Mailbag: Ten Hag tactics, 442, Nagelsmann and more!
Let's do these questions
Hi, everyone. The questions were great as ever, but a lot of you asked about the next Liverpool manager. Which I conspicuously ignored here. But you can expect the next newsletter to be looking into Arne Slot, what he’s about, and how it might work at Anfield. Until then, let’s answer some questions.
John Wolff asks…
“There’s been a lot of criticism of Ten Hag’s tactics, especially his statement that this is how he wants to play. But he is an experienced football coach, we can’t presume he’s just useless. He might be (probably is) wrong, but he must have some rationale behind it. So if you were giving Ten Hag all benefit of the doubt, what’s the case you’d make for what he’s trying to accomplish with how he sets his team up? Can you articulate the “why,” for his choices?”
John is right to mention that Ten Hag is an experienced coach. He’s probably more experienced than most football fans assume, starting out managing FC Twente Under 17s in 2002. At that time, Jürgen Klopp was only a year into his coaching career, Pep Guardiola was five years away from taking over Barcelona B, and Mikel Arteta was 14 years away from becoming Manchester City’s assistant. Ten Hag has been around for a while.
In those years, he’s worked with a lot of different players of different ability levels. That includes stints as assistant to other managers with their own ideas about the game. It includes spells where he didn’t have the quality needed to really dominate football matches and put on brilliant performances. And so he’s played a lot of styles of football. I think we all misread Ten Hag as someone ideologically espousing the Ajax way when, in reality, he was adapting to what he thought that club needed at that specific time.
So what on earth is he trying to do at United? He clearly came into the club intending to play something closer to Ajax football. We know he spent all summer chasing Frenkie de Jong, star of his first great Ajax side, while Lisandro Martínez and A Premier League Footballer Accused of Alleged Domestic Violence did actually join from the Amsterdam club. Then after all of two games, he had a change of heart. Since then, everyone’s been asking John’s question.
United are, for their wealth and league position, pretty direct. They’re tenth in the league for the number of passes they make in each sequence of possession. When Manchester City have the ball, they keep it for 62% longer (in terms of seconds) than United. It’s quite distinct in the numbers.
Without the ball, they’re not really a high-pressing side. They allow almost the same number of opponent passes before trying to win the ball back as Man City, but their territorial control is much poorer. They make far fewer high turnovers (winning back the ball within 40m of the opponent’s goal), despite “pressing” about the same amount across the whole pitch. The “zones of control” map from The Analyst shows the difference here. The blue squares are where the side have more than 55% of the ball, red where the opponent has more than 55% of the ball, and grey means possession is “contested”. Just look at United compared to City.
I think Ten Hag wants to play transition football at United. Just as he played “the Ajax way” in Amsterdam, I think he’s tried to embrace the values and traditions of Man Utd at Old Trafford. Let’s imagine he had a real midfield, that Casemiro’s legs didn’t fall off and Mason Mount was making a real impact. Let’s say Martínez and Raphaël Varane stayed fit all season, and Marcus Rashford maintained his form from last season. I’m not convinced it would work to anything like the level required, but I can sort of see the vision if I squint. Anyway, he’s getting sacked in the summer, come on.