Tactical Analysis: Fitting in Amad

Photo by Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images

If you had to find something positive from the tire fire that was Manchester United’s 2024-25 season, Amad Diallo would certainly fit the bill. The Ivorian winger was comfortably United’s second-best player behind Bruno Fernandes, playing well under both Erik Ten Hag and Ruben Amorim on United’s right side.

Amad’s season can be spliced a number of different ways depending on how you look at it. His underlying numbers didn’t change between the games he played in 2023-24 and 2024-25 under Erik Ten Hag

compared to his numbers under Ruben Amorim. However, there was a significant drop in his numbers if you removed the two games against 20th-place Southampton.

Amad’s success last season put United in an interesting situation. He was, as previously mentioned, United’s second-best player and most dangerous attacker. He could also be very easily marked out of matches, which happened far too often.

Additionally, Amad missed significant time last season with an injury, something that has been a theme of his young career. The most league minutes Amad has played in a season is 2586 while on loan at Sunderland. That number represents 62 percent of the Championship season but 75 percent of a Premier League campaign.

Until he proves otherwise, that’s as much as we can assume we can get out of Amad in a given season. If we extrapolate Amad’s eight goals and six assists from last season over 75 percent of a Premier League campaign, it’d be a return of about 11 goals and eight assists. That’s just not enough for what United needs from their top attackers. For as good as Amad is, United are going to need a little bit more.

That little bit more has come in the form of £65 million signing Bryan Mbeumo from Brentford. The Cameroonian attacker scored 15 non-penalty goals and added seven assists while playing all but six Premier League minutes for Brentford last season. He primarily played on the right wing of a 4-3-3 or as part of a front two in a 3-5-2 formation (with occasional but rare minutes as a wingback) but is expected to slot in as the right-sided no. 10 in Amorim’s 3-4-3 setup.

That leaves the question of what is going to happen to Amad?

The obvious answer is to shift him to wingback. Amad originally lined up as a wingback in Amorim’s first few matches in charge, picking up four assists in his first three starts.

Amad’s value as a wingback is twofold. His ability to push up and press teams high adds another dynamic to United’s out-of-possession play. He’s an exceptional individual presser who can quickly move in and nick the ball off a defender who takes a heavy touch.

More importantly, playing Amad as a wingback gets another attacker onto the pitch. Too often, United would line up with five natural defenders and a defensive midfielder in the team, forcing them to try and attack Premier League defenses with just four attacking players. The result was a team that scored just 32 goals and failed to score 11 times in Amorim’s 27 games in charge.

In very limited minutes as a wingback, Amad made 4.37 key passes per 90 compared to just 1.33 when playing as the no. 10. Surely a big part of that has to be that when playing as the wingback, there’s a whole extra attacking player he can pass to!

While it seems like a natural fit, the question is, how will it work tactically with Mbeumo? A look at Mbeumo’s touch map shows he’s a player who likes to get the ball from wide and cut inside with it. To make the most use of that, you would want to deploy him with a wingback who can hold the width and make overlapping runs down the touchline.

Amad is also a player who likes to get the ball wide and cut inside on his favored left foot. If you put both Amad and Mbeumo out there together, you run the real risk of the two constantly trying to run to the same spaces and getting in each other's way.

Having said that, I do think this combination can work.

One of the problems United had last season when Amad played as the right-sided number 10 was that they really struggled to get Amad the ball in those dangerous half spaces. Teams would be able to pack their defense in tight and easily double-team him to deny him the ball.

As a result, Amad would often come all the way wide in search of the ball. His heat maps from matches against Brighton and Chelsea provide a great example of this.

With Amad pulling wide, that would often leave the wingback - either Noussair Mazraoui or Diogo Dalot - to push up and get onto the ball in the dangerous half spaces.

With Amad pulling wide, you’d often get situations where the wingback would be further up the pitch than Amad, causing attacks to go to the more defensive player.

The lack of final third creativity from Mazraoui or Dalot was a big reason for United’s attacking struggles last season. They are not the players you want in on the ball in these spaces.

In theory, if you have an Amad-Mbeumo partnership down the right side, if Mbeumo comes out wide to receive the ball out there, then Amad can push forward into those dangerous half spaces. If Mbeumo stays narrow, Amad can hold the width.

Both players are comfortable receiving the ball out wide, but now, regardless of who is out wide, you’d still have an attacking player (and a rather effective one at that) also receiving the ball in these dangerous positions rather than a player like Mazraoui.

Moving Amad to wingback for the upcoming season seems like a complete no-brainer, and yet... I’m not convinced that it’s going to happen full-time or that Amad would be the first-choice right-wing back.

For starters, we really didn’t see much of it last year. Despite the aforementioned hot start, after four matches, Amorim moved Amad inside to the number 10 position, where he pretty much stayed the rest of the season. He started as a wingback against Southampton in January but was moved back to the no 10 spot at halftime with the introduction of Antony. The fantastic hat trick over the final 10 minutes all came from the No. 10 spot.

All in all, Amad only played 474 minutes as a wingback last season - just a third of his total minutes under Amorim. 149 of those minutes (31%) came over the final four games of the season, when it could be argued Amorim only put him there due to needing to get match fitness for Amad, Mason Mount, and Kobbie Mainoo, while also trying to give Noussair Mazraoui as much rest as possible while dealing with an injury to Diogo Dalot.

When United faced their biggest, most must-win game of the season in the Europa League final, Amad didn’t play a single minute at wingback. The story we’d have to tell for why it will suddenly start happening more often now, when it didn’t happen before, is getting more extreme.

It’s not out of the question, though. Amad did start United’s first two preseason matches at wingback. However, against Leeds, he swapped positions with Toby Collyer after about 25 minutes. Against West Ham, other than scoring a goal that was flagged for offside, you’d be forgiven for forgetting he was on the pitch later in the second half, as he struggled to stay involved in the game.

If he’s not impacting games as a wingback, it’s tough to see why Amorim would put him there. Out of possession against both Leeds and West Ham, United would often push one of their midfielders up while maintaining a flat five-man defensive line.

It was much more back five rather than back three, with that position being more full back than wingback. If that’s how you’re going to play, Amad is not going to thrive there. Add in that Mbeumo is not the hardest-working player off the ball, and putting Amad in this setup behind Mbeumo is going to put him under a lot of pressure defensively.

The new signings of Mbeumo and Mathues Cunha suggest that Bruno Fernandes’ primary position this season will be in central midfield. Fernandes has added a lot to his game to make him a more effective player there but he still lacks a bit of the defensive aspect of that position.

Amorim has shown to be a very risk-averse manager. When he plays Bruno in central midfield, he gets overly cautious with his back line to try and cover for Bruno’s defensive weaknesses. Like all Portuguese managers of this generation, he’s been heavily influenced by Jose Mourinho and tends to think defense first.

United have a difficult set of fixtures to start the season and it’s wise to believe Amorim will approach these matches the same we he approached them last year. Set the team up with a true back five, sit deep, and absorb that pressure. Assuming Mbeumo starts, Amad would be an impact player off the bench, but win or lose those tough fixtures, it’s hard to see Amorim signing off on a team with Bruno in midfield and an Amad-Mbeumo combination down that right side. Unless United are dominating possession, it’s too frail defensively.

On the other hand, putting an extra attacker like Amad on the pitch would help United keep more possession of the ball. It’s defending via possession, but now we’re back onto the ancient Pep vs Mourinho worldview of football.

There’s another thing to consider. United already has so many defenders. This is a lot of depth, and all these guys need games, too.

With no European football, getting games for everyone isn’t going to be easy. Now I know these situations usually resolve themselves through injuries. I’d even bet that at some point there will (somehow) be a full-on injury crisis among defenders, but if only one game per week allows more players to stay fit as so many people say it will (personally I’m a little dubious), that’s a lot of people that need to be fit in.

As of this writing, Amad is likely to slot in a rotational piece in that No. 10 spot. However, that won’t be a picnic either, as United have several players for those spots as well.

This is where Mbeumo’s previous experience playing up top for Brentford might come into play.

Last season, seven different players scored from the right wing or right-sided no. 10 position for a total of 14 goals - one fewer than the 15 non-penalty goals Mbeumo scored playing all but six minutes in the league. It’s going to be very difficult for Mbeumo to actually add goals from this position. The key will be adding to the eight goals United got from the striker position last season.

If Rasmus Hojlund and Joshua Zirkzee continue to struggle, you can see a scenario where Amorim decides to try using Mbeumo up top. That would open the door at one of the No. 10 positions. It still wouldn’t be the most ideal scenario, but it allows Amorim to have his two new signings and Amad on the pitch while still having the defensive cover that he loves so much.

As of the time of writing this piece, only two preseason games have been played. We haven’t even seen Mbeumo play yet and won’t for likely another week. All that’s to say is there’s plenty of time for things to change before the real games start.

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