Erik ten Hag’s Manchester United Needs to Improve in These Areas
The 2022–23 EPL season has so far been a mixed bag for Manchester United. At the time of writing, United are sitting at fifth in the table with a game in hand, and very much still in the race for the top four in late October. Coming off a big 2–0 win against Tottenham, Erik ten Hag is slowly, but surely, integrating his players into his tactical system.
But judging from the 2 losses to start the season versus Brighton and Brentford in addition to the 6–3 drubbing taken at the hands of Pep Guardiola’s Man City, Manchester United clearly still have a long way to go.
Let’s take a look at their weaknesses so far this season.
Erik ten Hag favors an energetic, fast paced possession based attack. In his 4–2–3–1/4–3–3 hybrid formation, this requires quick thinking, fluid passers at virtually every position. So it was no surprise this past summer when ten Hag brought talented ball playing CB Lisandro Martinez with him from Ajax, added technician Christian Eriksen on a free, and also targeted the likes of Frenkie De Jong. Passing is a quality ten Hag clearly values and wants the squad to improve in.
Yet so far this season, Manchester United still have a lot to work on in terms of their passing, especially in midfield. United are missing a deep lying midfielder like a prime Carrick who’d be perfect for a squad that needs more stability in midfield. Although signing Lisandro has helped the squad improve the build up play from the back, the defense should also make passing a priority. For everything De Gea has done for this club over the past decade, he isn’t great with the ball at his feet, and could be replaced with a better ball playing keeper next summer.
Using ten Hag’s former mentor Pep as an example, City’s Rodri currently has a ridiculous passing accuracy of 92.1% while also averaging the most passes per game (93.7) this season. He helps keep the City midfield ticking.
In contrast, Fred has the highest passing accuracy in the United midfield with 82.8%, and that’s only on 25.2 passes per game. You might assume the passing percentages are lower because United play more riskier passes, but that’s not the case. Rodri averages 5.8 long balls per game (7.7 per 90) while Fred averages 0.6 (3.6 per 90).
But it’s not just Fred who is struggling this season. McTominay is a solid squad player, but isn’t an elite passer either. Behind only Bruno in both key passes and average passes per game among United midfielders, Eriksen has been a much needed addition to the midfield, but is turning 31 soon. They need an upgrade here. The acquisition of Casemiro should help, but he’s still adjusting to a new system and a new league.
Among the traditional big six in the EPL, Manchester United have the worst passing completion percentage (81%) and are ninth overall in the league.
Man City are completing an astounding 90% of their passes in the league en route to a league high 33 goals.
Now, passing % and possession isn’t everything. Wolves, who have the 6th best passing completion rate in the league, are 18th in the table and have only scored 5 goals. It’s what you do with the possession that matters as well. This leads me to my next point.
In football, you have to score the ball. That’s the nature of the game. And in order to score the ball, you have to shoot. Seems simple enough. When we look at the statistics, Manchester United average 14.2 shots per game. That’s good for 5th in the league, which isn’t too bad although ideally ten Hag would like to average more.
But it’s not just how much you shoot, it’s the quality of the shot and trying to increase your chances to score. United average the seventh most (5.2) shots on target per game, which means 36.6% of the time Manchester United take a shot on goal, it is on target. That’s considerably less than the 41% of Spurs, 39.2% by Arsenal, City’s 38.4%, or even Brighton’s 39.4%. United need to be more clinical with their chances.
Part of the reason for the lack of chances taken is that Manchester United are taking far too many shots from outside the box. As seen in the table above, they are taking 6 shots per game outside the box, which ranks first in the league.
That means an astounding 42% of United’s shots are being taken from outside of the box, which far eclipses any other top table team.
Of course, it’s not ideal for United to try to walk it in every game, but it would be ideal to get that number down to around 30% and get better chances in the box. The lack of a number 9 is clearly hurting United, although United are still scoring just enough (15 goals in 10 games) to win in the EPL.
Well, you’d expect so, but United have also conceded 15 goals, which is why they are in fifth in the EPL and not in the top 4. A silver lining (kind of) is that ten of these goals were conceded in only 2 games, 4 versus Brentford and 6 to Man City while only five goals have been conceded in the other eight EPL games, including games against Arsenal, Liverpool, and Tottenham. So what happened in the Brentford and Man City games?
Time to take a detour on YouTube.
It pains me to have to rewatch these games again, but here we go.
The first Brentford goal was started by losing the ball near our box which led to a De Gea error, the second was also the result of a De Gea gaffe, and on the third it was a combination of both Lisandro and De Gea misjudging the flight of the ball. Brentford’s last goal was a counter attack that Shaw could have positioned himself better on.
On a surface level, you could say the first two goals could have been prevented if De Gea didn’t make those mistakes. That would be true. On a normal day De Gea would have saved the first one with his eyes closed. And sometimes that’s just how football is. Sometimes it’s just not your day.
But we have to also take into account that we lost the ball near our own box for both of Brentford’s first two goals. Had we prevented those, it could’ve been a much different game. So how can we prevent those mistakes from happening?
And this is where we come back to passing again.
Players who are comfortable with their ball at feet can play the ball out of pressure, like the pressure that Brentford applied near our box to win back possession.
Against Man City, it was poor defensive positioning and a lack of marking that led to most of City’s goals. Eriksen and Varane were both in no man’s land for Foden’s first goal, Malacia was out of position for the fourth City goal, and Haaland had too much space for the fifth.
Defensively, United clearly have a lot to work on, but they have looked much better since the City game and seem to be getting better as they are getting more used to Erik ten Hag’s system and to new transfers. The United defense has conceded one goal in their last 3 EPL games (1 in their last 4 games overall).
(Stats courtesy of WhoScored)
