up.
But when these defenders are confident on the ball and actually willing just to knock it five or six yards ahead and travel into that space, it really creates a problem for the opposition because they don’t know how they’re meant to press that, right?.
Because if we are in a moment like this and you’re expecting the striker to press them, but the striker is then beaten by the heavy touch, it asks questions of the next players. Are they meant to stay on their man in midfield or out wide? Or are they now meant to come towards you and apply pressure to the player on the ball?
But that might leave space out wide. It just kind of plants these questions, and this is something that United will look for in the first phase, asking these questions of the opposition with this ball-carrying ability.
Now, probably something that he will need to work on is his decision of when he then releases the ball. You know, when we see these young, confident players, you can carry the ball forward.
Sometimes you can get carried away and try and carry it too far, try and take too many players on. You get tackled, you lose the ball in a bad area, and you’ve got a problem. And this young man has experienced that a couple of times. He will need to learn when to release the ball.
But if he can do that, this is potentially a really valuable tool in the first phase because that ability to carry the ball forward is something that United don’t really have at the moment, not with this amount of drive, not with this amount of power, and almost this amount of arrogance on the ball as he moves forward.
Now, importantly, he’s also a good passer as well. In these higher positions, a little bit further forward up the pitch, he’s quite incisive with the way that he plays. Again, he’s used to being a midfielder, a position responsible for ball progression, and that shows in his game.
He is someone that wants to move the ball forward. And again, being that left-foot profile, it’s useful for United. Outside of Lisandro Martinez, we do currently lack that. So this could be something that we see quite a lot of, looking to move the ball forward through the lines, find the midfielders, find players in the half space. We know that the left foot sort of gives you this angle to play forward. I think that’s something that he will look to bring to the team.
This was actually highlighted quite nicely against Bournemouth in pre-season. Now, we have to remember that this is a pre-season game, so the intensity is, of course, much lower. But it’s in these sorts of moments where he has a bit of time on the ball and is able to get his head up, where he can play these incisive passes.
And when you can move a ball through the lines like this, look how many players you can take out at once. That’s six opposition players taken out of the game with one straight pass.
Now, again, we have to consider the context of the match. The intensity isn’t there. But it’s still a really good pass. You can only play against what’s in front of you, right? And this was something that he kept doing in this game.
On this occasion, the flow of the ball is sort of moving right to left, and you would expect him to continue that flow, moving the ball towards the left-hand side.
This is where there’s a really nice, subtle little detail in this moment with the reverse pass. It would have been quite easy to keep the flow going towards the left-hand side and working down this side of the pitch. But he doesn’t want to do that.
He wants to move the ball forward incisively. And again, it allows your team to advance. It allows you to take several players out of the game. So I think this is somewhere where he can actually be quite a useful backup to Lissandro Martinez almost straight away. On the ball, I think he would bring quite a lot.
Now, for all the positives in possession so far, there is also a negative, a weakness, or perhaps an area of concern that I do have, which we always expect to be the case with any footballer, but especially someone so young.
In this case, it’s going to be the longer passing range. I think we’ve got ourselves here a player who can switch to play. He’s not a bad long passer, particularly if you are asking for switches from deep left to sort of middle range on the right-hand side of the pitch.
You know those safe switches that you’re playing where you’re not really advancing the play and asking questions of the opposition, but you’re sort of safely switching the play into a good area.
So, for example, you’re drawing the opposition over like this, like United do so regularly, and then you’re looking for that switch out into a safe position. Nice. I think he’s quite comfortable doing that. He’s confident in his position.
But I think where you start to get the question mark is when you ask him to be a little bit more expansive. So not just can you push this ball out into the chest, into the feet of the player, but actually can you play a more searching ball, perhaps over the top for a striker, or actually even into the space on the far-hand side.
The far-hand side? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. The far side. Can he do this? I’m not so sure. This is where I do have question marks. And actually a lot of it is technique. In these moments, he doesn’t strike the ball particularly well. He’s not a great ball striker, which means the passers sort of fall flat a little bit and quickly peter out into nothing.
You can see it a bit clearer here. You can see what he wants to do. There’s a player on the far side he’s trying to switch the ball to. That’s what he wants to do. But the ball striking here, he almost catches the ball wrong, sometimes using the inside of his foot just a little bit too much.
He needs to use the top of the boot a little bit more to get the fizz on the pass that he wants. Instead, he kind of catches it with the inside of the boot sometimes, and it leads to these passes which don’t ever really go anywhere.
They sort of float off the ground, but there’s not enough drive on them, which means it’s always going to be difficult for your teammate to control. It makes life easier for the defender to read the play because it’s moving so slowly. So I think this is an area where he does need to improve.
But apart from that, I think this looks like actually a really nice ball-playing defender. Now, the last thing I do just quickly want to touch on is a slightly defensive side of the game because we are talking about a young defender here.
Now, to be honest, I haven’t seen an awful lot of footage of this. I haven’t got too many examples to work with, but there is one area of concern, and that is that for me, it does still look like a midfielder playing in a defensive position.
Now, perhaps at United you get away with it a little bit more because we play with three centre-backs, so you’ve got the extra two to help you out. We know that United often defend in a back five, so we do have the extra man. But you can tell that this guy’s only been playing centre-back for about 18 months now.
He’s not a natural in this position. There are moments where he lacks defensive instincts, and I think actually the best example of this, which people have been seeing, was actually against United in pre-season up against Hoyland.
As the ball gets played long to Hoyland in this position, the defender has to get himself into a position where basically making it difficult for Hoyland to get at goal. You’re trying to block this path. You’re trying to make it so that Hoyland, the striker, doesn’t have a direct route at goal.
But he doesn’t really do that at all. As Hoyland shifts the ball forward, the defensive footwork is just wrong. He just gets himself into the wrong position. He gambles the wrong side, almost like you might do if you’re a midfielder trying to nick the ball back in the middle of the park, knowing you’ve got cover behind you.
But you don’t get that cover at centre-back, and as a result, on this occasion, he does make it too easy. He does give Hoyland a very clear straight line to run into, and then, yeah, he doesn’t really have the recovery pace to deal with it. Now, that’s not to say he’s a slow defender, by the way.
He’s actually pretty quick, and I think as a channel defender, his recovery pace will get him out of a lot of sticky situations. But in terms of actually the technical side of defending, he’s not there yet. He will need a lot of work in this area.
I think it’s a part of his game which needs a lot of development, but we expect that to be the case when you’ve got a young player, especially a young player who very recently has moved position, moved away from the position he’s played his whole life.
Now, the good thing is you get all the positives of his previous position. On the ball, he looks really good. For a young centre-back, he has pretty much everything you would want, apart from the long passing that we were talking about.
Defensively, more question marks, and he will be tested in the Manchester United under-21s, but also should he play in the first team, there will be big question marks there.
But again, a bit like with Patrick Dorgu, and even more so in this case, this is a very, very young player we are signing. We are signing potential, not someone to completely rip it up in the first 18 months and destroy it and be unbelievable at Manchester United.
No, that’s not what we’re expecting. In three years, perhaps he can be a really useful player for us, being a squad player until that point.
I like the signing. It’s a risk-free signing. You get someone unbelievably cheap. The worst that can happen is you have to sell him in 18 months for a small profit.
Not really too much that can go wrong with this business, in my opinion, and also it annoys Arsenal fans, which is always quite funny because I don’t really like Arsenal fans.
So yeah, overall, I think it’s a good signing for Manchester United to do. We’re going to have to watch him a lot more to really learn more about his game.
But I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen so far, although there are clear areas that need work. In terms of today, we’re going to wrap it up there because that’s all I’ve really got to say. So let me know your thoughts.
