Louis Van Gaal has repeatedly reminded those who ask him that it takes a lot longer than three months to build a team and that a year is probably more realistic. Or three years. Or just shut up OK? It’ll probably work!
Before the Burnley vs Man United game a lot was made of the purchase of Angel Di Maria and whether he was a “Manchester United signing”, harking back to the days of wide wingers like Ryan Giggs. More or less unanimously, pundits agree that he is indeed “a Manchester United player”. Because Man United play with wingers, right? That’s their thing?
It turns out a lot needs to be learned, including clearly defining the difference between changing the way an entire football club has worked for 30 years and changing the way a team lines up for a match.
The philosophy isn’t just a switch to a 3-4-1-2 or 3-5-2 formation, it’s an entirely different way of understanding the game. This is what Van Gaal means when he says that he can’t just build it from scratch. The line up looks like this on a tactics board:
Sir Alex Ferguson made 4-4-2 and 4-4-1-1 the default formations over his 25 year reign and these depended heavily on the width created by wide runners. The play was directed to a powerful central midfield who would hold the ball until it could be played into wide players, who would in turn run a bit and then try and cross it in.
Van Gaal doesn’t care about tradition – he’s making a whole brand new thing! One with running EVERYWHERE
In Van Gaal’s system the three central defenders are required to occupy the width of the pitch, be able to pass and simply have to be three of the best ball playing defenders in European football. It’s totally easy to do over night.
Darren Fletcher anchors it in the middle, but with the team bereft of confidence and the opposition built to counter attack, nobody in defence wanted to take the risk on threading through a pass. Punting is easier.
Furthermore, the players just don’t look like they understand where they’re actually supposed to be yet. This shape works perfectly if everyone takes position in the space that the formation creates but instead it seems that this diagram below is more what United players seem to think they’re meant to do:
So you want actual proof do you? Well how about this:
Valencia is somewhere off screen instead of the position he should be in and every other United player is marked except for the defenders. Jonny Evans and Tyler Blackett aren’t exactly renowned for their attacking exploits and both – clearly confidence is important here – don’t want to take any chances and so spread the play back and forth. There is no conviction and everything is very slow and predictable. EASY TO DEFEND.
Fletcher, who is there to protect the defence and provide the pass that begins an attacking move, is marked by two players meaning that the defenders need to pick a clever through ball or just punt it somewhere towards the strikers. Guess which they did a lot?
The shape of the team means that Burnley’s strikers are left in a position where they are unable to press properly. If the defence sits deep then the opposition can’t get near them, but it also means that the wing backs/full backs have to run at a packed midfield. Instead of doing that, Ashley Young and Antonio Valencia received the ball and passed it straight back over and over and over. It was very boring. It was so, so boring.
Di Maria had some impressive moments and constantly looked to attack but with nobody around him 100% sure of where they were meant to be, players like Mata and Van Persie just couldn’t get in the game.
It wasn’t just United’s confusion that led to their lack of chances created either, Burnley were set up to frustrate them and did it very well.
The philosophy that Van Gaal is trying to implement runs from the first team right down to youth players. It’s the same that he instilled in Ajax, Barcelona and Bayern Munich – quick passing, fluid movement, constantly changing positions. In the words of Alan Partridge, it’s liquid football.
While United figure out what on earth it is he’s actually trying to teach them, teams that are better organised defensively but have less talented players (Burnley) will find it relatively easy to prevent them from scoring.
Some lifelong fans don’t know how to deal with watching an inept Manchester United. Look at the sadness in Paul Scholes’ eyes:
Paul Scholes continued punditing into the second half stressing that United needed to get the ball out wide to Young and Valencia and that it was too congested in the middle. This is probably because he only ever played in Man Utd teams with two wingers and hasn’t had to adjust to anything like the current team – that’s the way he won every trophy ever, so why wouldn’t it work?
The wide players in this new system are designed to create space for the central midfielders, offer an option going forward, and the forwards are expected to create intricate pieces of sharp passing. The problem is the English game’s default setting when nothing is happening is to “just hit it forward, something will probably happen”.
The English philosophy for years has been built on pace, power and dynamism. For Van Gaal, patience is key. Think about how watching Barcelona a few years ago could be pretty dull. Did they win stuff? Yes. Yes they did.
On
Monday Night Live about two years ago,
Gary Neville explored how Barcelona play with hugely seperated centre backs as it forces the opposition to press high, creates space and eventually wears the defending team down. If you click on the link above you’ll see him take apart El Classico and show how Real Madrid capitalised on mistakes made by Barca’s defenders and holding midfielder, allowing them to score.
In this example, the philosophy never changed and eventually Real grew tired from chasing Barca around the pitch, resulting in a win for Pep Guardiola‘s side as they exploited the tiredness.
Guardiola may have been in charge for that game and oversaw the greatest club side probably ever, but Van Gaal is the man who set the foundations for the Barcelona team he took over – Guardiola was his assistant for a period of time too. Bayern Munich, another team who switch positions, explore space and play short, flowing football were set up by the Dutchman before he eventually got fired.
Jonathan Liew’s brilliant
Van Gaal Dossier explores this more but my point here is that United keep making lots and lots and lots and lots of mistakes and the shape leaves them completely vulnerable to a counter attack.
If you don’t have brilliant, tactically aware and confident players, eventually the game hits 0-0 in the 90th minute and you’re playing against an entire team of defenders.
The team is learning a completely new formation in a very competitive league, have players that don’t really fit the system (Mata is not a central midfielder) and the whole thing depends on players constantly switching position and understanding each other.
New signings take time to adjust but as Val Gaal asserts, the results aren’t important, it’s all about getting the system right. Once it does, and that has taken time (a couple of years minimum) in his previous clubs, United will be fairly scary to play against. At the moment, everyone wants to play them.
The fear factor at Old Trafford may have temporarily hidden in the toilets, but the signs that Van Gaal is going to stick with the philosophy that has been so successful for him in the past are there. At the moment it is causing his own team trouble and as long as he keeps the players believing in the eventual benefits, it will probably work.
At the moment they’re a mess. This is like calling a really good plumber round to fix your bath but then he works out the shower in the room above has a problem too and the roof has actually been falling through for months, and the best thing to do is just move the bathroom to another part of the house – it will look brilliant, be futuristic and beautiful to look at. You’ll probably win prizes!
The last guy you had in just tried to work around the problems and that didn’t really work, and you have the money anyway… so you tell him to go right ahead. About three months in you kinda get a bit sick of having to use the neighbours’ shower and start to get antsy. “FIX MY BATHROOM SOONER” you yell, but only when you’re on your own and not surrounded by people who’ve been reading loads about plumbing recently.
And if that analogy doesn’t make sense to you, just remember that I really regret listening to that plumber.
