Red Devils’ Dead Balls, Part 2
Fixing Man Utd’s set-piece problem: Offence
As a quick intro in case you’ve stumbled onto this — this is the second part of a ‘fixing Man Utd’s corners’ project, with Part 1 focusing on the defensive aspect, and this part focusing on attack. Part 1 is linked here, by the way: https://medium.com/@jakewfox98/red-devils-dead-balls-part-1-b994f62b9085
Man Utd seriously need work with their attacking corners, as The Analyst, The Athletic (here and here), and Breaking The Lines have brilliantly noted, but I’ve tried to review these in a vacuum i.e. without having re-read these. I’ve watched every single corner taken by Man Utd in the league, noted it down, cried a little (a lot), and tried to plot out how I’d save things. Good? Good.
Attack
We should talk about Bruno
Fernandes is the heartbeat of Man Utd’s style, for better or for worse, and is probably the only man to come close to beating the ten Hag bleep test over this season. Both of these mean that he’s likely never dropping from the side, which is fine, but therefore means we should build Utd’s structures around his qualities — rather than say, Eriksen’s, when he plays a couple of times every few months.
Defensively I’ve spoken about how I’d adjust Bruno’s role more generally to make it suit (more aggy on short plays, not dropping on the post, leading outward charges) but offensively it’s a bit simpler really: Get him the fuck off corners.
Now Utd aren’t blessed with takers, I’ll admit — even when Eriksen does come in, he’s rarely taking over for Bruno on corners for long and often his balls are inconsistent too. However Bruno’s deliveries are erratic and arguably leggy due to the distance he’s covering, and it means Utd are rarely able to do anything valuable with Maguire, Casemiro and McTominay in the middle.
Shaw’s deliveries in his cameo away at Luton weren’t perfect but had a nice whip to them that Bruno’s often don’t, and Utd have tried alternatives on the right-hand-side almost in admittence of Bruno’s flaws — with Dalot taking them recently, and Mount popping up at the start of the season. The best thing about these alternate takers is that it free’s Bruno into a better central role, suited well to pinning markers on the edge or taking advantage with good shooting/passing if they choose to leave him open. It also lets him serve as a nice counter cover, using his pressing and general dawg serve to minimise that threat. This for me is so much better than Utd using him to aimlessly punt crosses into (often) the first man.
As a little aside, Bruno actually is one of the league’s best dead-ball creators, with 38 shot-creating-actions from dead-balls per Fbref, placing him 5th — the issue is that he’s taken the 3rd most corners in the league, and his deliveries just don’t suggest that should be the case. He’s not quite Julián Álvarez bad, but he’s not good enough for Utd to not get better from him elsewhere.
I need to go back a bit and calm down — I said get him off completely because of a fun thing called dramatic effect. In reality, it’s a bit more nuanced. Fernandes has 2 forms of genuinely good deliveries, cut in with the general shite:
1. A whipped outswinger to the front post, just on the edge of the 6-yard
2. A dead straight ball towards the far post, hit at Maguire’s big old head or at a free man on the edge
I think there’s still a place for both of these, there just needs to be some consistency in application. For the former, it needs to be done in games where you can get the run of markers, to earn distance and get the flicks on net — McTominay is great at this — and is arguably the harder technique given the size of zonal defenders against outswingers. I’d like to see Hojlund used well here too, and give Casemiro and Maguire (plus the other CB) used as blockers for closer markers to stop them passing runners off to each other. A good example of this came in the Aston Villa home tie — where although they don’t score, Evans and McTominay’s runs opens the space for Hojlund centrally to score a rebound. You can earn your own luck with smart movements like this.
The second is a reliable method for teams that suffer from the same issues as Utd, with holes between their lines or an inconsistent step-up of a single line. This was basically how Utd scored vs Villa; using Maguire’s excellent 1v1 aerial ability and powerful heading, along with Hojlund’s instinctual movement across defenders, to get a nice 2-phase play. Deliveries of this style are littered throughout Utd’s corner catalogue, and a really nice option. The beauty of these two styles is that they both work on outswingers, and can both neatly lead to the other — markers moving from back to front accordingly. Bruno’s inswingers stink badly, but there’s utility for him still in certain ties on the RHS.
I’ll also give a little bit extra on the ‘ball to the edge’ as Utd try this all the time and are yet to score from it, but do get some genuinely good (and by good, I mean better than usual) shots as a result. Whilst it’s a fairly difficult lane to earn, unless you have a team that’s super prone to being pinned in their own 6-yard box like Luton and Nottingham Forest below, it’s a nice routine that exists within the total vacuum of them that is Utd’s set-piece repertoire. Also, Fernandes weirdly has this pass far more on-lock than anything else, so benefits him again.
Utd should seriously consider bringing in a new taker in the summer, and hope Shaw especially can stay fit for actual whips from the other side, allowing for Bruno’s role to become more sporadic and in turn more impactful with these routines.
If this doesn’t happen then I have an alternative I’d recommend.
Short, back, and sides
Utd in the past months have developed a growing awareness about their corner strategy. In realising that Fernandes maybe isn’t the ideal taker, and that Utd maybe don’t have the strongest aerial line-up in the box, the focus has slightly shifted to include more short routines. Don’t get me wrong, the ball is still needlessly punted into the box more times than not, but Utd have shown a certain cuteness in bringing these in; doing so especially in games where they’re fully aware they’re getting destroyed in the air.
Take West Ham at Old Trafford from March for example. West Ham have a lot of tall lads. Man Utd’s line-up on the day wasn’t small, but lets just say chances are limited with Mainoo, Lisandro, Garnacho, Shaw, and Dalot in the XI. To counter this problem, of the 5 corners Utd had, they opted to go short 4 times — 3 of these times ending in a shot.
A positive of this was that one included getting Bruno central, as above, but in general this was a far safer way to approach these situations and minimise counter attacks when Utd had fairly limited transition control power.
3 days earlier, Utd had a similar focus away at Wolves. 5 corners, 3 shorts. Smart choices when met with man mountains — the same focus is repeated at home to Fulham in February. Shots originating from short corners account for ~29% of Utd’s corner shots, despite only being a ~25% proportion, including the late game-state corners which always produce fuck all.
It’s not all intelligent however, as anyone who’s watched a single Man Utd game this season would probably guess. A lot of these plays are frankly free-wheeled. As far as I can tell, in much the same way that Utd’s attacking patterns are mostly allowed to ‘run as the come’ with an emphasis on personal freedoms and choice, so are the short corner routines. Player movements locally are often at the beck and call of Fernandes as he aims to generate himself an opportunity rather than anyone else — Bruno also has a nasty habit of dawdling on the ball, allowing him and his other short option to be pressed super easily and kill any numeric overload they have. Player movements in the box meanwhile are either entirely static or entirely individual, as there is no collective move to an area or marker — insinuating to me that they’re purely reliant on where Fernandes ends up getting the ball to.
I really do enjoy these more, and feel they suit Utd far better than just launching it in there, but there needs to be a much stronger look at how all these parts interact. There’s clearly been some work done near the corner flag given how ‘eye of the needle’ some of these plays try to be, but in the box? There’s no choreography. Look at the moment-by-moment movements of Arsenal’s short corner vs Chelsea and it’s no surprise that Arsenal perform a lot better from dead balls than Utd.
This, however, is the area I feel most confident in Utd maximising in the future — if they’re willing to work on them as a collective.
Beware the counters — but you knew that already
The free form nature of these plays also leaves Utd in a significantly bad place for counters, unless they beef up the edge of the box like they do vs West Ham. Bournemouth, Liverpool and Fulham (twice) have all earned good counter opportunities from Utd not having a core philosophy to how they approach these off-shoot corners.
A small point is one which I stumbled onto right at the end of my back-to-front viewing, where Utd have very clearly been terrified by their early season habit of their corners essentially being gifts to opposition attackers.
In the first weeks of the season, against Arsenal, Wolves H, and most obviously Nottingham Forest (where they conceded), Utd’s gung-ho attitude but lack of generalised formula for corners meant they had a shaky rest-defence — which meant big fast attacking lads could storm through second balls and lose Utd all that territory they just gained.
In recent times, we get games like West Ham: this works in order to boost the quality of their short plays, and also means that teams like West Ham who live on the transition are robbed of the opportunity. Nice work.
However, this attitude clearly only works if you can score and control games in open-play, which Utd cannot. In the games against Wolves A and Fulham, either side of the West Ham tie, Utd lose the quality of structure from before, and combined with pretty dreadful deliveries from Bruno, give up vile counters which Wolves score from and Fulham should score from.
Whilst it’s probably a calculated risk primarily on size differentials, Utd should probably bite the bullet and stay outside more often, especially in the latter half of the season. Corner goals are so rare, and Utd’s defensive ability and general exhaustion means these counters are far worse for them than a wasted delivery or two. This also works pretty nicely with going short more often, and would allow Utd to keep some final third pressure on with a good hearty press.
Make some routines I’m begging you
As a final two-parter, something Utd need to work on is their ‘routinisation’, where they need to really decide a core philosophy and routines within this.
Corners don’t really have a purpose within Utd’s game model, they just kinda… happen. Whilst its fine not to have a focus on them, Utd should probably hope for better than just fluking into goals. Utd have only scored 7 goals from set-pieces this season per The Analyst, despite 190 corners, and that’s including Bruno’s pretty good free-kick deliveries. This is not only quite bad (only Brighton, Palace, and 3 of the bottom 4 have scored less), it’s a wasted opportunity.
Returning to a point from earlier, most Utd in-box movements are subtle, and by subtle, I mean not really anything. This is especially a hamper on those short corners, where I’ve mentioned players are just wandering about rather than making a conscious movement to optimal locations, but it’s a problem across the board.
There are some core themes within the corners which I’ll list below briefly, but in general, Utd are spending the majority of corners just trying to hit the same players in the same way, and it’s no wonder teams are so relaxed against them.
1. Negative pressure on the front post
This, as I’ll show in video, is where 2 or 3 players will rush beyond the front post to drag markers, and try and open space for usually Maguire, Varane, or Casemiro 1v1 behind them. This is the Utd go-to given Bruno’s front-post bias (both good and bad), and its generally fine but there’s nothing crazy here at all, as it often leaves the headerer short.
2. Varane 1v1s
This is another standard, which is smart but also fine, with a shifted focus towards the middle and back-post. This one is limited a lot by Bruno’s inability to regularly clear 20 yards, but the logic is mostly the same as the above. Create separation in space, give your player a valuable 1v1.
3. Crowd the GK
I’d argue this makes the most sense given Utd’s lack of runners a la Kai Havertz and Gabriel, and involves basically the classic routine vs DDG — get everyone on the GK, hope for the best. It’s fine, again.
4 (ish). Hit Maguire
Yeah I mean, come on, you would wouldn’t you. Not even joking when I say this is what they consider as a ‘core philosophy’.
In amongst these, there are some nice routines but they are so few and far between that you’d be forgiven for forgetting. Some of my favourites are below, but my main point here is that Utd’s general attitude is so careless and ‘well this’ll do’ that they’re missing out on a lot of untapped value, especially in Maguire and Casemiro as fantastic pinning players. I’m not going to rattle off all the plays Utd could do, but trying to use the natural push and pull of the box combined with their focus on short corners makes a lot of sense to me. Something similar to Villa’s second goal at the Emirates the other week — give the opposition something to organise against, rather than letting them use it as a training drill.
My favourite Utd routines
1. Inside the block
This is actually kinda like Stones’ goal vs LFC recently, with Casemiro shown here vs Nottingham Forest standing within the zonal markers of Forest to try and get a tap-in where he’s not being marked goal-side. This was also tried vs Brighton at home a few weeks later, and then never again because they didn’t score from it twice, I guess.
2. McTominay goal loop
Clearly taking note of Havertz for Arsenal, Scotty Maccy T loops through the goal-line in the home tie vs Luton — meaning he can crash to try and get the flick-on from Bruno’s front post focus. Again, not seen since.
3. Lovetrain
So Utd can learn? Interesting. This is very similar to the type of chance they concede, with runners queuing on the edge to then sprint into the splitting runs, used once against Palace and never again, shock.
Nice moments, but few and far between, and I think this comes from a core lack of clarity on what corners really mean for this side.
Again, we can learn a little bit from the best set-piece teams in the league do. What Arsenal were really good at in the early months of the season was understanding that they were likely to get 8+ corners each game, and so strategies could be slow-burn; the need for a specific ‘routine’ with vast intracicies died off, as if you have a basic strategy (plus a strong squad-build) that allows for you to get first contacts and shots consistently, you can rely on making smaller adjustments during the game without having to have one-off bangers. A key strategy in this was using a core area for a long time, and then massively changing it up to the open space created by the defenders reacting to before — watch the Man Utd Emirates match back again if you want to see it in action (I know ten Hag has, in his nightmares every night since). In the second half of the season, as this has changed with physical declines and profile changes, single routines have returned to make use of the shallower corner pool.
Likewise, Everton know their attacking presence is limited to transitions and more generally reactive, so their corners reflect far more of their attacking potential game to game. Hence, the focus on these, and the refinement of their blocking tendencies. Much the same for Brentford, but more from a nerd-perspective than a “God we need to score this header or it’s curtains”.
What I’m saying here then is that for Man Utd to improve in these situations is understand what corners actually mean to them, how vital is any given corner to success — even on a game-to-game basis (Arsenal, for example, went for more routine-y stuff vs Brentford due to their quality in a block in open-play). Right now any corner from any game looks basically the same, on macro and micro levels. Wider theory seemed to bleed in a little with the short corners, which represent a very Man City way of retaining pressure in the final third whilst acknowledging aerial flaws, but not for long, and it’s killing these as a source of chances. Not understanding their place within your game-model means they’re not only useless for you, they’re actually useful for your opposition — sacrificing a corner vs Utd is probably improving your odds at this point.
If Utd want to engage in fully transitional games, then use the position to create them: quick interchanges from short corners, accompanied by large switches and timed runs against an opposition rising line, rather than Bruno getting the ball, sitting with it, and punting it at the opposition defender.
If they want to use them as a way of enforcing control that their players/system don’t allow typically, then control: work on player movements on the outside to create quality possession, using opposition presses to manoeuvre space in the corners of the box which aren’t covered typically on defence (or can be taken away by simple pinning).
If they want to use it to score and swing game-states, then actually create some routines that isolate your targets: don’t rely on simple to-and-fro movements of your players, have markers pinning deeper inside zonals and blockers to allow slower runners free paths, or force markers towards the goal using these targets and hit these edge shots with your (admittedly good) long-distance ball-strikers.
Right now? It’s a total mess of ambition, being treated as a meaningless playground of unsure ideas and inflated egos.
As a sum-up then, to improve, attacking:
- Stop letting Bruno take everything — get him central more often, and use the rest of the squad to shift the responsibility (or buy someone!)
- Emphasise short corners — but improve the in-box work of those not involved in the intricate passing plays
- Stack the edge of the box to stop the counters — combined with short corners, aim to keep the pressure on
- Understand where corners stand within the game-model, and add routines as a part of these — let these become a part of the wider strategy, not some unwanted extras
Wrapping up
On corners it’s as simple as this — Utd take so much and give so little in return, and I think it’s a problem of laziness rather than potential. Defensively there’s barely been a shift of the same system that Mourinho used, and holes are constantly poked and totally ignored by opposition teams weekly and longer. Offensively, Utd rely exclusively on 3 people who are good at heading to win everything almost out of mathematical likelihood over anything else — no need to earn for yourself when ‘Old Trafford aura’ will carry you, right?… right?. You get hints of self-awareness, or accepting that maybe this is a problem, but these last for corners at a time. Much like everything else at Utd over the last decade, it’s all for the short-term rush, and little care for support network than lets the typical Utd style of play run so simply.
For all the talk of ten Hag, Woodward, and sacking and hiring everyone else under the club’s roof, maybe Utd need to get themselves a Nico Jover instead.
