1) McNair had trouble with Gomis on corners
Example 1: This is 4 minutes in. I labeled McNair and Gomis - it's clear that LVG has him marking Gomis. I also put an "F" above Fellaini to show that LVG has Fellaini standing in the middle to clear out anything that comes there.
Example 2: This is 10 minutes in and in this close up here, you clearly see McNair is marking Gomis.
And in the next instance here, you see Gomis gets away from Mcnair with another free header. Fortunately, Gomis managed to miss the header but that's pretty poor man marking from McNair.
This may be hindsight but I'm not sure putting McNair on Gomis was a good idea. Gomis is a huge and athletic striker while McNair is only 19. I think having Fellaini or Blind man mark him would have better a better choice. In this second example, the Gomis header was off a second ball which drew Fellaini away from the center, hence why Fellaini wasn't in the center to defend here.
2) Herrera's movement
Here's my odd one where I offer praise as opposed to critique. Herrera's movement is his best quality and he always makes runs to give our players extra options on the ball. Blind is good at this too but you don't see this from Rooney when he plays in midfield. Here's just one example:
11 minutes in, Herrera has the ball and he passes it to McNair which is running forward.
McNair dribbles it forward a little and is well defended and fortunately, Herrera ran behind him and all he has to do to keep possession is a simple back pass instead of forcing a bad cross. I drew the red arrow to indicate the position that Herrera ran from.
Herrera looks inside (you can see in the above picture that he's already facing inside) and passes it back to Blind. In the picture below, you see that Herrera is sprinting towards the center to offer Blind an option. In this case, Herrera is well marked so Blind passes it elsewhere but Herrera's movement forces the Swansea player to follow him rather than press Blind, thus giving him time on the ball to pass.
3) No option for Di Maria
This one bugged me when I was watching it live. 32 minutes in and we're counter attacking with Di Maria dribbling down the left wing - pretty much the ideal situation. Except now look at the picture below - Di Maria has absolutely no options to cross to right now. He has just the perfect space for a cross and since he's left footed, he can do a first time cross. He also is too wide to cut in (plus he's too left footed for that) so a cross right now would have been perfect.
Rooney is marked by two Swansea defenders, RVP is behind ADM and Fellaini is right next to a Swansea player. One of our players should have been in the blue circled area - the gap behind the two center backs and the full back area. Watching it live, I felt Rooney should have ran there RVP and Fellaini couldn't possibly get there in there (they were sprinting full out, can't magically make them faster). If Rooney was in the blue area, it's either a simple return pass to Di Maria to cross it in or a backheel to RVP or a turn a shoot - a lot of different options.
4) No one followed Shelvey
61 minutes in and RVP loses the ball in midfield to Shelvey.
Shelvey passes it back, runs forward and no one tracks his run. Valencia for no reason decides to rush forward to press the Swansea player that Shelvey passed it back to even though he's miles away and from there, it's just a simple pass to get it forward to Shelvey who is in plenty of space. Now Jones is forced out wide to cover for Valencia's mistake and we're one defender down in the middle.
You could put the blame on Blind for not covering Valencia as that is somewhat is job as the deep defensive midfielder but this was a really fast situation and there's no way Blind could have predicted that Valencia would randomly rush forward. RVP could have tracked Shelvey all the way back as he did lose the ball but that's not a striker's job. I felt this was entirely a Valencia mistake.
5) Fellaini should be standing at near post not far post for crosses
We saw Fabianski catching and punch a lot of our crosses in the game today and this is why. The picture below is 33 minutes in, Di Maria is about to cross the ball. Di Maria is left footed and the solid blue arrow shows the line the ball has to take for it to get to Fellaini. Fabianski can easily intercept the cross there unless it's floated absolutely perfectly.
If the person crossing the ball was right footed (ie Ashley Young), then standing far post is fine because the ball takes the dotted line and it avoids the keeper.
Here's one at 35 minutes. Once again, Di Maria crossing to Fellaini who is at far post again. Neither of these two crosses were successful.
Here's one at 68 minutes with Valencia crossing to Fellaini who is far post again. This one is actually successful but that's because Valencia doesn't curl the ball when he crosses it - he hits it dead on with no curve so it takes a straight line to Fellaini instead of going closer to the keeper first.
This is clearly a positioning thing that LVG worked on in training since Fellaini is far post every time. The idea is that Fellaini is at least 6 inches taller than Swansea's full backs so by standing far post, he can dominate the fullback in an aerial challenge. It's a valid tactic that works but it didn't work today - it might work against a keeper who is less aggressive coming out to get crosses but that's what scouting is for. Additionally, I felt that LVG should have had Fellaini at least mix up his positioning a little to make our crossing less one dimensional - he could can switched between near post flick on's and far post knock downs instead of sticking to one only.
6) Di Mari's laziness
I actually missed the second Swansea goal live because I was jotting this down and unfortunately, we were punished for this.
72 minutes in, we lose the ball in the middle. I circled Di Maria in blue and our other midfielders in black (Fellaini, Blind, Herrera). We're playing a diamond (more or less) and Di Maria should be running back along the red arrow to maintain our shape and defensive formation. Our other midfielders are more or less in the right positions (Blind and Herrera switched). This is picture just shows how completely lopsided Di Maria made us.
You see a few moments later the Swansea player has taken it further forward and Di Maria is still lagging behind. Due to him lagging behind and not covering the right side, our three other midfielders have to shift further right to cover for Di Maria. That leaves Shelvey (circled in red) free on our left.
Unfortunately, stuff like this is the reason why LVG plays Rooney in the midfield and kept Di Maria further up. As much as I hate Rooney in the midfield, Rooney would never have let this happen if he was in Di Maria's position.
Conclusion
Ok, lets hope we build on this loss and get a win against Sunderland next week. I hope that despite our defensive frailties, we keep this formation and we keep Rooney up front next week. We should use this loss to learn how to improve our defensive shape rather than just playing really defensively.
Good work
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