There's been calls for Man U's goalkeeper; Andre Onana to be dropped in the Premier League.
But has their star goalkeeper really had a bad start to life at Old Trafford, or is he actually vital to their success?
But has their star goalkeeper really had a bad start to life at Old Trafford, or is he actually vital to their success?
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00:00 Hello everybody, the shivering husk of Adam Cleary today because it's cold, that's
00:07 the joke, and Andre Onana. Oh boy. You've no doubt seen by this point he posted an absolute
00:14 disaster class against Galatasaray in the Champions League, leaving Manchester United
00:18 on the very cusp of elimination and such a catastrophic performance was it, there is
00:23 talk going into this weekend's Premier League fixtures that he may not even retain his place.
00:28 Given he was signed as the supposed jewel in Eric Ten Hag's tactical crown just a few
00:32 months ago, that would be massive. So, dead simple question and dead simple video, is
00:39 Andre Onana, to paraphrase a shampoo advert, worth it?
00:44 Alright, so when either I or anybody else talks about Onana being worth it for Man United,
00:51 what do we actually mean by that? Well, in short, for Eric Ten Hag to play the way Eric
00:55 Ten Hag wants to play, he needs to have a goalkeeper who can do the kind of things that
00:59 Andre Onana can do. Last season he did not, he had David De Gea, and thus they couldn't
01:04 play like this. Ten Hag effectively wants six players involved in the build up phase,
01:08 that's why last season you saw Manchester United fall more commonly in a 4-2-3-1. These
01:13 six players here, they were responsible for receiving the ball out of the back, circulating
01:18 it, inviting the opposition press on, and then playing the ball through those lines
01:23 into the attacking players. They did not want David De Gea particularly involved in any
01:27 of that, if they could help it, they had to do it all themselves, and if it did go back
01:31 to him, he would just pump it long and they would try and do something else entirely.
01:35 And the main consequence of this is that the defence has to play about five or ten yards
01:40 further back than they would ideally like to, because they can't trust De Gea to take
01:44 any sort of command in this area, that's where they need to be. And straight away you can
01:49 see there's now a huge disconnect between the attacking players, so naturally they have
01:52 to play about five or ten yards further back, and your whole team is nowhere near as far
01:57 up the pitch as you would like them to be.
01:58 So you go out in the summer, you get a goalkeeper like Onana, who you can trust with the ball
02:02 at his feet, who does understand the build up and inviting the press on, and has the
02:07 ability to break the lines himself with his own passes, and straight away he can now be
02:11 playing roughly on this line, so your defence, they can all shuffle up, your attackers, they
02:17 can all shuffle up, Man United can play ten yards, fifteen yards further up the pitch
02:22 when they are building up, and more importantly, because it's only six players you want doing
02:27 this, you can have two number eights, you can play a 4-3-3, you can have an extra attacker.
02:33 And the consequence of this is because you are now further up the pitch and you have
02:36 more bodies committed, the second part of Eric Ten Hag's game plan is once you have
02:41 broken the lines with this build up, the entire team then pushes up, you play incredibly high
02:46 so that when you do lose the ball in your opponent's half, you can turn the ball over,
02:51 you can get on them a lot quicker and a lot easier.
02:55 Which means you also need a goalkeeper who's not just comfortable playing here, but is
02:58 going to be comfortable playing all the way up here, either mopping up balls over the
03:03 top as the opposition panics and humps it along to get away, or when you are recircling
03:07 the ball yourself, there being another option somewhere in this area.
03:11 And that was the thinking behind Andre Onana, because that is just what he was doing at
03:15 Ajax and what he was doing against Inter Milan.
03:17 If you watched our video in the summer, looking at why they so desperately wanted him, we
03:21 had a full of little clips of him doing little pirouettes here, going past defenders there,
03:26 just playing his football, living his best life about halfway in his own half.
03:32 And to an extent, this has sort of worked.
03:37 Like you don't see this 4-3-3 every single week, but you do see it and you don't necessarily
03:42 see this open, free-flowing, really dangerous, suffocating, high up attacking football all
03:48 the time, but you do sort of see it.
03:51 Like here is a stat that may surprise you.
03:53 Manchester United currently third in the league for the total number of high turnovers, for
03:57 the amount of times they've won the ball back in the opposition's third.
04:01 They're one high turnover this season behind Ange Ball at Tottenham, which is a system
04:06 almost specifically designed to turn the ball over high up the pitch.
04:10 And that is undeniably because of Onana's influence on this team.
04:14 Like Man United are so much better positioned to win the ball in this part of the pitch
04:18 because A, they play so much further up because their goalkeeper enables them to do that.
04:22 And B, they've got an extra player in this part of the pitch compared to last year because
04:26 their goalkeeper is the one leading the build up.
04:29 So that holding midfielder that would have been there is now one of the eight that is
04:32 there.
04:33 Direct attacks as well, which is something we talked about earlier in the week.
04:37 Basically any sort of attacking sequence that starts in your build up phase, so you're knocking
04:41 it about, but then you get it quickly into the opposition's half and then you either
04:45 get a shot away or you get a touch in the box.
04:47 Basically you manage to do something from here that ends up here.
04:51 They are fourth in the league for that, which is really, really good.
04:54 Like it's a stylistic thing.
04:55 Not every team wants to attack that way, City are like right at the bottom of that stack
04:59 because it's just not their style.
05:01 They want to pass it around a lot more.
05:02 But the teams that do really want to go for the jugular, that's how they play.
05:07 And Man United are one of those teams and they're doing really well at doing that.
05:11 Doing really well at doing it.
05:12 Good English.
05:13 And the thing is, even using the Galatasaray game as an example, which is somewhere you
05:16 would say you had an absolute nightmare, Onana was contributing really positively and really
05:21 well to Manchester United's attacking play.
05:24 And if you've only seen the highlights of this game, you might have missed this because
05:26 you've got to rewind ever so slightly further than the clips were showing you.
05:30 But Onana is directly responsible for two of Manchester United's goals.
05:34 Two of the goals they scored, I should clarify, obviously he was also responsible for two
05:39 of the goals.
05:40 His crisp packet hands just gently ushered into the back of the net.
05:43 Anyway, watch this.
05:44 For the first goal, they are playing it around the back.
05:46 And while they are a lot deeper than they would probably like to be, you can see here
05:49 Eric Ten Hagy's got that six player setup with one midfield pivot and Onana in there.
05:55 Galatasaray are squeezing and squeezing and eventually it comes back to Onana who flights
05:59 a really, really nice ball into McTominay in the midfield.
06:03 And from there, they beat the press, they get turned, they get runners off the ball,
06:07 they start the overload and they score the goal.
06:09 Again, for the third goal, Galatasaray are really squeezing them, they're pushing right
06:13 up, they're going man for man.
06:15 And under incredible pressure, Onana plays this beautiful ball from his own six yard
06:20 box down into one of the channels.
06:23 They get a throw in off that reset and get the third goal.
06:26 But this 30 second passage of play encapsulates every single reason why they bought Onana.
06:31 First of all, the pass under pressure from the defender and accurately finding a teammate
06:35 in space.
06:36 And then all of about 10 seconds later, being the Manchester United player at the very base
06:40 of the buildup phase.
06:41 And you can see straight away because they brought him into play, Galatasaray all of
06:46 a sudden aren't quite sure how to press.
06:48 They kind of go all over the place.
06:49 They get really stretched and that creates the space for this brilliant interchange between
06:55 the three players here.
06:56 Andre Onana with the ball at his feet and four passes later, it's in the back of the
07:02 net.
07:03 And that is why Andre Onana is worth it to Manchester United.
07:08 But this is why he's not.
07:11 So this is Andre Onana's FB ref profile in the Premier League this season.
07:15 Now just to explain everything you're looking at here, this little number down the middle,
07:19 that's how many times in 90 minutes that's happening.
07:22 The green bar basically indicates how he ranks compared to all the other goalkeepers in the
07:26 league.
07:27 Basically, the larger it is, the greener it is, the higher this number is, the better
07:30 he's doing.
07:31 And just to explain the stuff he's scoring really low on, it's stuff he should be scoring
07:35 really low on, like goal kicks and average length of goal kicks.
07:38 He doesn't really take them.
07:39 He plays that from the back.
07:40 And when he does, he tries to find players in the channels rather than humping it long.
07:43 So that's just his style of play.
07:45 That's not a negative.
07:46 That's just a reflection of what he's doing.
07:48 It's the same with crosses stopped and the number of actions outside the penalty area.
07:51 Man United are one of the top teams, so he doesn't face that many crosses.
07:55 And because they've got a lot of the ball, he doesn't need to do too much per 90 minutes
07:59 outside of the penalty area.
08:00 Those aren't stats you would ever really score a keeper at a top club on.
08:04 What you would score them on is the number of goals they concede and their save percentage
08:09 and their clean sheet percentage and the average distance of the actions they're capable of
08:13 taking and all of those.
08:15 Onana's having a great season.
08:17 78.8% save percentage.
08:20 There is only Alisson in the Premier League right now who saved a higher percentage of
08:24 shots he's faced.
08:26 So purely as a shot stopper, statistically speaking, Onana has been the second best keeper
08:31 in the Premier League this season.
08:33 And what were we saying before about Man United wanting to play five or ten yards further
08:37 up the pitch?
08:38 The average distance of the defensive actions Andre Onana is taking, I'll just bring up
08:42 David De Gea's stats from last season, is pretty much five yards further up the pitch
08:47 than his was.
08:48 He's doing exactly what Ten Hag wants to do and he's doing it really, really well.
08:56 But this is the exact same set of statistics for Andre Onana in the Champions League this
09:04 season.
09:05 It is almost the exact opposite set of stats.
09:08 Everything he's doing well in the Premier League, he is genuinely a liability for in
09:12 the Champions League.
09:13 His save percentage puts him in the bottom third of the entire competition and this one
09:18 stat at the top here, which is going to take a little bit of explaining.
09:22 That is, and if you just roll your eyes at this, I completely understand, that is post
09:25 shot xG, so the value of the chance after it's been taken, basically what is the probability
09:31 a goalkeeper should save that, minus the amount of goals he's conceded.
09:36 And from that number, when you calculate it over 90 minutes and divide it by all the number
09:40 of games, you should either get a positive number or a negative number.
09:43 If you get a positive number, then great, that means over the course of the season the
09:47 team should have been expected to concede a certain number of goals based on the chances
09:51 that were had against them, but they didn't because you were in goal and that's really
09:55 great and you stopped all that from happening.
09:56 But if you get a negative number, it's quite the opposite.
09:59 It means that the team should have conceded a certain number of goals based on the quality
10:03 of the chances against them, but they didn't.
10:05 They conceded more than that because you were in goal and you should have saved some of
10:09 those.
10:10 And in the Premier League, Onana's number is positive.
10:12 In fact, it's one of the most positive numbers in the Premier League.
10:15 But in the Champions League, Onana's number is negative.
10:18 In fact, it's one of the most negative numbers in the Champions League.
10:21 And I know sometimes when people talk about XG and all this really deep statistical stuff,
10:25 it just doesn't really pass the eye test, does it?
10:28 You can sort of see the number, but it's not really borne out when you're watching the
10:31 game.
10:32 But I would argue if you watch those two free kicks he conceded, you can certainly see where
10:37 that negative number comes from.
10:39 Worst of all, although what I'm saying, of course, not worse than throwing two goals
10:43 into your own net, but still bad from Eric ten Haag's perspective will be this.
10:48 The average distance of the actions he's taking is 18 yards in the Premier League.
10:53 It's on average, it's outside the box.
10:55 And in the Champions League, on average, it's like just outside the six yard box.
11:01 He is not being able to comfortably come and do Andre Onana things in that competition.
11:06 Now, of course, there are reasons for this happening.
11:09 It's not just purely Andre Onana.
11:12 Manchester United, when you watch them in the Champions League, seem almost incapable
11:16 of controlling a game, of displaying any kind of game management that makes it more chaotic.
11:21 And if you are yourself quite a chaotic goalkeeper, then the lens, the spotlight is going to fall
11:26 on you considerably more than it's falling on everybody else.
11:29 I'm not saying it's Onana's fault, but it is certainly happening very near him.
11:34 Like I know Onana is going to be the one quite rightly getting all the headlines for that
11:37 game, but you have to look at the performance of Bruno Fernandes at exactly the same time.
11:42 Like those are diabolically bad free kicks to concede, but they're also two really stupid
11:47 free kicks to give away.
11:49 And your captain did both of those.
11:51 But the first one in particular, you've just gone 2-0 up.
11:54 You've taken the sting out of the crowd.
11:55 You've quieted all that down.
11:57 You've got this big lead now.
11:59 Galatasaray are going to be really concerned about how high they're pressing you.
12:02 And you somehow get caught out with both your number eights in the box in this situation.
12:07 You leave your opponents with this just yawning chasm to play their football in.
12:12 And after they've let them run the entire length of the pitch, Fernandes finally fouls
12:16 one of them on the edge of the box and immediately starts giving out and complaining to all of
12:21 his teammates.
12:22 That is not a football team in control of that situation.
12:25 So you can see this is not a team that really has a handle on what's going on.
12:30 And in the Champions League, where every game is so pressurised, where every team is so
12:35 desperate to win, they know any single defeat isn't just a, "Oh, we're playing Man United.
12:41 We'll write it off.
12:42 We'll go again next week."
12:43 As you might occasionally get in the Prem, they know they've got to go at them and they've
12:46 got to really try and rattle them.
12:48 And they've proved you can rattle them.
12:51 And when they are rattled, they're not even just rattled, they completely implode.
12:56 Rob Dawson from ESPN bringing up the frankly mind-boggling statistic that in the Champions
13:00 League this season, they've conceded two in four minutes against Bayern, two in four minutes
13:05 against Copenhagen, two in 10 minutes versus Galatasaray at home, and two in nine minutes
13:10 versus Galatasaray away.
13:12 Now granted, your goalkeeper acting like a toy that's just heard the words, "Andy's coming!"
13:16 at free kicks doesn't help that fact, but it certainly doesn't cause it either.
13:21 So anyway, yes, what was the question?
13:23 Is Andre Onana worth it?
13:25 Well, to Eric Ten Hag, yes.
13:27 Yes, he definitely is, because he is the one thing that is currently enabling you to play
13:32 the way you want to play.
13:33 You're having great attacking returns.
13:35 He is a major, major reason for that.
13:38 But you have other issues.
13:39 You have structural issues.
13:40 You have mentality issues.
13:42 You can't seem to wrap your heads around different states of the game.
13:46 And he, the problems he is having, are a symptom of that.
13:50 They are not the cause.
13:52 You take Andre Onana out of that team, goodbye Andre, and put somebody else in, you will
13:57 have the same chaotic, sort of wide open issues, except now, you just won't be as good going
14:04 forward.
14:05 And yes, okay, maybe another goalkeeper would have saved those two free kicks.
14:08 Christ, I probably would have saved those two free kicks, and I have zero knees and
14:13 a heart condition, but did you watch it?
14:17 Galatasaray would have probably just found two other goals.
14:20 It was that wide open.
14:22 Anyway, I'm now off for a lie down, and to pick that Subutiyo player up before I stand
14:25 on him in a pair of socks, ouchies, but if you have enjoyed this video, please do consider
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14:39 The latest issue of the magazine on sale for not much longer, Harry Kane exclusive interview,
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14:44 But until next time, my friends, and until Saturday 8 o'clock, where this just absolute
14:50 mad pack of bastards has to play Eddie Howardsley Castle United, I've been Adam Cleary, and
14:56 I'll see you soon.
14:57 Goodbye, and good luck.