Three at the back, three in the middle, three in the net
Solskjaer turned the tide with a quirky formation – and an elderly forward line
FIVE ASIDES Premier League: Spurs 0, United 3
What does Ole Gunnar Solskjaer do when his job is on the line? Very little. His response to United’s disintegration against Liverpool was to make only two changes. After seeing his back four fold like a cheap tent, he kept faith with the lot of them, merely adding the fit-again Rafael Varane as a sweeper. The only players dropped were the two wide strikers, Marcus Rashford and Mason Greenwood. And yet it worked. The scoreline had an element of luck – on xG, it was more like 1-1, with United only shading it by 1.2 to 0.9. Fortune, for once, favoured the safe. A good result was essential, a clean sheet badly needed, and United managed both.
Solskjaer’s conservatism led him to pick a pair of strikers who are 70 years old between them. Cristiano Ronaldo grabbed the headlines, as per usual, but Edinson Cavani was just as impressive. In the previous two games, with Cavani on the field, United had beaten Atalanta 2-0 (from 1-2 down) and drawn 0-0 with Liverpool (from 0-5). Here they were 2-0 up when he gave way to Rashford, so United’s aggregate score since October 20 with Cavani present is 4-0, while without him it’s 2-7. If you need a clean sheet, pick somebody who defends from the front. Cavani is so alert and adroit and applied: if he was in your office, he’d be that person everyone likes working with because they’re always on it. Plenty of strikers spend much of their time being spectators, as Harry Kane did here. Cavani is more like a good manager, able to lift a whole team.
Solskjaer did make one bold decision, to go to three at the back – and three in the middle. United’s new formation wasn’t 3-4-1-2, as widely reported: it was 3-3-2-2, with Scott McTominay joining Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Luke Shaw in the second bank of three, while Fred lined up next to Bruno Fernandes behind the strikers. Fred’s average position, as recorded by WhoScored, was almost as far forward as Cavani’s, and giving Fernandes that support brought the best out of him. He played a beautiful part in the first goal, pressing the pause button after a spell of pinball in the Spurs box, stopping the ball dead, spotting Ronaldo on manoeuvres, aiming a chip just over the head of Ben Davies and making it dip to enable a pinpoint van Persie volley. Then, pouncing like a predator, Fernandes played a pre-assist for the second goal by winning the ball off Oliver Skipp and slipping it to Ronaldo, who sent Cavani through to score. There was a bestselling book a while ago called Thinking Fast And Slow. That’s what Fernandes does.
It’ll be interesting to see if Solskjaer sticks with this formation. He surely will for the derby this weekend, when United can again expect to see little of the ball. But will he take it to Watford on November 20? Let’s hope so. Look at Chelsea: they don’t switch to a back four when they see a minnow approaching, and the upshot is that, in the league, they’ve become utterly ruthless. Unlike Liverpool or Man City, they have yet to drop a point this season against anyone outside the big three.
This formation makes sense of United’s odd bunch, as Gary Neville calls them. Everyone who played at Spurs has a plausible understudy. The 2nd XI now looks like this: Henderson; Bailly, Mengi, Jones; Dalot, Matic, Telles; Lingard, Pogba; Greenwood, Rashford. For Lingard and Pogba, 3-3-2-2 works better than 4-2-3-1: either of them could take the place of Fred. And they in turn would be understudied by Donny van de Beek and Juan Mata, two fine craftsmen who have been mysteriously frozen out. There are losers, too: the new shape is tough on Anthony Martial and Jadon Sancho, who both land up in the 3rds. But it should benefit Diogo Dalot and Alex Telles, who could come straight in at Atalanta on Tuesday. Aaron Wan-Bissaka did better than expected yesterday, helping to defuse the dangerous Son, but you can still see him dither when he’s in attack with a decision to make, which isn’t what you want from a wing-back. Against smaller teams, he should be Victor Lindelof’s deputy at right centre-back, with Dalot getting a start and a licence to bomb forward. After a grim week, the air is once again full of possibilities. Full credit to Solskjaer: he carries the can for the shockers, and deserves a big hand for the bounce-backs.
Tim de Lisle writes for The Guardian and The Mail on Sunday. He has supported United since the days of Carlo Sartori.