In the winter of 2019 Paul Pogba was in the form of his life. Manchester United had won 14 of 17 matches with the Frenchman at the forefront of it all. That March he went away on international duty where he started flirting with a potential move to Real Madrid.
Pogba would end up staying, but rumors of a departure would never go away. As such, United started being linked to several midfielders who could potentially replace him. One of those players was Leicester City midfielder Youri Tielemans. Tielemans’
name would be mentioned several times in the early part of the decade but United never decided to pursue a move.
As is par for the course these days, United would eventually get their man, albeit a few years later than they should have. Tielemans (finally) arrived to Old Trafford as a 29 year old. That age would bring about many concerns about whether his legs would hold up enough to handle the out of possession rigors of playing central midfield in the Premier League. While the questions about Tielemans’ legs are valid he still possessed a skill United needed. The Belgian brings exceptional passing to a midfield that badly needed it.
The hope would be that Tielemans could provide United with an element of on-ball qualities their midfield had been lacking while not being a liability defensively. Unfortunately through five games that is not… quite what’s been happening.
It’s a bit harsh to say Tielemans has been a complete liability off the ball. His defensive numbers are solid but unspectacular, but far from someone who is doing nothing. As a whole United’s defense has more or less been pretty solid. They rank sixth in expected goals against and have conceded the third fewest shots. They’ve been undone by some bad luck as much as they’re own mistakes. Like most cases though, the numbers don’t tell the entire story.
When you put everything under the microscope a pattern starts to emerge. It seems that nearly every time United are faced with a dangerous situation, Youri Tielemans seems to be involved.
Tielemans isn’t the most mobile midfielder. United knew that when they signed him and hoped they’d be able to hide it. In the first game of the season his lack of defending nous showed up.
With the ball coming outside the box, Tielemans is a step slow to close down Hull City’s Mohamed Belloumi. Belloumi is able to easily bypass the Belgian leading to Tieleman’s giving away a clumsy foul.
Hull City scored from the ensuing free kick.
Two weeks later against Everton, after bypassing United’s first line of pressure Tyrique George finds himself in a nice pocket of space. Tilemans finds himself in a bit of no mans land, not marking a man, nor marking any particular dangerous space, nor is he cutting off passing angles to Theirno Barry. Tielemans is easily bypassed, forcing Lisandro Martinez to run at Barry who quickly gets passed him. The threat is subdued by a good block from Luke Shaw.
Later in the match Kobbie Mainoo is slightly more advanced than Tielemans. An Everton pass allows them to easily bypass Mainoo, creating a dangerous transition opportunity for the Blues. This is a scenario where an experienced defensive midfielder would usually put in a tactical foul to disrupt the transition and allow United to get their men back behind the ball.
Tielemans either doesn’t think to foul or doesn’t have the pace to get into a position where he could foul (without being sent off) and as a result it’s Diogo Dalot who gets booked after being isolated 1v1 against Jack Grealish. There’s a chain reaction here. Three minutes later Dalot, now on a yellow, is taken off for Leny Yoro. A few minutes after that when Luke Shaw has to come off Noussair Mazraoui comes on. Both were involved in Everton’s second goal, though how much anyone can be blamed for a once in a lifetime strike is up for debate.
In United’s most recent match against Fulham, it seemed like the Cottagers were trying to specifically pick on Tielemans as much as they were trying to pick on structural issues in United’s out of possession structure.
Here Fulham centerback David Affengruber has the ball around midfield. Matheus Cunha starts to step up on him while simultaneously cutting off the passing lane to midfielder Sander Berge. But on the next line Tielemans is quite far away from Fulham playmaker Joshua King.
It’s a simple pass from Affengruber to King that bypasses Tielemans and allows King to run at United’s defense and get a shot away.
Tielemans does enough to not allow King to cut back across the middle, which helps Martinez cut off his angle and not give him much to shoot at. However, as we saw against Everton, even when your defender cuts off the angle as well as you possibly can, sometimes the ball still goes in.
Later, Fulham try to attack a structural weakness in United’s setup to take advantage of Tielemans’ lack of pace.
With the ball at the feet of center-back Calvin Bassey, United have Bryan Mbeumo, their right winger, playing narrow. To counter this, Fulham push Antonee Robinson, their left back, higher up into the wide space between the winger and fullback.
This creates a tension for right back Diogo Dalot. He either holds his position on the back line, or he pushes up to close down the left back Robinson. If Dalot pushes up, central midfielder Alex Iwobi will make a run into the vacated space and it will be Tielemans job to track that run.
Fulham play the ball out wide and Dalot pushes up kicking off the whole chain. Robinson doesn’t hit the pass cleanly, allowing Tielemans to break it up, but now Fulham know how United are going to react to the situation and where they can attack.
A minute later Fulham have the ball in a very similar situation. Bassey has the ball at the back with Robinson pushed up high and wide, causing that tension for Dalot. This time just by moving with the ball to his left, Bassey gets Dalot to commit to Robinson, opening up space for Iwobi to attack.
With Dalot already committing to Robinson, Bassey goes directly to Iwobi, who is attacking the space Dalot vacated. Tielemans is hopelessly beaten by Iwobi’s run, forcing Maguire to come over and pick up the ball. That causes United’s entire defense to shift over to the right, leaving the door open for a wide open man at the back post.
A minute later Fulham take advantage of United’s weariness on the outside – and Bruno Fernandes just walking back into position – to go through the middle. First Sander Berge drops deep to overload United’s front line. Then Shea Charles comes across the middle to receive what looks like a harmless pass and send an even more harmless pass back to Affengruber. At this point, Robinson is still being covered by Mbeumo while Iwobi is the purview of Dalot.
While Charles is making a harmless pass, what he’s really doing is forcing Tielemans to commit to him and create a whole in United’s midfield. Once that gap is created, Robinson aggressively pushes up down the left side while Iwobi comes inside to fill the space vacated by Tielemans. This again puts a tension on Dalot, should he follow his man inside or worry about Robinson on the outside. Everyone on United is a bit confused, with Mbeumo, Tielemans, and Dalot all pointing for someone to be marking a different player.
Tielemans leaves Charles to retreat back to his position, leaving the Fulham midfielder open for an easy pass and easy turn up the pitch. Tielemans gets back into position but doesn’t pick up Iwobi. When Charles makes the simple pass Tielemans goes for the interception but he’s a step slow and doesn’t get there in time. Iwobi now can run at United’s defense with Tielemans essentially taken out of the play.
Iwobi runs straight at United’s back line. Eventually he plays it out wide, but with United’s midfielders behind the play Fulham have the chance to create havoc in the box. They whiff on their initial chance but eventually force a good save from Lammens.
United would quickly fix the structural issue out wide so Fulham couldn’t keep attacking it the rest of the game, but there was still a clear plan to target Tielemans in the middle. That could continue to be a problem for United going forward.
Luckily for United, “Carlos Baleba fixes this.” Except, like everything in football, it’s never quite that simple.
Whenever you lock in and focus on what a player can’t do you tend to forget what the player can do. Or more specifically, what the player actually brings to the table.
In the case of Youri Tielemans, it’s his passing, which has been nothing short of ridiculous.
Only Bruno Fernandes has attempted more passes than Tielemans for United this season. The Belgian has completed a whopping 90 percent of his passes with 66.67 percent of those passes being forward (second best among the squad’s midfielders). His 23 progressive passes rank third in the league among midfielders and the most among pivot players. Per Fotmob, his 101 line-breaking passes rank him third in the league amongst midfielders, trailing only Elliott Anderson and Declan Rice.
These are really important traits because United’s play style has been much different this season compared to last season under Michael Carrick. United are much more possession-focused and play much slower. Per Opta, their average sequence time has risen by over two full seconds from last season to this season. United advance the ball up the pitch as a unit, controlling both the ball and territory. They have the highest field tilt in the league. They rank second in the league in number of sequences with 10 or more passes. They rank third in average passes per sequence.
This team is much less direct than they used to be. When you’re playing a much possession-based style and looking to control the ball, it is vital to have a midfielder who can not only keep possession of the ball but can move up the pitch too. Not just one of these guys, but two. Everyone in your midfield has to be able to do these things because the entire team progresses the ball together. Passing is the weakest part of Carlos Baleba’s game, and if you have a midfielder who can’t pass while you’re trying to play this way, you’re screwed. In that regard, it may not be practical to just throw Baleba into the team instead of Tielemans.
Now for all this territorial dominance United haven’t been all that good at turning it into quality scoring opportunities. Their 0.08 xG per shot ranks them 15th in the league. It makes it completely fair to ask should they even be playing this way?
What is the reason behind their inability to do these things? Is the style itself bad? Are the players just still getting used to it? It has only been five games. Are the players themselves, specifically the attackers, just not suited to playing a less direct style?
There are arguments for and against each of those questions, though five games may truly not be enough time to definitively know one way or the other. But here I present another question. What if Manchester United were only playing this way at the start of the season because of the players they had available?
To play that more direct style of play United showed under Carrick last season they’d need a central midfielder who could cover ground and win the ball back for them. Through the opening five games of the season, United didn’t have that player available.
Kobbie Mainoo and Youri Tielemans can do a lot of things, but covering lots of ground isn’t one of them. What if, since they were the two best midfielders available, Carrick’s goal was to mitigate how much ground they’d have to cover by mitigating how often they’d have to be defending. The best way to do that is to make sure your opponent has the least amount of the ball possible. Once Baleba comes back, United could put him in the team and try to move back towards the more direct attacking approach that suited them so well on the back end of last season.
Maybe that’s been the plan all along and – despite this slower approach aligning closer with how Carrick’s Middlesbrough side played – those speed and territory numbers are just the product of negative game states skewing the numbers in a small sample. Whatever it is, what Carrick now has is options. If a game calls for more possession and incisive passes he can call on Tielemans and bring Baleba off the bench to provide energy to protect a lead. If he wants to play more direct, Baleba comes in with Tielemans able to provide more passing off the bench.
The games are about to start coming thick and fast and United need to get their vibes flowing in the right direction ASAP. Youri Tielemans is going to be a key player for United – albeit as long as he’s used properly. United will need to make sure to hide his defensive weaknesses, but don’t sleep on what he can bring to the table either.
