How opponents can beat the top in-form teams this season
Come the new season and the big boys of football are at it again. Whether it be controlling possession, keeping clean sheets or scoring freely, the top teams in all the leagues across Europe are daunting prospects, aiming to either maintain their dominance or return to winning ways.And so, with all leagues having played at least six games, we look at the strengths and potential weaknesses of these football juggernauts along with the tactics teams could use to counter them, if at all.
#1 Manchester United
Louis van Gaal’s Red Devils climbed atop the Premier League table this weekend and rightly so. The Dutchman is slowly but surely teaching the virtues of possession and patient build-up to a league which primarily takes pride in its pace and physicality.
Strengths
New signing Anthony Martial has, of course, helped speed up matters – literally and figuratively speaking. The 19-year-old forward offers the option to run past defenders, which pegs back the opposition backline and offers United’s attacking midfield trio of Memphis Depay, Wayne Rooney and Juan Mata time and space on the ball.
Mata, in particular, has stepped up to the plate. He is not only being his usual creative self but scoring consistently as well. A defensive midfield pairing of Michael Carrick or Bastian Schweinsteiger and Morgan Schneiderlin has helped plug the gaps left by the attacking full-backs.
Weaknesses
Dominating a game in terms of possession, however, has lulled United into a false sense of security a few times this season already. A classical example of this was Swansea’s winner at Liberty Stadium, where the Swans exploited left-back Luke Shaw’s over-commitment to attack and Daley Blind’s lack of pace to score.
PSV, too, made use of United’s slow transition from attack to defence in the Champions League tie and, despite winning 3-2 against Southampton at St. Mary’s, the Red Devils once again showed an alarming vulnerability in away matches.
How to counter
A counter-attacking 4-3-3 would perhaps be the ideal formation to trouble Van Gaal’s team, provided it has the right ingredients – tactically aware defenders breaking up play, fast wingers attacking the flanks, a striker with a physical presence up top and a goalscoring midfielder (Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea of 2005, anyone?).
An additional tactic to man-mark Mata would not go amiss either, especially in light of Memphis’ inconsistency and Rooney’s indifferent form.