Manchester United hosted Swansea in what many perceived to be a routine game against a side with serious relegation worries.

Swansea impress with early possession

Swansea started the game strongly, dominating possession in the first 15-20 minutes.

Their 4-3-1-2 shape naturally gave them decent occupation of the centre and halfspaces, as well as, in theory, a numerical superiority against United’s midfield 3.

A key player in Swansea’s midfield was Britton, who acted as a stabilising presence in front of the centre backs, aiding the ball circulation with his intelligent positioning. Carroll often dropped fairly deep to support him in this, whereas Ki was more likely to make forward runs to combine in attack.

Swansea’s focus when in possession was on more direct passes to the forwards, who, ideally, could combine with onrushing midfielders given the central occupation offered by the formation.

A key method of doing this was through manipulating United’s man-orientations to open lanes for longer passes. The key players here were Ki and to a lesser extent Carroll, who tried to drag Rooney and Herrera into wider or higher positions in order to open direct passing lanes. United’s midfielders were not always so strongly man-oriented and did choose to remain passive at times, which made it harder to access the ball but helped to secure the spaces in front of the defence and prevent passing lanes from opening.

Unfortunately for them Swansea were unable to take advantage of these situations in terms of goalscoring, and after around 20 minutes United were able to regain some control in the game.

Swansea’s defence & United’s solution

Swansea also showed some interesting aspects in their defensive phase. They defended in a fairly position-oriented zonal system. The front three were flexible, creating 4-3-3-0, 4-3-1-2 or 4-3-2-1 permutations. Common in all of these shapes was the control it gave them over central spaces which made it very difficult for United to penetrate in these areas.

When the ball was in United’s first line, Swansea focused on forcing United to the wings due to the positioning of their front three. The central player, usually Sigurdsson, stayed close to Carrick who held a fairly static position in the centre of the pitch, making it difficult for the United midfielder to be involved in United’s buildup. The two wider players of the front three could pressure the centre backs and/or use their cover shadow to prevent passes to United players looking to support the buildup with dropping movements in the halfspaces.

Thus United were forced to either play long or buildup through the full-backs. With the narrow positioning of the front 3, it was Swansea’s #8s, Ki and Carroll who often had to move out to defend the wide areas when United’s built up through the full-backs. In theory this could work well – Ki could pressure the ball and block forward/diagonal options, Sigurdsson could block the pass back inside to Carrick, the ball-near striker, Ayew, could block the pass back to the centre back.

Crucial to defending wide areas in this way is maintaining compactness during ball-oriented shifts to prevent spaces opening up for the opposition to exploit, and maintain good defensive connections.

This is an area in which United were able to find some success against Swansea – through the use of outside-to-inside combinations.

United were able to use the outside pass from the centre-back (or defensive midfielder when he drops deeper and wider as in the case above) to the full-back in order to draw out Swansea’s ball-near #8. They would then quickly move the ball back inside in order to exploit the space created by the shifting of the #8. The problem here for Swansea was the temporary loss of defensive connection between Britton and the ball-near #8.

In many cases Swansea did recover their compactness fairly quickly, preventing United from immediately combining through them on the ball-near side. If this was the case, the go-to option for United (Rooney in particular) was the switch to Valencia running forward from the right back position.

In theory this is a good way to attempt to penetrate a defence – using the ball to shift the opponent to one side before switching the play for an isolation situation. However this wasn’t so effective for United, and didn’t really create that many dangerous situations for them in the first half. One reason for this was that many of the passes to switch play were high, chipped passes, which, due to the longer travel time of the ball compared to a flatter, driven pass, gave Swansea more time to shift over and support the left back who went out to pressure Valencia. By this time it wasn’t really an isolation situation in which Valencia could play 1v1 against his defender.

Due to the left-sided orientation of United’s attack (the outside-to-inside combinations mostly happened on the left, with the likes of Lingard drifting into the centre), and partially due lack of rational spacing, there often also wasn’t support for Valencia to engage in combination play in order to penetrate on the right side after a switch.

This seems to be a fairly common feature of United’s play United this season. They like to build on the left and rely on Valencia for width on the right, finding him with diagonal switches from players such as Pogba. Of course, this has been very effective for them on occasions this season. However, sometimes the execution is poor, in ways outlined above, with the ball being switched too slowly for a true isolation, nor is the structure when the ball is on the right well connected enough for fast combination play. Another reason why this strategy is sometimes ineffective is down to the Valencia’s characteristics as a player. Although most would recognise that he has played an important role as right-back for United this season, he does have individual weaknesses. The most notable of which is his unwillingness to use his left foot when on the ball. This has the obvious effect of making him more predictable to play against, with a more limited range of angles available for him to pass to, taking into account his body orientation at a given moment, than a more ‘two-footed’ player. He very rarely cuts inside, or even threatens to do so, which makes it possible for defenders to force him close to the sideline. This naturally limits the options and range of action of any attacking player. This doesn’t necessarily make Valencia ‘easy’ to stop by any means, his powerful running with the ball enables him to find solutions which other, less physically accomplished players might not be able to execute.

Mourinho matches Swansea in the 2nd half

After United took the lead shortly before halftime, Mourinho decided to change the structure of United for the 2nd half. In what might be described as pragmatic Mourinho fashion, his adjustment at half time was to match Swansea’s diamond shape with his own, moving Lingard into a left-central-midfield position, Rooney into the #10 position, and Martial up front alongside Rashford. Presumably the reasoning behind this is that United could then look to secure their lead with man-orientations in the defensive phase, as in the new formation, they should have direct access to each of Swansea’s midfielders.

Indeed, right from the opening stages of the 2nd half, Swansea were forced into an even more direct style with long balls into the strikers, due to their diminished ability to circulate the ball lacking the security of Britton as the free man in front of the defence which they had benefited from at times during the first half.

It wasn’t too long before Swansea manager Paul Clement made a system change of his own – switching to a 4-2-3-1 in the 65th with the (short lived) introduction of Jefferson Montero, as a left winger, who was then replaced on 72 minutes by Martin Olson due to injury. Interestingly, upon Clement’s change of formation, Mourinho decided to match him again by reverting to the 4-3-3 shape United had began the match with.

Conclusion

The match ended 1-1 after Sigurdsson’s well taken free-kick in the 79th minute, and a lacklustre attempt by United in the last 10+ minutes to regain their lead. This marked United’s 10th home draw of the season, continuing to under-perform their expected goals value, though in this game not by such an egregious margin as in some previous games. With the race for 4th now out of their hands, United head into a key Europa League tie with Celta Vigo, in a competition that is probably now their best chance of Champions League football next season, especially given their upcoming league fixtures.