Chelsea 1, Manchester United 0, another Premier League match and another Premier League loss. Becoming all too familiar with this feeling of a disappointing Manchester United performance and another disappointing performance in the league. It is now official, we cannot win two games in a row in the Premier League this season, which is just absurd to think about. The standards are so, so low at this football club at the moment.
Although weirdly, we didn’t actually start this game too badly. People often talk about the first 30 minutes of a football match being the most tactical part because that’s when the managers have both come up with an idea, a blueprint to go into the game with. And during those spells, I think United were actually the better team.
Now the reason why I say that is because for the first 20, 25, maybe even 30 minutes, United were the better team. We were the team controlling the ball, playing out from the back, moving through the pitch. And also out of possession, we were the team pressing with a greater intensity. And like I said, I genuinely think United started pretty well. Some of that was helped though by the fact that Chelsea were incredibly passive.
We know how United are going to try and play out from the back. The middle centre back will be a little bit higher than the other two. I’m going to see our wing backs drop a little bit deeper. The problem for Chelsea was the way that they approached this. You see their striker dropped in on Harry Maguire. But this meant that their two wingers had to come to our two wider centre backs like so.
This is going to leave our wing backs with quite a lot of room to be honest because even if Kukureya can come out to press Masraoui, it’s quite a long way for him to travel to get there. So United can either use sort of bounce passes in the middle of the pitch to find the spare man, or we can go a bit more direct and actually just clip the ball over. And early on, like I said, I think United were the better team and able to play out from the back.
And we can see this sort of working here. You can see the two Chelsea wingers coming inside, fairly narrow into high positions. But it does mean, like I said, that Masraoui is completely free down this side of the pitch, completely open. And Maguire’s got two options. We can sort of go infield to Bruno Fernandes and play that bounce pass around the corner. Or we can go direct to Masraoui.
Either way, we are going to get out from the back and move the ball into a decent position. Masraoui does well, takes the ball, moves inside the pitch, goes into the feet of Rasmus Hoyland, who actually initially does well because he gets separation away from the centre-back. After that, not so well. Not so well. Not a good night at all for Rasmus Hoyland.
I’m not going to pile in on him like a lot of people are, but I will just say we have to acknowledge it. He was terrible. Absolutely terrible. A horrendous number nine performance from Rasmus Hoyland. He needs to find some confidence. He needs to find a way of improving because right now it is not happening for him and he’s playing terribly.
But regardless, tactically, which is important, United I felt did start the game well because we were able to move the ball out from the back. We were able to sort of exploit Chelsea and overload them in the first phase. And even in the midfield as well, to be honest, because Chelsea had several players high up the pitch initially, this front four sort of trying to get pressure on the ball.
But behind them, there was a lot of space in this area here because Chelsea only have two central midfielders with Enzo Fernandes and Caicedo. But Manchester United were often playing with three, sometimes even four because we’ve got Casemiro and Bruno Fernandes who both started there. But also we’ve got Mason Mount who could rotate into this deeper position. We had Ahmad who could drop a little bit deeper. But also Masraoui would occasionally go into midfield as well.
And when we did this, we did, like I said, genuinely overload Chelsea. And again, I think we looked fairly decent on the ball during these parts of the game.
If we just move ahead to this next clip here, we’ll see this. So initially you can see Masraoui taking up a more central position, very narrow in fact for a wing back. But more importantly, you can see the Chelsea four high up the pitch leaving a pretty large space behind them. No Chelsea players in that space there, whereas we’ve got the likes of Mount and Bruno.
They’re good technical players. And you can see sort of really here how it matches up. Three Manchester United players with Mason Mount dropping deep to just the two Chelsea players. And that means when you combine and you play well, you’re going to find the free man. And United were able to do that. The problem was quality in the final third was, as usual, just completely lacking. No real threat.
By the way guys, I just quickly want to interrupt the video because whilst this may not be the most important match in the world, we do have a huge game coming up on Wednesday in the Europa League final. The biggest game United have had since I started this channel, in my opinion. Therefore, to celebrate that, we are going to be doing a six hour charity stream on Wednesday before the Europa League final.
We’re talking maybe playing some pro clubs, if you guys like, some football manager, talking about tactics, tactically previewing the final, quizzes, all sorts for you guys to get involved in. If we reach £100 in donations for Nelson’s Journey, there will be a link in the description down below. If we can reach £100 before Wednesday, I will be streaming football manager during that stream so you guys can see actually how I would be setting things up at United.
Because I always talk about what Amrim should do, that will be my chance to provewhat I would do. So if you could please use the link in the description, it would be greatly, greatly appreciated. There will be more details on Wednesday during that stream, so I’ll see you there. Now whilst United never really offered a proper attacking threat in this game, I am just going to briefly continue with some positives, which might be a bit weird because everyone’s come out of this match with the same feeling, and even I was disappointed. But tactically, I think we did see some promising stuff, and also individually as well.
For this, we’re going to switch to more of the defensive side of the game. Look at Chelsea trying to play out from the back, and United trying to press high. Something I think we did pretty well for large parts of the game, but we also had problems as well.
So we’ll start off with Chelsea trying to build in a back three. So Rhys James, the right back, comes a little bit deeper next to Tosin Adarabayo and Levi Colwell. Kukurea is going to move a little bit further forward into these positions here, so Mudweke can go wider, and Enzo Fernandes is going to move forward. So it’s basically three players like this here for Chelsea, and Caicedo playing as the solo pivot.
And what United look to do in this game was actually be really aggressive and basically go for a man-to-man pressing system, which is not something that we usually do, particularly away from home against one of the top five sides. So a little bit unusual from Amarin, but early on it really worked. Because you can see, we are naturally going to match up with Chelsea’s back three, because we know that we have a front three, so it makes sense.
We’ve then got Bruno Fernandes on Caicedo. So far it makes a lot of sense. In these areas, though, is where it’s going to be a bit more challenging. Or certainly it could have been if United didn’t approach the game well. But we did approach the game well. You see, the problem is here, Kukurea, Palmer, Enzo Fernandes, all against Casemiro. That’s a three versus one. That’s a big problem. So Casemiro needs some help from his defensive line.
And he largely got that, because Luke Shaw would be really aggressive out from the back. So he’s playing centre-back, but he’s actually going to go and mark a midfielder. And Lindelof, who is also playing centre-back, is actually going to go and mark Kukurea, the full-back. That’s very, very aggressive.
Now, within this shape, there were rotations as well. Sometimes Dorgu would go inside onto Fernandes instead, and Shaw would go out and play this position as well. That could also work. But generally speaking, United were very aggressive in the early stages. Here you can see that the first part, the natural part, if you like, the three versus three, we can see Bruno Fernandes backing up the press on Caicedo.
But what’s really interesting is how high Lindelöf and Luke Shaw are. Now, I think I’m just blocking Victor Lindelöf. I am. You can see him down there. United are really, really high, really aggressive. And it forces Chelsea to play the ball long. I believe we lose the header, but it ends up in a drop ball situation. But the important thing is we aren’t giving Chelsea comfortable possession. A lot of times recently, we’ve played against teams and made it very easy for them to play out from the back and move through us. That wasn’t the case last night.
You can see it again in a situation like this one here. So initially, Luke Shaw high on the left-hand side, not playing centre-back, squeezing forward to connect. But eventually the ball actually comes to the other side of the pitch. You can see the Manchester United front three trying to match up with Chelsea. And Chelsea try and play the ball through the middle. They tried to go to Kukurea, who has inverted from full-back. But guess who’s there? Victor Lindelof, pressing high, putting the pressure on and forcing Kukurea into an error. Also, by the way, look at that stat at the bottom. Just insane. So, so far, it’s actually all pretty positive from a tactical point of view.
So how do we go on to lose this game 1-0? And how do we end up with this disappointing feeling about the performance? Well, to be honest, one of the big, big issues, and it’s always a concern when you play man-to-man, is what happens if you lose your man-to-man battle? You know, one of these players doesn’t quite win their 50-50. You know, Cole Palmer against Casemiro. Palmer’s a very gifted player.
That’s not someone typically you want to be 1v1 against. But actually, the bigger problem was Bruno Fernandes against Caicedo. Now, this isn’t a criticism of Bruno Fernandes. He’s a very good presser, and he pressed well in this game. Caicedo was just unbelievable. Unbelievably good. So he was the player that Chelsea could go to and trust his press resistance, and he could beat Bruno Fernandes.
And the problem is now for United, what do you do? Do you go forward and close Caicedo down? For example, does Casemiro jump but leave Cole Palmer now in space to receive the ball? Or does Casemiro stay deeper and allow Caicedo to carry the ball forward? This is the big problem for United. This is something that United are going to have to work on because I enjoyed the high-pressing shape, but you do also need to be ready for when a high press doesn’t work. And last night, United didn’t feel like they were.
We’ll see a lot of teams, if they don’t get a high press right, they’ll at least force the ball wide to give themselves time to drop deep. The problem for United was it was in the middle of the pitch we were getting it wrong. So the likes of Lindelöf and Shaw would then drop off. And now we’ve got a situation where there’s just so much room on the outside of the Manchester United midfield, so much room for Chelsea to move into. And that’s why as the game went on, you know, Caicedo was amazing throughout.
But as the game went on, Chelsea could do this slightly more regularly. It felt like as it went on, United lost a bit of intensity as well. So if we are pressing with less intensity, Chelsea are going to find these gapson a more regular basis. And that’s why I felt that as it went on, Chelsea just started to take control in the game really. And to be fair, we actually had the warning four minutes in.
This is Caicedo against Bruno and it’s just unbelievable play from Caicedo. It’s fantastic. It’s unbeatable play. It’s so good. Carries the ball through the middle of the pitch and you can see the problem, right? Space outside the Manchester United midfield. And on this occasion, when it’s Cole Palmer in that space, you’ve got a problem because we know that his delivery into the box is up there with the very, very best in the world. And he proved it with this ball into the middle. Madueke couldn’t quite finish. But that space is a real, real concern.
Now, whilst that space was a concern, Chelsea didn’t exactly exploit it that regularly. Considering this was one of their biggest games of the season, you know, they’re racing for a spot in the top five. I don’t think Chelsea played particularly well at all. And I think United deserve credit for that. I think United restricted Chelsea very well.
Defensively, it was largely a good performance, apart from those moments where we were beaten. The problem was more for me, the lack of attacking threat. Defensively, I don’t think we were too bad. Granted, we became passive as it went on. But I don’t think we were too bad defensively. On the ball, we just didn’t ever look like we could score. And it always felt like if anyone was going to score, it was going to be Chelsea.
And what I talk about so often, I say there’s a little saying all the time. Football is won in the boxes. You can do so much tactical work here to find overloads, to find spaces, to link, to create, to rotate, whatever. But ultimately, football matches typically, unless you’re Mason Mount shooting from the halfway line, typically football matches are won in this penalty area here. Your ability to attack that space and the opposition’s ability to defend that space. And the one in this box here, your ability to defend it and how well the opposition attack it.
And the problem for United was, well, for both teams, neither team attacked the space particularly well. But there was just one moment where Chelsea attacked it well and United defended it very, very poorly. And it leads to the goal. And, you know, this level of football, one goal will often decide it. And it’s bad. It’s really bad for United.
So initially, we’ve got three players at the back post. We’ve got, I believe it’s Ugarte, Lindelöf and Mazraoui. I do believe at the back post. And that’s fine because Chelsea only have three themselves. So that’s ideal. Manchester United are three versus three. The important thing is we must stay three versus three. So we’ve got Ugarte on Palmer, as you can see here.
We’ve got Lindelöf on Kukerea and Mazraoui should be around on the back post. I can’t quite see who that is. But you can see United are three versus three. It has to stay this way. As these Chelsea players make the run into the box, naturally, of course, they’re going to. They’re attacking. As they make the run forward, the United three have to drop off with them. We have to stay three versus three. If not, someone’s going to be outnumbered.
The problem is Ugarte doesn’t drop. You can see this yellow line here. Everyone else drops below that line. Lindelöf drops. Mazraoui drops. The three Chelsea forwards push forward. Ugarte, though, holds his position here. He doesn’t drop back into the defensive line. Now, this is something that Casemiro, by the way, is normally amazing at. Very, very good at dropping in and helping the defence.
Ugarte doesn’t do it here. He doesn’t protect his defence. And that means that Lindelöf now has to come across onto Cole Palmer, which means at the back post, Mazraoui is now one versus two. He’s got two players to try and deal with. That’s very, very difficult. And it’s why Kukerea ends up with what is essentially a free header unchallenged because Mazraoui couldn’t get close to him because it’s not actually Mazraoui’s man, it’s Lindelöf’s man. But Lindelöf can’t be there because Ugarte didn’t pick his man up.
And at the end of the day, like I said, this level of football, it’s often one moment in the penalty area that decides a football match. And that’s what we saw in this game. I don’t think United were too bad. If this performance occurred in a more promising season, I don’t think people would be too doom and gloom about it. But because it’s been such a bad year, everything feels so much worse. United weren’t amazing either, don’t get me wrong. But we probably did enough to draw this game.
I don’t think any side was great, but United had an error at the back. Chelsea didn’t. Chelsea got the win. And, you know, that’s the Premier League for United this season, right? It’s what we do. We lose matches. It’s a big, big problem. It needs to change next season. We’ve become too comfortable with losing. Even me here, 12 months ago, I’d have been fuming if we’d just lost in the Premier League. But it just feels normal now. And that has to change next season. It’s not going to change now.
