Welcome back to The United Way! It’s been a while, but in the last post I talked transfer strategy, outlining my approach to improving the squad in both the short and long-term. In this post, it’s time to look at things I can do immediately, namely setting the team up to go out and win football matches!

Playing ‘The United Way’

One of the major criticisms that a few of Manchester United’s managers post-Fergie have faced, is that their style of football wasn’t exciting enough for the fans to tolerate, and that the club weren’t playing the ‘United’ way. David Moyes, Louis van Gaal and José Mourinho in particular bore the brunt of this backlash, despite the latter two both bringing trophies back to Old Trafford.

Although recent comparisons have rightfully been made to Sir Alex Ferguson’s multiple incredible sides, the ‘United’ way long precedes the Scot. As Sir Matt Busby once said to a teenage Bobby Charlton, “All those lads you see going to the factory in Trafford Park, they come to watch you on Saturday. They have boring jobs, so you have to give them something they will enjoy.”

Fast, exciting, attacking football is the nature of the beast, and even success isn’t always enough for managers who don’t provide it. 

As I’ve said in pretty much every tactical post I’ve ever written, I am by no means an expert. This post, and save in general, is in no way a recreation – I’ll just be looking to create a successful tactic that embodies the style of football that Manchester United fans demand. 

Having said that, there are many a smarter mind than mine out there, with two of my particular favourites; FM Treq and RDF Tactics, both producing excellent videos – Treq covering the all-conquering 07/08 side and RDF looking at a realistic rebuild under Erik ten Hag.

Starting Out

I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to create when putting together my first iteration of a tactic for this save. Exciting, aggressive football while looking to fully utilise attacking transitions and the pace we have on the counter-attack. Amongst a sea of iconic Manchester United goals, this one from Cristiano Ronaldo is right up there as one of my very favourites, and perfectly encapsulates the sort of threat I want to carry. 

I still prefer a more pragmatic approach to tactic building, and so won’t be throwing an ultra-attacking formation out in order to overwhelm opponents. For a few years now I’ve had a preference for a double pivot in midfield, and with the introduction of positional play into Football Manager this has made me think more than ever about my build-up shape. Fortunately, with the additions we’ve made (full updates from the save can be found over on the SI Forums), the squad suits a 4-2-3-1 quite nicely.

The choice to show you through a third-party site, rather than an in-game screenshot is intentional, which I’ll explain in more detail later on. For now though, I’ll lay down the bold strokes of what I’m looking for and how we can achieve that.

We want to defend on the front foot – not necessarily full blown gegenpressing, but definitely aggressive and proactive. A huge advantage in this is Onana’s ability to sweep, although for somebody so renowned as a sweeper keeper his relative lack of acceleration is a minor concern. 

Despite wanting to maximise attacking transitions and be effective in the counter attack, we also want to be able to create sustained pressure, especially against opposition who are likely to sit in against us. We’ll do this by building out from the back, building up in either a 2-3-5 or 3-2-5 shape depending on opposition and personnel. 

The renaissance of the ‘proper’ number nine seems to be in full swing, and in Rasmus Højlund I think we have a player who can grow into that role and become one of the world’s best. He’s quick, strong, relatively creative and has good movement, as well as having an incredible work ethic, and I want to utilise that as much as possible.

I want variations within our combinations. If one winger is tasked with offering a goal threat, then the other will be asked to hold the width and create. I don’t want both of our pivot players doing the same thing; even if both are asked to sit deep, one can be a passer and one a destroyer. Variations increase the options we have and also make us less predictable, which can only be a good thing.

Combinations of Roles

The reason that the image above wasn’t taken from in-game, is because for this save I’m putting more focus into allowing players to play their natural game, and making selection decisions based on how well players can complement each other. 

Let’s take a look at our build-up shape as an example of how I’m looking to approach things. With my current preferred eleven on the pitch (as seen in the previous image), our roles look like this:

In this configuration we build-up in a 2-3-5 shape, with the two central defenders staying in place, able to hit long balls if they’re on, with Dalot inverting to join the pivot from right-back, and allowing Shaw the freedom to join the attack from the left. In midfield, Hjulmand is tasked with sitting and doing the dirty work, while Mainoo is given the responsibility of offering our main source of creativity, albeit while remaining positionally disciplined. 

In the past, I’ve been guilty of putting a tactic together and then rotating players without changing the roles they perform. In my head, tweaking a role could ‘break’ the tactic, and then at times where we have lost games, confirmation bias has kicked in, and I’ve blamed the new roles rather than looking at what has actually gone wrong.

There are two players who will benefit above all others from my change of mindset – Scott McTominay and Aaron Wan-Bissaka. Both have fairly unique skill sets within the squad, and neither fit seamlessly into the composition above.

Wan-Bissaka is a far more defensive able right-back than Dalot, but also a lot more limited on the ball. Although Wan-Bissaka can still maintain the balance of the side by inverting, by changing his duty from Support to Defend, it eliminates any creative responsibility and he essentially joins the pivot as a second ‘destroyer’.

This setup would possibly suit some of our tougher games, but against sides we would expect to dominate we may struggle to break teams down with only Mainoo really allowed any creativity in the midfield three. We could add to the creativity of the midfield in build-up by adjusting Hjulmand’s role; he’s excellent on the ball, and in all honesty I’m probably wasting him slightly by using him solely to provide defensive stability. However, I don’t like to use too many playmaker roles in a tactic where I can avoid it, especially right next to each other. 

The option I actually prefer is to bring another player into the midfield during build-up, who is excellent on the ball but does not need a playmaker role – Luke Shaw.

Using Shaw in this way gives us an excellent left-footed passer in midfield, and also allows Mainoo to play more through the centre than in the left half-space, which are both things I like, but there is one obvious flaw with this – it completely changes our build-up shape from a 2-3-5 to a 2-4-4.

That’s where Scott McTominay comes in. 

McTominay has often been mis-profiled by many as a below average holding midfielder, especially during the ‘McFred’ era. However, he’s proven himself to be an incredibly dangerous player further up the pitch, rescuing multiple poor team performances with vital goals. I wouldn’t want to use McTominay as either the Defensive Midfielder or the Deep-Lying Playmaker in my current tactical setup, nor would he get gametime as the ten with Bruno Fernandes and Mason Mount in his way; however, luckily for Scott, there’s a role in Football Manager that I love, that he suits, and that provides a sensible tactical adjustment.

Using McTominay as a Segundo Volante reverts our build up shape to my preferred 2-3-5, while also giving us something the previous composition lacks – a line breaking runner and a goal threat from deep. This change also allows the possibility of switching Hjulmand to a Deep-Lying Playmaker to make the most of his technical ability, especially with Wan-Bissaka in the side who is more limited on the ball. 

There are of course other changes that can be made; I haven’t even talked about the front four and the different ways I see the profiles we have complimenting each other, but there are far too many possible combinations to cover them all!

So, Is It Working?

Umm, not entirely. 

As I mentioned previously, there are more in depth updates available over on the forums, but at this point of the season we’re sat in sixth place with nearly half of the season gone.

The positives are that we are only expected a Europa League qualification spot by the board, so there are no concerns of underperformance, and that we’re only a point off of our city rivals, having beaten them earlier in the season. The major negative is that we’re only winning half of our games, and dropping points in winnable games. Our goal difference would suggest many of our games are close, and therefore one mistake can be costly.

Given United’s struggles with the number of shots faced in real life last season, you could be forgiven for assuming that we’re giving away too many soft goals, particularly given my desire for exciting attacking football.

Making Adjustments

I’m nowhere near as prone to ripping everything up and starting again as I used to be; I’ve become much more of a disciple of the ‘evolution not revolution’ train of thought over the years. The thoughts of making some adjustments really started to cement themselves in my head at a time where results were actually strong, but a few of the performances were unconvincing, and a loss to Bournemouth, coupled with a Bruno Fernandes injury, meant the timing was right.

Why did Bruno need to get injured before I would make a change? Well, because I wanted to change the shape, but I love Bruno as a Shadow Striker. Essentially, I was too afraid to drop Bruno deeper and risk blunting his impact, so without him available the opportunity presented itself.

The move to a 4-3-3 isn’t exactly revolutionary, but does shift the onus on supporting the front three firmly onto the two number 8’s. This will obviously in turn affect our build-up structure, where we again have the flexibility to use either a 2-3, or 3-2 shape. This will require both of the full-backs to invert, but personnel and opposition depending we will on occasion play one of them as an Inverted Full-Back and ask them to tuck in as the third centre back. This will more often than not happen at left-back, with Shaw able to do so and Martínez able to shift across if needed. I wouldn’t want Dalot to do this job on the right, but Wan-Bissaka could, and Kossounou is also pretty comfortable at full-back.

The big difference I was looking for was whether we would look more threatening in attack with an extra member of the midfield creating the attacking five. My theory is that by having that fifth member of the attack starting higher up the pitch, we may be in a better position in both attacking transitions and sustained possession.

I couldn’t have dreamt how well the first run-out would go. We have trouble away from home and we have trouble scoring goals, so to go to Spain and demolish a very good Villarreal side is a great achievement. Hjulmund had one of his better games so far in what has been a fairly slow start to his United career, Mainoo and Mount both played exceptionally as number 8’s, and we got a goal from each of the front three positions.

In the very next game we saw the other side of the 4-3-3, where we were able to match up Manchester City’s midfield and win a very tight game with a disciplined performance.

So there is very much still work to be done, but that is a look at our tactical style and early implementation. As we progress the tactic will inevitably evolve further, which means the possibility of a rarely seen sequel from yours truly. 

Until next time…