Sports
Louis Van Gaal, More of a Problem than Solution (Read)
Memphis – a player that possess “speed and creativity” spent 90 mins of game on the left side of the field, Juan mata barely went past the center and his statutory right sided role, ander hererra got overly caught up in trying to carry out his manager’s philosophy by sticking rigidly to the number 10 role.
The resulting effect meant Swansea knew where each player would be at every given time as each Swansea defender never had to worry about being drawn out of position as a result of united’s player movement.
Luke shaw and Memphis have formed a great understanding off the pitch, one would’ve thought that their off field alliances will give way to some form of telepathy on the pitch, unfortunately this hasn’t been the case. Lvg doesn’t play to the strength of his team, he has potent width in Shaw and Depay but fails to utilise them, for all the pace Shaw possess he should be ghosting past defenders with a simple reverse pass from depay.
A constant feature of SAF’s 2006 – 2011 was Cristiano Ronaldo and Patrice Evra combining to devastating effect on the left side of the pitch. Paul Scholes was often found pinging balls to to chest of evra who would more often than not thrust forward without fear of being caught out, of course his speed and stamina ensured that he got up and down the pitch just in time to carry out his defensive duties. It would be important to note that Shaw is twice as pacey as Evra was. Unfortunately with Shaw all that pace is canned and restricted. Sighs
Since joining in 2013, making 70 appearances for Monaco Martial has scored just a handful of goals,15 he has managed, which suggests he is yet to master the art of goal scoring more so on a frequent basis.
This leaves you with the question ‘what exactly is he good at’. Martial is a pacey type player with a loads of tenacity and thrust going forward, plus he has a real impact when in top gear. Martial can play across any position in attack which would suggest that at different spells in a match his natural preference would be to roam across the forward line.
The downside to all of this is that like those before him Angel di maria and Depay whom of course is still a work in progress, Lvg doesn’t really appreciate players running with the ball or not sticking rigidly to their positions, therein lies a huge problem as he would have to, like his fellow creative teammates play with the hand breaks constantly on.
Martial is an exciting young player and “should” be given time to blossom and adapt to his new surroundings but if history is anything to go by, players with huge price tags, and even more so the ones that come in on deadline day with the tag “panic buys” are never given the time to do so. How much more the most expensive teenager in football history.
The writer if this article Yubby Nduonofit is a manutd correspondent on sportive23.net and founder of the Counter Attack desk. Follow @YubbyThePundit
0 comments