Alex Keble analyses Manchester United's defensive issues and how manager Erik ten Hag might respond to fix them.
Iwobi's winner exposes flaws
Man Utd supporters watching on Saturday as Adama Traore launched the match-winning counter-attack deep into stoppage time at Old Trafford will have been surprised by the outcome – but not by the move itself.
United just don’t concede late goals in that context. Indeed, Alex Iwobi’s was the latest winner scored by a visiting side at Old Trafford in Premier League history.
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But the shape of the Man Utd team - the huge spaces between their defensive and attacking lines – was nothing new. It had been happening all match, has been happening all season, and appears to be getting worse with time.
Iwobi's winner
The 97th minute is our new favourite minute. 🤩 pic.twitter.com/ChyiRiaNnS
— Fulham Football Club (@FulhamFC) February 24, 2024
Man Utd have had good results in 2024. Their five consecutive wins in all competitions prior to the Fulham defeat even prompted some to wonder if Ten Hag – with a new-look front three – had turned a corner.
Yet the performances never quite matched the results, and more nervous Man Utd fans will not have been too surprised to witness a step backwards on Saturday.
Here’s how and why Man Utd’s defence has been struggling this season, and what Ten Hag can do to fix it.
Defensive record is getting worse
Ten Hag’s side have defensive problems, that much is clear. They have conceded 17 goals in their last 11 matches in all competitions and have kept just two clean sheets in that time, against West Ham United and Wigan Athletic in the FA Cup.
Going back further, United conceded 1.3 goals per match across the first 18 Premier League fixtures of the 2023/24 season and have let in 1.6 over their last eight contests.
They have also faced more shots in the last eight compared with the first 18 (16.8 per 90 minutes, up from 15.7 per 90 minutes) and are allowing more touches in their penalty area (32.8 per 90, up from 27.4).
Man Utd's decline in defence in 2023/24
| Per 90 | MW1-18 | MW19-26 |
| Goals conceded | 1.3 | 1.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Shots faced | 15.7 | 16.8 |
| Opp. touches in penalty area | 27.4 | 32.8 |
The situation is worsening and United - now eight points behind fourth-placed Aston Villa despite beating Unai Emery’s side home and away this season - need to tighten up.
| Position Pos | Club | Played Pl | GD | Points Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 |
Aston Villa
AVL
|
38 | +15 | 68 |
| 5 |
Spurs
TOT
|
38 | +13 | 66 |
| 6 |
Chelsea
CHE
|
38 | +14 | 63 |
One damning statistic sums it all up.
Man Utd have faced 414 shots this season, the fourth-most behind Sheffield United, Luton Town and West Ham. That is an extraordinary figure that has resulted, in part, from a particularly poor last five Premier League matches, in which United have faced 100 shots.
Compared with their supposed rivals, Man Utd are well below where they should be, as Sky Sports revealed on Monday Night Football: Ten Hag's team have faced 20 or more shots in 12 of his league matches as Man Utd manager, or once every 5.3 fixtures.
Mikel Arteta, Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp are nowhere near that figure, with their sides facing 20 or more shots every 23, 73 and 161 matches respectively.
This season, United have faced at least 16 shots in a Premier League on 14 occasions. City have done so twice, while Arsenal not once.
Most and fewest times 16 shots faced in 2023/24
| Club | Matches |
| Man Utd | 14 |
|---|---|
| Sheff Utd | 14 |
| Luton | 14 |
| West Ham | 13 |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| Man City | 2 |
| Arsenal | 0 |
Underlying stats not so bad
There are structural issues that have persisted throughout the season, but first we must redress the balance slightly by digging deeper into the numbers.
Man Utd have conceded the sixth-fewest goals, with 36, and those have come from an Expected Goals On Target (xGOT) total of 38.46, suggesting their raw numbers aren’t actually too bad.
But a club of their size chasing a minimum of UEFA Champions League football should be doing better than the 10th-best xGOT, while having the seventh-worst total for Expected Goals Against (xGA) of 43.3 is also well below par.
| Total | PL rank | |
| Goals conceded | 36 | 6th |
|---|---|---|
| Expected Goals on Target (xGOT) | 38.46 | 10th |
| Expected Goals Against (xGA) | 43.3 | 14th |
It isn’t as bad as the basic "shots faced" stat that was highlighted above would have people believe, but nevertheless it is a problem. In fact, the difference between their xGOT Against and xGA of 4.84 tells us Man Utd have got lucky with their opponents’ poor finishing.
Fans of other clubs will attest to that. Man Utd have won matches in which they scored a lower xG than their opponent on 16 occasions in the Premier League this season.
Impact of injuries
Injuries are no doubt partly to blame. Ten Hag is consistently forced to try new centre-back partnerships – including three in the last five league matches – while his first-choice defender Lisandro Martinez has been limited to just seven starts.
Martinez is essential for Ten Hag because of his aggressive, front-foot defending style.
He is superb at stepping out of defence and getting to the ball first, pushing up into midfield to clamp down on opponents and squeeze the space. Last season he attempted 52 tackles, more than twice as many as United’s next-highest centre-back on the list, Raphael Varane with 24.
He also recovered the ball 164 times, which again was substantially more than the next-best centre-back, Varane's 100.
Casemiro has also endured a difficult season, managing just 13 league starts, and even when on the field his performances have declined. His recoveries are down from 8.69 per 90 minutes to 5.77 per 90 minutes.
Coupled with the fact that Sofyan Amrabat, Christian Eriksen and Mason Mount have all started fewer than 10 league matches, is it any wonder Man Utd are easily sliced open?
Restricted minutes and enforced chopping and changing inevitably disrupts a team’s rhythm, and Man Utd have often been without their first-choice defence and midfield.
High press is malfunctioning
But there is more to it than that, and indeed what United are missing in Martinez’s absence gets to the heart of the issue.
Ten Hag has decided to deploy a more aggressive high press this season. Man Utd are sixth in the table for high turnovers with 244, second for shot-ending high turnovers with 47, and their 151 possessions won in the final third rank seventh.
However, all too often the midfielders and defenders fail to push up behind, as Martinez would, which elongates the pitch, causing a decompression between the lines.
The Fulham defeat was a perfect example.
In the build-up to the first goal, the pressing from Alejandro Garnacho, Marcus Rashford and Scott McTominay is not backed up, as you can see by how deep that back four are sat on the right side of the image. The result is a gaping hole in the middle that the three central midfielders (circled) cannot cover.
Counter-attacks like the one for Fulham’s winner are bound to happen when a team is so stretched.
Indeed the problem has been present since the first match of the season, when Wolverhampton Wanderers repeatedly carved Man Utd open on the counter.
But evidence is best found in the numbers. Man Utd have faced 568 attempted take-ons, of which 268 have been successful, which is the second-most in the league on both counts.
Most damningly, they have faced 586 progressive carries, the third-most behind Sheff Utd and West Ham. Allowing opponents to carry the ball so far upfield is a sure sign of an overly stretched shape and disjointed pressing.
Forwards sprinting away from midfield
The other factor at play here is Man Utd’s method of attack.
Ten Hag has previously spoken of his intention to "go direct" because the profile of his squad means he cannot emulate Ajax’s possession football. We have seen the fruits of this philosophy in recent weeks when Rasmus Hojlund, Rashford and Garnacho have enjoyed breaking quickly.
United have had 66 "direct attacks" this season, the second-most in the Premier League, while their "direct speed" of moving the ball 1.89 metres per second towards the opposition goal is the sixth-highest and way above their average of 1.35 in 2022/23 (the 13th-highest).
They have also been caught offside more than anyone else (69 times), again reflecting the desire to move in straight lines.
Unfortunately, this makes Ten Hag’s shape even less compact.
The forwards sprint ahead of the play, chasing longer and higher-risk passes, so when the ball is turned over there is invariably a very large gap between the centre-backs and forwards.
Deeper line of engagement could help
But the bigger issue is the deep defensive line when Martinez isn’t playing, and the haphazard pressing that stretches the shape, as we saw again and again against Fulham.
Here, from a Fulham goal-kick it only takes three simple passes (with Man Utd forwards applying pressure to each one) to create the scenario below, which leads to Rodrigo Muniz hitting a post.
One solution, as the dotted lines suggest above, is for the defence to bravely push up higher, squeezing the space. But assuming Ten Hag believes Varane and Harry Maguire do not have the recovery pace for this, the other option is to drop everyone deeper.
It is something we have seen Man Utd do multiple times against "Big Six" opponents – and it’s what they will surely do in the Manchester derby on Sunday.
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Counter-attack only in small numbers; do not press the centre-backs; and shuffle across in a compact shape: that is the reactive way to stop Kevin De Bruyne and Phil Foden from sauntering into enormous gaps.
That is what happened in January 2023, when Ten Hag’s United beat Man City 2-1 at Old Trafford with just 29 per cent possession, restricting the visitors to five shots on goal by sitting everyone behind the ball and refusing to press the defenders.
It could work again, especially considering Manchester City have only scored three goals in their last three Premier League matches.
But as a long-term strategy? That kind of reactive, back-foot aesthetic presumably isn’t how supporters envisioned Ten Hag’s Man Utd would be playing in 2024.