Rúben Amorim made a smart tactical tweak against Sunderland, which allowed Amad and Bryan Mbeumo to finally click at Manchester United.
Ruben Amorim and Manchester United’s recruitment staff would’ve been worried after having seen Bryan Mbeumo and Amad play together at the start of the season.
Questions were starting to be raised about whether they could play together. It felt like they kept getting in each other’s way; two players who want to occupy the same areas playing right next to each other.
Both are undoubtedly quality players, but because of their similarities, it seemed as if they couldn’t work together.
That all changed vs Sunderland, though. The duo seemed to be in tune, and United’s recruitment department will definitely be breathing a massive sigh of relief.
Amorim’s tactical tweak vs Sunderland helped
Ruben Amorim made a perfect tactical tweak against Sunderland to help get the best out of Amad.
At the start of the game, Manchester United made one attempt to play out from the back, but Sunderland pressed man-to-man. After that, Senne Lammens went long almost every time he got the ball.
When Lammens went long, Mbeumo was always positioned very close to Benjamin Šeško. This is for two reasons. The first being, as we saw vs Chelsea, Šeško, if he wins the initial duel, can play the flicked header for Mbeumo to run onto.
The second is that by having Mbeumo so central, it opens up the half-space for Amad to run into should he get the ball.
As seen in the image above, having Mbeumo so central opens up space in the right half of the field for Amad to exploit. As everyone knows, he likes cutting in and shooting with his left and having Mbeumo so central allows him to do this.
Mbeumo is starting to understand Amad’s game
Throughout the game, it was clear Mbeumo was making a conscious effort to allow Amad to drift into the half-space.
In the image above, Amad has moved into the right-half space. At this point, Mbeumo has two choices. Either continue his run and receive the ball from Amad and create a cut-back opportunity, or stop his run to allow Amad the extra bit of space to come inside and shoot.
Mbeumo chose to hold his run, and this led to Amad being able to move slightly more inside and firing off a good shot, which required an impressive stop from Robin Roefs.
In the image above, Mbeumo has moved out to the touchline very purposefully, allowing Amad to move inside. This is, of course, relatively high up the pitch, but these rotations can be very useful in losing markers.
United, under Amorim, have lacked fluidity, and those rotations between Amad and Mbeumo could play a significant role in disorganising opposition teams, at least on one side of the pitch.
The reason Amad plays as the wing-back is because he’s very strong in 1v1 situations when isolated against the full-back out wide, while Mbeumo is a brilliant goal-scorer. However, Mbeumo can definitely hold his own out wide.
In the image above, Amad and Mbeumo have once again rotated positions. Mbeumo isn’t the best 1v1 dribbler, but he is very good at finding ways to create separation from his marker. He is also a very good crosser.
While he is left-footed, he is capable of going down the line and whipping a cross in with his right foot, as he did in the image above.
READ MORE: Senne Lammens forces ex-Manchester United star into embarrassing U-turn as ‘brilliant’ point made
By finding himself out wide more often, Mbeumo could get himself into better crossing positions to provide service to Benjamin Šeško.
In the final third, a manager’s main responsibility is to ensure that his players are in their most dangerous zones. Amorim seems to have found a way to continue getting Mbeumo in dangerous positions while allowing Amad to come into the right-half space as much as possible.
With Amad and Mbeumo, United have a quality dribbler, an elite crosser off both feet and two players with an eye for goal. If they continue to play like they did vs Sunderland, the dynamic between the duo could become a cornerstone of Amorim’s United and get Amad back to his flying best.
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