Tactical Analysis: No adjustments, no points

Injuries and off the field issues meant that 21 year old Facundo Pellistri was the only recognized right winger available for Manchester United to face Brighton on Saturday. Pellistri signed with United in the summer of 2020 but has played more senior minutes for Uruguay than for Manchester United since that time.

Last season Pellistri played just 64 Premier League minutes spread out over four different appearances for Erik Ten Hag. This season he had made 14 and 6 minute cameos. The fact that even when United need a goal, Ten Hag doesn’t put him on the pitch until the absolute last minutes of a match suggest that Ten Hag doesn’t trust Pellistri’s off the ball qualities and would make him hesitant to start him.

But with no other (natural) right wingers available, Ten Hag was left with seemingly three choices on Saturday:

1. Roll the dice and start Pellistri anyway.
2. Shift one of your two left wingers – Marcus Rashford or Alejandro Garnacho – over to the right wing. Moving either one of your two best players or your best prospect out of their favored and arguably best positions.
3. Shift Bruno Fernandes from the no. 10 position out to the right wing, moving your best player out of his best position.

Erik Ten Hag chose door number four, change the system entirely. Ten Hag set the team up in a 4-4-2 diamond, allowing Bruno to remain as the number 10 while Rashford played as a second forward, more up top out of possession and more of a left wing when United had the ball.

The idea was to use three players to cut off Brighton’s four in their 2×2 buildup structure, thus having a free man left in midfield to aid in the defending.

No one saw this shape coming – including Brighton – and the element of surprise allowed United to get off to a fast start.

A few minutes later United were able to get Rashford into space on a counter attack.

From there Rasmus Hojlund showed us what things could look like when you have a striker that can make quick near post runs.

After 15 minutes United were outshooting Brighton 4-1 – though the 0.26 xG (0.07 xG per shot) was already indicative of the trend of the match, United didn’t have much of an offensive plan besides get the ball to Rashford and let him run at defenders.

It was at this time Brighton started making adjustments. With United playing very narrow, Brighton pushed their centerbacks wider, making the angles tougher for United’s front three to cut off. That meant United could no longer mark four players with three men, giving Brighton a numerical advantage.

Here, Pascal Gross drops between the two centerbacks to collect the ball. The centerbacks have pushed wider giving Gross multiple options.

Further up the pitch, Danny Welbeck and Adam Lallana began dropping to give United more things to worry about in midfield and eliminate their numerical advantage. Shortly after the image above, Welbeck has found himself unmarked behind and between Casemiro and Christian Eriksen.

While United are cutting off the short passes to Gross and Dahoud, as well as the long pass out wide to Joel Veltman, they leave an avenue open to go directly to Welbeck.

When the ball is played directly to Welbeck it opens up Pascal Gross via an easy one touch pass from Welbeck. But when Christian Eriksen follows the ball to Welbeck he leaves Veltman wide open. Fullback Sergio Reguilon is already occupied by Simon Andigra ready to make a run.

In two touches, Brighton have the ball across midfield in space. As soon as Gross plays the ball out wide Welbeck turns to run forward. He quickly gets it back from Veltman as Casemiro was presumably too busy laughing about how United were actually dumb enough to give a 30 year old physical midfielder that one last huge payday he was looking for to actually track his runner.