United have to become brave and bold now
WHEN United were consumed by the Paul Pogba transfer saga in the summer of 2019, Youri Tielemans was a name mentioned as a possible replacement for the World Cup winner.
The Belgian had just spent six months on loan at Leicester City from Monaco and he’d shown he could cut it in the Premier League.
He’d have been a welcome addition to any team in the division.
In the end, Pogba remained at United and the uncertainty over his future remains as big an issue now as it was nearly two years ago.
Tielemans, then 22, had been happy with life at the King Power Stadium and he made his move permanent for £35m, the same fee United paid for Donny van de Beek last summer.
Right now, one of those looks like a steal and the other is beginning to seem a questionable use of resources at a financially constrained time.
But the comparison with Van de Beek, beyond their transfer fee, is a red herring. It’s in a deeper role where Tielemans does his best work and where he would walk into this United team.
The battle between the Belgian and Wilfried Ndidi, in the blue corner, and Fred and Nemanja Matic, in the red corner, was as one-sided as the rest of the contest yesterday.
For United, this was like sending two lightweights into a heavyweight title fight.
The three-year contract handed to Matic, 32, nine months ago is beginning to look like another error of judgement at United, but the balance of the midfield, in general, is all wrong.
While Leicester had a natural defensive midfielder in Ndidi and a passer capable of breaking lines and breaking forward in Tielemans, United don’t.
Matic, Fred and
Scott McTominay all prefer the defensive side.
The Scot can at least offer well-timed runs into the final third, but a combination of Matic and Fred leaves United short of creative passing options.
That midfield set-up is something you would expect of a team in the bottom half of the Premier League, not one with ambitions of winning the title and the Champions League. It was ruthlessly exposed by Tielemans, in particular.
He ghosted away from a flatfooted Matic after a sharp one-two with Kelechi Iheanacho in the lead up to his crucial goal and then remained socially distanced from Fred, who didn’t do enough to get near him.
The finish was smart and the goal decisive, but Tielemans’ crisp and creative passing was an asset for Leicester all night, regularly finding Iheanacho, Ayoze Perez and Jamie Vardy in dangerous positions. United had nobody who could offer the same threat and razor-sharp cutting edge from deep and when the changes came just after the hour mark they failed to fix the obvious problem in midfield. It was an opportunity to drop Van de Beek into a deeper role and introduce Bruno Fernandes further forward. Instead, Matic went off and McTominay came on, while somehow Fred remained on.
It was rearranging the deckchairs
For United, this was like sending two lightweights into a heavyweight title fight Tyrone Marshall
on the Titanic and it was no surprise the ship sank when Leicester killed the quarter-final off.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had a point when he raised the demanding schedule United have had recently and how much that has taken out of them, but the paucity of play in midfield is not a new problem.
Since Pogba’s injury against Everton in the first week of February United have gone into every game with a midfield axis of two of Fred, Matic and McTominay.
It’s just not adventurous enough and for all the talk of progress this season, of which there has been plenty, it’s still hard to comprehend such a cautious midfield set-up taking United and Solskjaer to where they want to go.
The game at the very top level now is dominated by the adventurous. It’s time to be brave and bold and that means abandoning a midfield more suited to defence than attack.
They need a better passer in one of those deeper roles in a 4-2-3-1. Without it this is a team relying on Fernandes or a moment of magic in the front three. That’s not sustainable. At £35m Tielemans would have been perfect. He’d still be perfect now, but Leicester’s sharp recruitment left United in the shade and in this quarter-final they paid the price for that on the pitch.