Stretford Trends

United’s lack of training time, decision making and quality tight space players was evident in Amorim’s first home defeat of the season.

Forest set up in a 4-2-4 with the wingers tasked with jumping onto United’s wide CB’s whilst Wood and Gibbs-White acted as cover shadows blocking the passing lane into the double pivot.

The aim was clear from Forest that they wanted to STOP all central progression from United and force them into wide area’s where they can lock on and BOX them in, forcing the ball out or regaining it. It worked perfectly.

But there were CLEAR signs to break this down and Amorim highlighted it after the game too... 3rd man combinations.

What is a 3rd man combination? Two players exchanging passes before a third makes an off-the-ball run into space to receive.

Here Garnacho receives the ball between the lines yet plays it straight back to Bruno who is already under pressure. If Garnacho scanned before, he would have saw that Kobbie is ready to receive.

That 3rd man combination would have helped us retain the ball and sustain pressure instead, Bruno lost it and gave a foul away.

Here we DID use the 3rd man combination and with no surprise this is how we equalised.

De ligt taking his time on the ball whilst Bruno dropped deep DRAGGING Ryan Yates with him, sets it into Ugarte and now there is an opening. Slots it through and Hojlund gets the rebound. Bruno dropping was VITAL for the goal as it opened an enormous amount of space.

Another example of Bruno looking for the move, yet Ugarte is standing still he does not read it and Bruno has to set it back to the CB’s.

Ultimately the CB’s need to take the risks, break lines and be quicker. Amorim talked about how it was on in multiple moments, in his post-match.

But with time, good recruitment and training, we will see patterns like this used more with synergy. https://x.com/lauriewhitwell/s...

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