Rooney goal against Manchester City

Wayne Rooney goal – http://bit.ly/euvDqX
Manchester united 2-1 Manchester City

Bolton Wanderers 2-2 Manchester United | Evans, O’shea, Evra, Rooney …

On a day when United can put pressure on Chelsea, they wasted the opportunity to do so. To be honest though they have 66% of the position… still chased the game and are behind bolton twice. Interestingly  managed 13 shots to Bolton’s 15 and committed more fouls than bolton.

BWFC v MUFC lineups

United went with the same side that won against Liverpool with Rooney and Berba upfront with Scholes and Fletcher running midfield. Bolton also played 4-4-2 with Davis and Elmander upfront. Bolton started brightly and they maintained the same pace throughout the game. Game is not very much tactical to write in depth analysis but there are few interesting things about manchester united.

United continued their habit of leaking goals from the defense. For more embracement its again Johnny Evans who was at fault for first goal along with confusing position of Evra in the goal post. Then Nani sent a brilliant strike into goal to level the score. At half-time team talk, SAF told them to send the ball to Nani as much as possible but Nani was not able to send many crosses into the box. But Nani was unsuccessful through out the match to send the crosses into the box except the the one that Owen scored. The second goal which was deflected off Fletcher is not entirely his fault, had Evra or Evans did their job, that cross would never have reached Fletcher. Fletcher’s substation was not surprise since we have a midweek CL match and finally Struggling rooney was subbed. The goal was Owen is simply super and it send a reminder to SAF that, he had an option to turn to, instead of sticking with Rooney.

How many of you had observed and agree with me that, Van Der Sar is poor in this game? After the first 10mins, i started counting how many times pass from VDS finds a united player. All his long passes went to Bolton players…expect one 1 out of 13. Which means for every 8mins, Bolton’s attack came through a goal kick or free kick.

Edwin Van Der Sar ball distribution against Bolton

Observations:

Evra: Everyone is saying Rooney is not in form but the one who is surely struggling from that Worldcup hangover is Evra. He is not at his best in any of the games so fat this season. On the left side, we always get crosses from Evra more than the left winger many times but in the last 2-3 games those are limited to 3 or 4. Match against Bolton, he had 4 attempted crosses and just one is successful.

O’shea: Don’t know why he is still a preffered right-back this season. He is slow and not creative. Not getting into more attacking positions or crosses. in the match against Bolton, he had just 1 unsuccessful cross into the box to his name. We all know, Neville is old and not a good choice now but we have young Rafael waiting for opportunities. He may did a mistake against Bayern Munich that defeated us but he deserves a chance so is his brother. Don’t know when SAF will fix this right back issue.

Johny Evans: I’m sure he has lots of talent otherwise he will not feature in those many games for United. But this season, so far he is struggling. Against Bolton, he didn’t have a tall striker or someone Tevez, still against Davis he struggled. Also we saw Evans giving away a penalty to Torres in the match against Liverpool. Which suggests that, he not dealing properly with strikers who moves more or run around the Penalty box. Evans need to step up to cover this in his defense game, otherwise he may not be wearing that United shirt for long.

Rooney: First time, i though we could have started with any other striker. His choices are wrong and not showing any confidence. He needs to move on and make his on-field scoring count. Now, Owen has sent a signal that he is ready for action… so it would be interesting to see, if SAF opts for Owen in future.

Analysis : Dimitar Berbatov | Whats wrong and what changed ?

I’m one of the fans of Manchester United, who argued that Berbatov is not flop at Old Trafford. I defended him every time some made a comment on this either it is about his laziness or lack of goals etc.. Many United fans nick named him Berbaflop but the same people are now eating their own words after seeing him this season.

Was something changed or is he changed ? No… he wasn’t changed but the difference is the arrogance is back in Berbatov. 🙂 . this statement looks funny but its true. In the last 2 seasons we didn’t saw the arrogance of berbatov much.  He is the best when he drops deep, collects the ball and then plays it to the front player or target man. when i wrote arrogance, its the way he passes the ball. He doesn’t care about his pass but it will be accurate enough to find the right person with good timing.  You saw the in the last match when he took his shirt off after scoring that brilliant airborne volly.

With Tottenham

Remember his days at Spurs. He and Keane formed a wonderful partnership and he is the focal point of the spurs attack. Here is his passes from one the matches he played well for Spurs. You can see here that he likes to drop deep and involve in buildup play.

First season at United

Now at United, in his first season he has Ronaldo and Rooney. Ronaldo used to be the target for United attack and rooney played on the left. This left Berbatov with limited chances to score. Here is Berbatov’s average positions from his 1st season at Old Trafford.

He may have just nine league goals to his name, but he has 10assists also. He even finished fourth in the overall Actim index with 586 points, with his 652 passes the eighth most in the league.

Second season at United

Now into the second season he played along side Rooney when we lineup 4-4-2 but later we switched to 4-3-3 with Rooney alone upfront. Here is the Berbatov’s position diagram.

Generally, the second striker will not play a huge amount of passes, but will look to provide key passes that will lead directly to goals. But Berbatov has more passes and involved more in the build up play. The role that SAF gave him is unique. His game is to keep position in tight situations up on the pitch and to keep the attacking play and importantly to provide the pressure on the opposition team.

Now, in this season he played well and did what exactly he has been assigned. He played in support of Rooney as a second striker. it is common that the second striker generally gets less number of passes. but he has huge contribution to the team. Look at these stats below.

He was a creative, deep-lying, playmaker sort of striker. we need to see him as a striker who could do things besides scoring goals better. So he was always going to be unsuited to being a lone striker.

Sadly when he was alone upfront, the team didn’t delivered him what they does for Rooney and he was also suddenly into new shoes which he never tried before.

United played [attacked] more on the wings last season.

If you see the berbatov’s passing, he mostly plays through the middle and short passes and also will pass very few to the wingers. This means when berbatov plays as lone striker, we have less no of chances coming from the wings unlike when we have rooney, who prefers sending the pass to wingers and wait for cross.

Otherwise, the midfield has to feed the ball to wingers, at which i think we failed towards end of last season.

Third season at United

A lot has been talked before the season starts. There is a talk of his transfer, Sir Alex finally loosing faith in him etc.. But before the pre-season SAF made it clear the he is staying and no question of offloading him. In the pre-season games he showed good form and scored some goals. now United is playing 4-4-2 with Berbatov behind Rooney. Things started working…. here is his passing map from guardian chalkboards

Look at that passing… he was everywhere on the pitch except defense. He played more infront of Scholes and Fletcher. Did you observed it? He is passing the ball more to wingers especially Nani who is on the right side. He is excellent so far in the last 4matches. He is making a good partnership with Rooney this season and we observed that he is well suited for Hernandez. To Berbatov’s game, an out and out striker in 4-4-2 is well suited.

The one word that almost most of hte united fans are behind in this summer is ‘play maker’. You have Paul Scholes in your team and with this new improvements of Berbatov, you have second play maker. If you don’t think so look at what happens when we substituted berbatov in the games so far this season. Also look at the passing and attack when both Scholes and Berbatov are taken off in the game against Westham. Do you agree that we took long time to understand him?

So what changed for Berbatov ?

1. Nothing 2. He is involving in build up play and linking well with Nani. 3. His teammates started to pass him the ball more. 4. Behind the rooney he is playing like connector between midfield and attack. 5. He started passing ball to wingers more 6. He is clear on his role and responsibility 7. I think we’ve found where he is more effective.

Didn’t we, finally learned what he brings to team and how to watch him?

Manchester United 3 – 0 West Ham United : Review | only 74mins of football

The below formation diagram shows United Lineing up 4-4-2 and Westham playing 4-2-3-1 but Westham played 4-1-4-1 with parker moving to front of the defense and Noble and Boa joining the forwards.

The first 30mins of the game is dull and it looked like United is playing after a long time, as they created less no of changes and game is off the pace. But in this period webstham defended very well . The 5 westham midfielders stuck the roles assigned to them. They tracked both fletcher and Scholes well and it looked like man marking at many times. With Parker moving deep, Boa marked Fletcher and Noble tracked Scholes. Parker took the role of sweeper in front of the defense.

Jonathan Spector had fouled Ryan Giggs with an unnecessary tackle in the penalty box. He opted to tackle even when some of the defenders are available to track Giggs. This resulted a penalty which Rooney took and scored. With that he ended his five-month wait for a goal.

United’s left and right backs pushed higher up the pitch as both Nani and Giggs are cutting inside. Just before half time. Vidic lofted a long diagonal ball over the West Ham defence for Berbatov, who knocked it back for Nani, whose shot was tipped onto the woodwork by Rob Green. Just after few minutes, Nani licked the ball over the crossbar when Giggs chipped the ball through for Nani for a one-on-one with Green.

The observations from the first half are: United opted to attack from the middle. Nani played inside and looked more comfortable on the right side. Berbatov dropped deep to, in front of the midfield. WestHam tried to stop the united attack higer up the pitch.

The second half started brightly for United. 5mins into the second half, Nani scored a brilliant goal to United 2-0 lead. The second  half Scholes looked more lively and played long passes to berbatov and Giggs more. In the second half it looked like Westham lost the plot. Their midfield didn’t tracked the united midfield properly, like they did in the first 30mins. This leaves Scholes and Fletcher to move freely and as a result united created more opportunities . Third goal came when a cross from Nani found Berbatov unmarked near the goal and his perfect airborne volly found the net.

Then United made 3 substitutions at 74th minute: Carrck for Scholes, Owen for Berbatov and Smallings for Evans. The main playmakers of the first 70mins Scholes and Berbatov were off suddenly and suddenly it looked like these substations killed the game. And nothing exciting happens for the next 15mins and the score line stayed 3-0.