The Tactixology

Now that United have a coach who insists on a progressive game model and more control with and without the ball, you can begin to see more clearly the enormous errors of our recruitment and team buillding. 🧵

For the past 10 years, with some sporadic exceptions, United have been buying:

- big-name players
- players known to the manager
- players bought to address a specific gap

For example, afer losing the first two league games of the ETH era, we went for Casemiro because it was decided that a DM was urgently needed. And he was the biggest name available.

But not much thought was given to what kind of a DM he is; whom he ought to be paired with; what might his trajectory be in a season or two.

Consider how much we’ve spent on two RW options who were either completely misprofiled (Sancho) or their PL adequacy completely misjudged (Antony).

In general, broader team dynamics, player profiles and tactical compatibility were rarely considered. 

This has led to:
- bloated wages & transfer fees
- misprofiled & misused players
- short-term planning & constant overhauls
- poor team composition & missing profiles

This approach, sadly, was quite prominent during the ETH era as well. 

He held a transfer veto, was heavily involved in recruitment and usually opted for big name players with whom he had some kind of a previous connection with.

Many often seem to forget the magnitude of turnover in the past 2 years: we’ve replaced ~75% of the whole squad, with only a modest number of players remaining from the Ole era. 

This was an open heart surgery on a FM level. Unfortunately, it was not a very successful surgery.

All of this means that United currently have:

- a lot of good players who don’t necessarily fit well together
- a lot of good players who are not ideal for what Amorim wants them to do
- a number of average & overpaid players who are not suited to top levels of the PL
- lots of missing profiles & traits

This will take years to correct.

The easy thing to do would be to sit back in a mid block, rely on compact lines &amp; box defending, and attack using counters and individual flair.

We’ve got enough quality for this approach to take us to relatively far, especially in cups.

Which is what ETH did during his first season. At the time, it seemed smart and pragmatic. But nothing ever grew out of it; no foundation was being set.

And it’s not an approach that can win you the PL.

Hopefully, the club are now taking a different route. 

Instead of emergency signings and short-term tactics, it’s time for a hollistic, club-wide effort: define a desired style, stick with it and have every department support it.

1. Define how we want to play (and why we want to play this way)
2. Use training &amp; games to implement general principles and specific patterns
3. Persist with mistakes &amp; bad results
4. Over and over again
5. Slowly raise your floor &amp; ceiling through recruitment and youth 

This is a key point: the underlying idea of how we want to play must be larger and more lasting than Ruben Amorim. 

The club has to define this on a macro level, in order to avoid constant &amp; radical overhauls once managers get moved.

So it’s not a question of supporting Amorim - or just supporting Amorim - it’s a much deeper &amp; broader question of what the club is trying to achieve and how it wants to get there.