[Analysis] Manchester United vs. Valencia (Friendly)

Since we're approaching the start of our season, I thought I'd write something like a report that will hopefully kickstart some discussion so we can all learn a thing or two about the system and tactics Manchester United are using in the games.

• Very high back-line in possession: while last season our defense spent most of the time inside the box, throughout pre-season we've seen how in possession our players stand very high up field. As we can see here, all of our outfield players are on Valencia's half. Our formation at that point looks like this (ignore the roles assigned by LineupBuilder.com). I don't know about you, but to me that's very solid in terms of attack and positioning. Valencia sees themselves forced to use a defensive line of 5 or 6 men in order to cover all the holes that could be leveraged by United, leaving them with just 4 men to press a bit higher.

• Rotating triangle in midfield: the system United used against Valencia assigned various different roles to our midfielders. Herrera played as an attacking midfielder, deep lying midfielder and defensive midfielder; Fletcher as a defensive midfielder and advanced midfielder; Mata as an inside forward on either side and attacking midfielder. You can see it in the game here and in a more general form here. They would switch positions according to the flow of the match, and at times the triangle itself would move to leave Mata alone in 'the hole', with Fletcher and Herrera guarding Mata's back.

• Defensive coordination: Man United looked very well organized going back. As we can see here, we have 2 close lines attempting to close all/most spaces with EIGHT men, and still not too deep. That means that the attackers have a lot of hurdles if they want to attempt going through the middle, or they'll have to try getting to the byline and attempting a cross.

While one could understandably argue that this was not exactly our best game in pre-season, we can see that the players are taking responsibility for their roles and they seem eager to shine in this new system. In this match we saw very few lazy balls and most of the times we lost possession was in understandable circumstances, aside from 3 or 4 poor passes in midfield in the 2nd half. For this report I am somewhat obviously highlighting the things we did good, as we didn't make any terrible mistakes. In the first half there was a Mata free-kick that was practiced in training and that should've ended with a goal by Chicharito, but the Mexican mistimed his run and wasn't able to reach the ball.

Now here are a few other little details I loved:

• 3 zones for 3 speeds: in possession, we seem to be using 3 speeds: slow buildup until the half line (unless we're being pressed); then the players go into second gear until the final third, where they seemingly try to go faster. Obviously, this is just the general idea and the flow of the game will modify it as needed. I just thought I should point it out because last season I saw nothing like this.

• Coordinated movement to drag defenders: We can see how Mata and Herrera run towards a defensive player each and as Blackett moves forward, they simultaneously try to drag those defensive players out of position to create space. It didn't work, but it was still quite impressive for me, as it seemed like a coordinated effort.

• Rooney's captaincy: now, this is just a very small detail, but in this play I liked how Wayne sort of corrected Jones' position. Those types of movements are usually studied in training, and since Jones didn't make the expected movement, Wayne pointed it at him with his left hand.

Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope you found this interesting or at least not completely boring. Have a good one!