We’re 32 games into the season, and this much is now obvious:
Manchester United are one of the four best teams in the Premier League.
Yesterday’s 4-2 romp over Manchester City
was United’s sixth league
victory in a row and the team’s best performance of the season. Just a
month removed from a heated battle for fourth place with Liverpool,
United totally dominated their crosstown rival and now sit four points
clear of City in third.
Over the first half of the season, Louis van Gaal’s team strung together a host of ugly victories on the back of improbable goals
and timely finishing. But now, with wins over Tottenham and Liverpool
in addition to City, the manager has his team playing the kind of
attacking soccer he warned that fans might have to wait until next season to see. So what finally clicked for United?
Basically, van Gaal finally found the right starting lineup.
Up until the team’s recent run, United profiled
as a solid defensive team that would win the ball back when it lost it,
keep possession for a long time, and then not create any chances.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
However, over the last four games, the goals have finally appeared:
four against City, three against Aston Villa, two against Liverpool, and
three against Tottenham. Compared to the early part of the season,
that’s an attacking avalanche — and it’s coincided with the arrival of
van Gaal’s new-look starting 11.
After flirting with a back three, fiddling with a diamond midfield,
experimenting with a traditional no. 10, playing with his best striker
in the midfield, and playing his high-priced midfielder at striker, van
Gaal eventually landed on something close to a traditional 4-3-3.
The attacking trio of Ashley Young, Wayne Rooney, and Juan Mata
provides the same component parts van Gaal had with the Netherlands at
last year’s World Cup: the speedster, the traditional striker, and the
creative hub. For the Dutch, those three roles were occupied by Arjen
Robben, Robin van Persie, and Wesley Sneijder. The difference is that
Robben and van Persie lined up as two strikers ahead of a no. 10 in
Sneijder, while United’s attacking trident has two wingers flanking
Rooney.
This setup means Mata is playing outside of his traditional attacking
midfield position, although he’s being asked to do the traditional
attacking midfield things he’s very comfortable with, like running onto a
through ball from the striker after the defense has been pulled out of
position. Bonus points for being marginally offside:
Thanks to the emergence of Marouane Fellaini at the tip of its
midfield triangle, United can afford to deploy their most creative
player out wide. Fellaini’s huge build enables him to act as a target
man and a transition hub from defense into attack. Against City, he
initiated attacks by receiving long balls …
… and finished them by lining up against smaller full-backs at the back post:
Other times, the Belgian has joined
Young, Rooney, and Mata to form a four-man attacking band to test
opponent’s back lines. Fellaini’s skill set is fairly unique, but he’s a
towering presence, and United (much like David Moyes did at Everton,
and not like Moyes did at United) have figured out how to leverage his
size, aerial ability, and chest control into a transitional weapon.
Fellaini’s roots as a defensive midfielder and his willingness to
press have also combined well with Ander Herrera, who is the Platonic
ideal of a box-to-box midfielder. Defensively, the two provide a shield
for Michael Carrick at the base of the midfield triangle. There’s
nothing revolutionary about playing two energetic midfielders to protect
an aging playmaker — Liverpool did it last year to protect the
playmaking iteration of Steven Gerrard; Juventus have been doing it for
years to protect Andrea Pirlo — but it’s an arrangement that both covers
for Carrick’s lack of mobility and amplifies his strengths as a passer.
Part of the reason Fellaini is able to position himself as aggressively
as he does in attack is Carrick’s ability to keep possession in the
midfield by picking the right passes.
So if all it took was playing these particular players in these
particular positions, why didn’t van Gaal do it sooner? After all, Mata
and Herrera spent months on the bench while van Gaal tinkered and moved
things around.
Part of the issue is injuries: Several of the current key
contributors, including Carrick, Fellaini, and left back Daley Blind,
have been hurt at some point this season. The current lineup wasn’t even
an option for much of the year.
Then again, why would it be? Mata is playing in a position where he’s
never spent a significant amount of time before. And using Fellaini
high up the field is particularly difficult to fathom when the team has
so many high-priced attacking players. All the recent success has come
without an injured van Persie or any real contributions from high-priced
acquisitions Radamel Falcao, Ángel Di María, or Luke Shaw. In other
words, United finally started to play well once they decided that not
all of their super-expensive players could be a part of the success.
At the start of the season, nobody could’ve envisioned this current
group as the one that would lead United back toward the top of the
Premier League. So it’s hardly a surprise that van Gaal took a few
months to figure things out. Sure, it’s required a lot of money and a
lot of tinkering, but his vision of possession-driven soccer has finally
come to life. And it’s here ahead of his own schedule.
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