Manchester United 1-0 Arsenal – Post match thoughts

Robin van Persie of Manchester United applauds the fans as he is substituted during the Barclays Premier League match between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford.

Manchester United on Sunday secured their first “big win” in the David Moyes era when Arsenal came to visit. In what was almost inevitable, Arsenal’s former captain Robin Van Persie headed the Red Devils in the lead mid-way in the first half by heading in a brilliant Wayne Rooney corner.

Despite trying their best and taking control of most of the second half, the Gunners could not avoid their first defeat since that 3-1 embarrassment against Aston Villa on opening day. United restored a bit of pride after a start to the that most have seen as shambolic and Arsenal despite coming off a loss left Old Trafford with their heads held high after they won two of three difficult, consecutive matches.

Teams

Manchester United started with Jonny Evans and Nemanja Vidic at centre back, Chris Smalling and Patrice Evra were the right and left backs respectively. In central midfield Moyes decided to go with the duo of Phil Jones and Micheal Carrick, they were flanked by Shinji Kagawa and Antonio Valencia. With Van Persie up front and Rooney behind him. United looked to be playing a 4-4-1-1/4-2-3-1.

Arsene Wenger, was to put a team out with the knowledge that Per Mertesacker and Tomas Rocisky were not going to be playing. He started with a back four of Bacary Sagna, Thomas Vermaelen, Laurent Koscielny, and Kieran Gibbs. In central midfield, the returning Mathieu Flamini partnered Mikel Arteta, in front of them was Mesut Ozil, who was flanked by Santi Cazorla and Aaron Ramsey who was on the right. And up front was Olivier Giroud. Arsenal were playing a 4-2-3-1.

Arsenal frustrated by solid United in first half

Some people – myself included- were expecting to see the game start with Arsenal dominating possession and looking dangerous, while United defended deep and looked to counter. That seemed to be the plan at least. Arsenal’s line up had the elements of brilliant passing and movement but in the first half of the match, it just did not click for them. The Gunners had the trio of Ramsey, Ozil and Cazorla behind Giroud. Cazorla and Ramsey, who were on the wings have been proven to be far more adept at central roles, and with them starting wide, its very clear that Arsenal were looking to utilise that space between Man United’s lines to hurt them. Any width was to come from the full backs. (Sagna in particular was putting in crosses through out the duration of the game). The plan was for Arsenal’s attacking midfielders to move, interchange and combine with each other with the space infront of United’s defence the intended target of their onslaught. With Flamini back in the team, Arteta was a bit more liberated to concentrate on distributing and finding Arsenal’s attackers in dangerous positions. The full backs were meant to be the ones providing width, but Sagna found himself doing more because he was faced with an Evra that loved to attack and a Kagawa that loved drifting inside.

While a lot of people will point to the fact that Arsenal’s attacking midfielders were no influential, part of it was because of United’s solid defensive organisation. The Red Devils employed a compact and narrow mid block and mostly with two banks of four. The block was designed to stop the supply to the attacking midfielders. Flamini and Arteta were not pressed when they had the ball to prevent them passing to the danger men. Instead United decided to block all passing lanes to Ozil, Cazorla and Ramsey (when they drift in). Whenever the ball made it between United’s lines, it was immediately snuffed out as United’s pressing in those zones was aggressive. With the narrowness and compactness of the United defense, came at a bit of a cost, they were prone to attacks down the wings. This was an advantage more pronounced on United’s left. On the right, it was the more defensive Smalling and the energetic Valencia. On the other side though, Sagna had a 1-on-1 with Evra when Kagawa and Ramsey went inside. Man Utd were victims of a lot of crosses from that side and instead of going tight on him to prevent the crosses, they sought to heavily mark the only player that could do anything about the crosses – Giroud. This was a very well executed plan. And probably the best, as putting any special attention on Sagna could have resulted in one of Ozil, Cazorla or Ramsey having space. To sum it up United shut down their middle and dealt with the crosses from wide.

Ozil’s poor game

It goes without saying that Arsenal’s attacking midfielders were lacking space and at the centre of all this was Mesut Ozil. The German was having one of those games where you wonder whether he was even playing. Manchester United’s vigilance over the space between their lines was key to this. And also the fact that all passing lanes from deep to him in dangerous areas were blocked. When this happens, the German international normally uses one of his stronger weapons – movement. When Ozil is starved of space in the middle, he drifted to the wide areas. This attempts to accomplish two things:

1. It helps get a defensive midfielder out of position and allow other players exploit the space vacated by the opposition player in the middle. If he moved to the right and dragged Jones with him, Cazorla had the chance to drift in and hurt teams. Same goes for Ramsey if the German was to drift to the left.

2. It allows the team to create overloads in the wide areas. And could have resulted in the United committing a lot of players to the overloaded zone while leaving others free.

It didn’t work. To start with, United were employing what looked to be a Zonal marking system. So when Ozil went to the wide areas, none of United’s central midfielders went with him which meant that Cazorla or Ramsey going centrally would have met the same problems the German was facing. Any pass in between the lines would have been intercepted because of United’s watch over that area. So Ozil’s options when wide were to either pass it back or to Sagna to cross. None of those crosses caused serious problems for the opposition. All this contributed to Ozil not having as much influence as he would have wanted.

United’s dominance

With Arsenal’s wingers playing narrow and United camping in their half. When they won the ball back the attacked with pace and numbers down the wings. With Arsenal playing narrow, and using fullbacks for width it meant that United could easily win the ball and get it into Valencia on the right, or Evra on the left on the counter. Kagawa drifted inside to help bring the ball forward and create through the middle.

United’s goal

Manchester United scored from a corner. Arsenal were undone by the zonal marking that normally serves them well in this situation. But could they have used a man marking system? Probably not. Mertesacker not playing meant that United outnumbered Arsenal when it came to aerial ability. And that’s important when using man marking. Arsenal’s best option was to mark zonally. That United scored was because Arsenal allowed them to exploit the weaknesses of zonal marking. One of that is when players are not sure of what zones they are supposed to cover that is, when the ball is played between two players’ zones. When Rooney’s brilliant corner was swung in, it looked to be heading between Giroud and Ramsey’s zone at the near post with the Welshman standing infront of the Frenchman. When the ball was played in, Ramsey misjudged the height of the ball and stepped forward. This created the space for Van Persie between him and Giroud. Giroud’s reluctance to leave his zone and enter Ramsey’s meant that Van Persie had a pretty much clear run to the ball. Another weakness of zonal marking is that it allows players to have running starts when going after the set piece. This means that any clean connection with the header and the goal is unstoppable. This is why Barcelona leave two people to check the runners. Arsenal did not do this efficiently, and they paid the price.

Arsenal’s missed players

While a lot of people will point out that Mertesacker was a huge miss in the game, there are two players that would have made Manchester United’s plan infinitely harder to excecute – Theo Walcott and Tomas Rocisky.

Walcott’s pace and directness would have been a problem for United’s narrow defense. The Englishman would have simultaneously stretched United’s defense and created space for the likes of Ozil to operate. Because he could cause serious problems for them on the wings if they don’t give him attention. And giving him attention would create space for others.

With United being compact and narrow, Arsenal’s attacking midfielders lacked space. United’s defense was solid but not impregnable. Against Chelsea in the FA cup last season United did something similar. But the difference came when Juan Mata (who didn’t find space between the lines) dropped deep and played the ball over the top to goalscorer Demba Ba. This was something Arsenal’s attacking midfielders did not do. Ozil and Cazorla are far more comfortable making horizontal movements that vertical ones. They can move efficiently from side to side but dropping deep to create is not something they commonly do. Ramsey on the other hand is not the type of player that will carve opponents open from deep with one pass. Rosicky though, regularly drops deep to play the ball forward. Rocisky dropping deep would have helped drag players out of position if the followed him deep. But if they didn’t, he could have carved United open with a pass.

Vidic’s injury

This was one of the key moments of the game. The fact that Manchester United’s captain and defender went out injured on the stroke of half time was enough of a blow. But that event lead to Phil Jones moving into centre back to replace him and Tom Cleverly coming into the midfield, this was significant. Because Jones was a huge part of why Arsenal did not have space between Man United’s lines and why United could form their defensive line a bit higher than normal against Arsenal. And was playing and anchor role for United’s attack, recycling possession and winning the ball back. He was shielding the defense well. United responded to this by defending much deeper than they did in the first half. And made Arsenal take control of the game and look more likely to equalize.

Arsene’s changes

Manchester United’s deeper defense meant that Arsenal had better control of the ball and territorial advantages. But it did not bring them much closer to breaking United down. Even though they probed more dangerously in the second half, United’s goal was not threatened much. And as such Arsenal took off Flamini for Jack Wilshere.

Wilshere is a brilliant player on the ball, his ability to get past players in the tightest of spaces is phenomenal, and he naturally attracts a lot of people to him when he’s on the ball creating space for team mates, and playing an eye of the needle pass through the crowd. His introduction was to goad United players into committing to trying to get the ball off him when he has it with two or more men to create space for the others. It didn’t work much because he was not heavily marked when he was on it. United’s players stood off him and looked to block any potentially dangerous passes or force him to a harmless pass.

Arsenal were enjoying a lot of space on the wings (mostly on the right) and the crosses going in were great. But with only one aerial threat, it was easy for United’s defenders not to allow Giroud any space to get a clean header in. Wenger changed this by bringing on Nicklas Bendtner for Cazorla. Instead of going in alongside Giroud, the Dane was on the left probably to get on the end of crosses at the far post from the right with deep runs from the left channel. A substantial amount of Cristiano Ronaldo’s headers have come this way. The fact that Giroud was with him meant that they could act as decoys for the cross and trick the defenders. The plan was not very successful because Bendtner was facing a United right back (Smalling) who is a centre back by trade, but is also good in the air. Smalling was easily able to track his deep runs inside.

Wenger’s final sub was to bring on Serge Gnabry. The young German is the closest thing to Theo Walcott, Arsenal have available. And it showed as the Gunners threatened better with him on the pitch. He was able to stretch the play and make dangerous runs into the channels. He and Sagna up against Ryan Giggs (who came on for Kagawa) and Evra was a bit of a mismatch in Arsenal’s favour as Giggs could not cope with the pace. This made Arsenal more dangerous down the right especially when you consider Bendtner and Giroud were waiting for crosses. Arsenal’s most dangerous chance came from a cross from the right that needed just a touch from Bendtner or Giroud. I feel Wenger should have made this sub sooner.

Conclusion

Arsenal over the course of the season have tremendous versatility and variation to the ways they attack teams. But injuries to their more direct players have more or less forced them into being a tad more predictable. And the limitations were clear at Old Trafford. This loss is not very big for Arsenal as far as their ambitions this season are concerned. And especially after winning the first two matches of a difficult group of matches. And the third one being against a team more concerned about stopping them than scoring themselves. How Arsenal respond to this loss though is of optimum importance.

For Manchester United, this is a big win. It shows that maybe the talks of crisis in their team was a bit exaggerated. And also they showed that while (like everyone else) they have their weaknesses, they are steal a team to be feared. The selection and defensive organisation the team showed increases belief that David Moyes is learning and is still capable of improvement and that is something for the fans to be optimistic about.