2013 How to Play Like 2012/13 Manchester United

[MerlionMaple96]

 

 

Introduction

 

Manchester United won the English Premier League by 11 points last season. By the hugely competitive nature of the Premier League, a runaway margin of 11 points constitutes a landslide. How was this achieved? Many put down United’s dominance last season to an implosion amongst their foremost rivals Manchester City and Chelsea. Others attribute it to Robin van Persie’s remarkable 26 goals. Apart from those factors there is the matter of the tactics used by United. What is certain is that tactics must have played a part to their success on some level, regardless of what one chooses to believe. In this guide I will detail both how United played last season and how to emulate them on FMH 2013

 

The Formation

 

 

If one thing was clear last season it was that Alex Ferguson had 2 major problems when it came to picking a formation for his team. The first was the recent emergence of the modern 4-2-3-1 fashioned by such teams as Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid and Chelsea. This new formation was dynamic, fluid and most importantly, highly effective against Ferguson’s preferred 4-4-2. The second was Wayne Rooney. With the purchase of Robin van Persie, everyone was expecting a deadly partnership to be formed between him and Rooney. However, Ferguson knew that he needed to stray away from a strictly 2 up top formation if he was to keep up with the modern shift to a lone striker. Therefore Ferguson reached a compromise of sorts. He deployed Wayne Rooney as a striker playing off van Persie. Although Rooney was not by any means a conventional playmaker, (He lacked the skillset to play this role) he functioned between the opposition’s midfield and defense as a secondary striker. In essence it was a 4-4-2 with “benefits”.

 

The Player Roles

 

Rio Ferdinand & Nemanja Vidic - Central Defenders

 

Ferdinand and Vidic were nothing special folks. They were just your plain old everyday central defensive partnership. They were not “hoof-the-ballers” like Ryan Shawcross and Robert Huth and they certainly no longer had the legs to be Ball Playing Defenders like Jan Vertonghen or David Luiz. When they had possession, they passed it on. When they didn’t, they organised and marshalled the entire defensive effort.

 

Rafael da Silva and Patrice Evra - Wing Backs

 

Wing Backs are almost a given in any World Class team these days. When you spend much of your time attacking it sure would be a massive waste if these players didn’t get in on the act as much as possible! And that’s exactly what Rafael and Evra did last season. They provided a secondary option on either wing, and sometimes delivered crosses that led to goals. However, more importantly, their movement and overlapping pulled defenders away from the real threats down the wing. In essence, their involvement led to more indirect goals than direct ones.

 

Michael Carrick - Deep Lying Midfielder

 

Recently, Dec commented that Carrick had developed into a similar mould of player as Pirlo, Schweinsteiger and Xavi. I couldn’t agree with this observation more. Last season Michael Carrick was voted Manchester United’s Player of the Season by his colleagues and superiors. It was a testament of the importance of Carrick to this team that he received this award and not van Persie, or Evra, or De Gea. Essentially, Carrick is a passer. When United set-up in attack Carrick hardly moves from his position right at the top of the centre circle. From this position he then spreads the play left and right, short and long. He is the clock that keeps the team ticking. Although he hardly picks up assists, he must have had a hand in almost every United goal from open play last season.

 

Tom Cleverley - Central Midfielder

 

To contrast Carrick’s play in midfield came Tom Cleverley. Similar to Carrick much of Cleverley’s best work last season went unnoticed. However, his contribution to the title effort should not. Unlike Carrick, Cleverley does not sit deep. Instead he was deployed in the general area in between Carrick and van Persie, a rather large region of space. Here, Cleverley served as a link up man, playing short passes in triangles with the likes of Kagawa, Rooney and van Persie. When possession was on the left flank, he would drift over to the left and link up with Kagawa and Rooney, similarly, he would link up with Rooney and van Persie when the ball was on the right. Although he rarely ventured into the box, he was perhaps the United player who covered the most ground.

 

Antonio Valencia - Winger

 

Sir Alex loves his wingers, and Antonio Valencia is the living definition of the old school winger. His best attributes are his pace, strength, stamina and crossing ability. In other words, he is built to patrol the flank, beat full backs and deliver crosses for attackers to get on the end of. Unfortunately, last season was not Valencia’s best season. Especially on the heels of a simply sensational campaign in 2011/12, Valencia disappointed deeply last season as he failed to find the same form once again. However, his style of play remained the same, challenging full backs, beating them and getting crosses into the box. No time for fancy tricks or party play, Valencia just does his job, plain and simple.

 

Shinji Kagawa - Advanced Playmaker

 

The inclusion of Shinji Kagawa in the line-up by Sir Alex was a result of the entire formation dilemma discussed in the first paragraph. When Sir Alex chose to play Rooney in the “Advanced Playmaker” position he knew that he still needed to include an element of creative flair in the side for as good as Rooney was, he is no Silva or Mata. He lacked the pace, dribbling ability and quick feet that was needed to beat his man and open up space for his teammates. Kagawa on the other hand did indeed have those qualities. Playing him on the wing however was both unconventional and slightly risky, and the end of the day although Kagawa was indeed instrumental in United's success, the truth is that he had the potential to be so much better. Most of Kagawa's time on the ball involved him cutting in from the left flank and linking up with Cleverley and Rooney with quick passing in an attempt to create space for van Persie. One other thing to mention is that Welbeck also played quite often in this role instead of Kagawa. Whilst less effective, the basic principles of the role still held.

 

Wayne Rooney - Deep Lying Forward

 

The title speaks for itself. Rooney was for all intents and purposes a Deep Lying Forward last season. Playing just off van Persie he was responsible for creating space for the Dutchman while also getting in scoring positions when called upon. His performance was indeed quite iffy as one could see that he struggled somewhat to come to grips with the new role. As expected, his scoring did drop as well. On the field he was often found in between the opposition's defense and midfield combining with Kagawa. When United were attacking from out wide however, he joined van Persie in the box to give the crosser more options. 

 

Robin van Persie - Advanced Forward

 

van Persie was highly effective in the goal scoring department last season for a number of reasons. The first was that remaining relatively injury-free he was able to carry his remarkable form from the 2011/12 season into the new one. The second was that he was very much the top dog up front with Rooney relegated to a secondary role. Thirdly, and most importantly, he was subject to some delightful service from the likes of Kagawa, Rooney and Carrick. Fourthly, whatever chances he got, he took. He most often operated on the edge of the box, constantly looking for a yard of space to be found by a pass from Rooney, Kagawa or Cleverley. On the counter he was always the most advanced player looking to Carrick for the pass to match his run. The fact that van Persie was more than willing to leave the penalty box in search of the ball and to hook up with the rest of the midfield would make him an Advanced Forward rather than a Poacher.

 

Team Instructions

 

 

The team instructions are relatively self-explanatory. United never played anything other than Attacking football under Sir Alex and similarly Mixed was the appropriate option as both Passing and Direct were too extreme for a team that varied it's play greatly, while Long would just be out of the question. Tackling is set to normal quite understandably as United are not Stoke to play committed. Once again, cautious would just be out of the question. Offside Trap and Pressing are on because just like how virtually every world class team uses Wing Backs, almost every world class team uses the offside trap and press. The only other thing I was debating turning on was Counter Attacking. However, I reasoned that last season United were much less Counter Attacking than in previous years as Sir Alex only really used it once, which was against Manchester City away.

 

Conclusion

 

In conclusion, I just hoped that this guide was an enjoying read and fulfills everyone's inner desire of playing like Manchester United On a more serious note, this tactic is still untested, although I should soon complete some testing with it and will post the results here. Of course, it would be just peachy if any of you guys try it out and return with results as well. I really hope that you learned as much from reading this guide as I did from writing this. And if you did enjoy it, it would warm my heart to get some comments. If you disagree with anything in this guide whatsoever, do remark on it and maybe we can get some good discussions going. Oh, how I do enjoy those

[ImagineDragons]

Great guide MM!

[Lewiitom]

Fantastic guide MM hopefully they'll do as well as they did in real life!

[Dec]

Nice work MM, I'd love to see you go into more detail about how you came to conclusions though and research pre-tactic such as looking at passing accuracy and other impressive statistics. It'd really make it go up beyond a standard guide in my book, nevertheless great work .

[anfieldsquirrel]

Amazing Work maple!!

One thing - maybe add in a conclusion of the overall teams strengths and weaknesses? Dec suggested that on mine and Jplummz' Reading guide, and it seemed a good idea

[Ashez]

A great read MM

[darkmedina]

Great tactic! Are there any results?

[J-savage]

Amazing read!

[Keraviln]

Great read! Nice tactic

[MerlionMaple96]

Cheers Everyone. Thanks for all the support

@Dec - Ill be sure to incorporate a more statistical analysis next time. As this was my first real piece of content I just wanted to make it simple

@AS - Great idea, I might rewrite the conclusion to include that!

@Darkmedina - Not yet mate. If you do try it out, let me know how it goes

[Aslancimbom]

Can't see pics