Manchester United's transfer window looks like it's finally coming to life with the imminent arrival of left wingback Patrick Drogu from Italian side Lecce. With Ruben Amorim desperate for reinforcements despite the club's PSR situation, the Danish international has his admirers, but isn't yet a household name. Adam Clery takes a look at why, despite his unproven nature, he's actually tailormade for their new brand of football.
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00:00Right, hello everybody, Adam Cleary from 442, you remember me, back on your screens, albeit
00:09briefly.
00:10And we are here today to talk about Manchester United who are still having their struggles
00:14under Ruben Amorim but are now linked, indeed by the time this video goes out, potentially
00:19in bed with, I regret that wording, Patrick Dorgoo.
00:23Now he is, you've no doubt seen, is a big, big boy and Manchester United have identified
00:27him as a priority transfer for a priority position.
00:31But why, specifically, is he the man that Ruben Amorim is so excited about and why could
00:36he be so important to this system that he wants to play?
00:41I'll tell you.
00:43Right, before we do all of this, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who sent
00:48me some nice messages over the last week.
00:51I'm not going to get into the whole thing because obviously it's a really weird thing
00:54to have to talk about on YouTube.
00:56But I did see all those, I did get sent all those both in the comments and the ones people
01:00sent personally and they meant an enormous, enormous amount to me.
01:04So thank you so much for all that and thank you too to Adam Monk, by the way, who I think
01:10is doing a quite spectacular job filling in in the circumstances.
01:15I will be back eventually, properly at some point, but next time you see him, please do
01:20give him a bit of love because he's been an enormous help during all of this.
01:25Anyway though, football, that's what you're here for.
01:27Now Manchester United, as you know, spent the summer chucking around money like it was
01:32confetti, going and buying players that felt like they were a really good fit for the manager
01:36system and then they got rid of the manager and brought in a completely different one
01:41with a completely different system.
01:42Ruben Amorim, one of the most coveted system managers in all of Europe.
01:46He did not play how Eric Ten Hag played.
01:48He plays this quite religious 3-4-2-1, which is very different to what these players were
01:54used to.
01:55And the best way of describing its success so far is that sometimes it looks really,
01:59really good and other times, well, it doesn't.
02:03And the squad is thus currently a mix of players who look like they fit this system really
02:08well and others who are just square pegs in quite awkward round holes.
02:12Like Ahmad is having a brilliant season, Bruno Fernandes looks like he's getting back to
02:16his best and Harry Maguire is so at home in this back three, he might as well be playing
02:21in his pants with a slice of toast hanging out of his mouth.
02:24But the thing you see about very well-defined systems like this is that either every player
02:29is comfortable in it or nobody is.
02:32And as a result, Manchester United's results have become quite predictable.
02:37How predictable you ask?
02:38Well, this happened.
02:42The next two games they have are Southampton and Brighton.
02:46Now they are both at home in the Man United side we've seen previously this season and
02:50indeed for most of the last one, would turn up to those fixtures, labour to a really uninspiring
02:57win against Southampton after going behind and getting a scare and then get their pants
03:03pulled down by Brighton.
03:08I don't normally like when people on the internet are like, oh, look at me, I said a thing once
03:12and it was right, but that was, that was quite spooky.
03:16I'm annoyed I didn't put money on it.
03:18But the reason these games tend to follow this pattern is because when you haven't got
03:21the ball, when you're out of possession, basically becomes a 5-4-1.
03:26So a back five with four players sitting in front of it, and that's really hard to break
03:30down.
03:31It's really, really solid.
03:32So in games, when they're not expecting to see the ball, when they're playing a team
03:36who are superior to them, they're actually really robust and hard to play against.
03:41You're locked in, you're nice and solid.
03:42You've got a couple of really exciting, quick attacking players who can get you up the pitch
03:46When the game is stretched, you can get at teams in transition.
03:49It works really well.
03:50They've beaten Liverpool with it.
03:52They've beaten Man City with it.
03:53They've beaten Arsenal with it and looked great in doing so.
03:56Like these were their average positions.
03:58I think this is the Manchester City game.
03:59And you can see the back five is, they're all there.
04:02They're quite deep.
04:03You've got Manuel Agaté sitting in front of it.
04:05So that's six players protecting the space.
04:08And there's only really sort of Fernandes floating about and Amad and Haaland who are
04:12pushing up and trying to be adventurous.
04:15Liverpool hated playing against this, but not to sound like Gary Neville here, but this
04:20is Manchester United we're talking about, right?
04:22There's only going to be certain teams in the league who they're ever going to be willing
04:26to sit off and sort of concede the momentum to.
04:29The vast majority of games they play, home and away, they're expected to not dominate
04:34necessarily, but certainly control the game.
04:37So you get to all the other games, your Brighton's, your Southampton's, and all of a sudden you
04:40look at the lineup and it doesn't really scream goals or dominance to you.
04:44You've got three centre-backs and two full-backs, so that's five defenders.
04:48Then someone like Manuel Agaté, a defensive midfielder, so that's six players whose main
04:52priority is stopping things happening.
04:54And if Fernandes is in this front three, which tends to be where he's best, then you end
04:58up with someone like Kobi Meinu in the other midfield position, who's excellent, yes, but
05:02he doesn't really give you a goal threat.
05:04He's not going to box crash or make things happen.
05:06So all of a sudden it looks really light in an attacking sense.
05:10And thus, you get a lot of people saying that the system isn't really appropriate for
05:14a team like Manchester United in the Premier League, because you can't rock up at home
05:18against Southampton, who've got six points all season, and have a back five.
05:23Yes, they had Diallo at right wing-back in this game to sort of freshen it up and make
05:28it a bit more ambitious, but that's a waste of him, because it gives him defensive responsibilities.
05:33It means he's going up and down rather than focusing in the final third.
05:37So lo and behold, when they moved him out of that position late in the game and put
05:41him further forward, he scored a hat-trick.
05:43Like that's a waste.
05:45But the point I'm getting at here, and I will talk about Dogu in a second, I promise, is
05:49that normally you're going to have Diogo Dalot and Maserati in these positions, and they're
05:53both fantastic players.
05:55I rate them very highly.
05:57But on one side, you've got a right-footed full-back who's sort of a bit awkward on the
06:02left, and on the other, you've got a proper defender who's probably more at home in that
06:07back three.
06:08So you're never going to get any attacking impetus from this squad in this system in
06:14these positions.
06:15So it might be the system, that might be the problem, but right now, looking at it, it
06:19does feel like it's the personnel.
06:21Because if you go all the way back to his time at Sporting Lisbon, this system that
06:26Amirim loves so much, lives and dies by the ability to turn this back five quickly into
06:33this front five.
06:36That is how Manchester United need to look when they are attacking teams, and too often
06:41this season, they look more like that, for lack of a better term.
06:46So, and this is a video about Patrick Dogu, honestly, I swear, I would argue that if not
06:52the two most important positions, I think it's those two inside 10s, that's a whole
06:56other matter, the two most specialist positions this Man United team needs are the two wing-backs.
07:02And I'll show you why.
07:03You can see in this clip here, they've got the back five, they are settled and thus they
07:06are hard to break down.
07:08So it's working from a defensive sense, but when the ball is turned over and they start
07:12to transition this into the attack, just look at how sluggish the full-back is to join in
07:20with that.
07:21It takes them ages to get up with the attack, and all of a sudden their defence has reset
07:26and these three players have been unable to break down that scenario.
07:30And Amirim will have spotted this in pretty much every single game Man United have played.
07:34Like if you just look at that as a freeze frame, look how far back from the attacking
07:38play those two wing-backs are.
07:40That's not how this is supposed to work.
07:42And this is no criticism, by the way, of Maserati and Dalot, like asking players to get up and
07:47down that entire flank with equal weight of responsibility for 90 minutes and knowing
07:52exactly when to go and exactly when to stay is a very specialist thing to do.
07:58It's a huge physical ask of a footballer and it's just not their games.
08:04But do you know whose game it is?
08:07Patrick Dorgoo.
08:08You see, I told you the video was about him, eventually.
08:12He is probably one of the most exciting progressive wing-backs, whatever that is, in Europe right
08:18now.
08:19He's not the finished article by any stretch of the imagination.
08:20He is a raw talent.
08:22But in terms of what he does specifically, he is a wet dream for Ruben Amirim with this
08:29team.
08:30We'll get into all the stats and the numbers and stuff in a second, but here's just a few
08:32choice clips from the many Patrick Dorgoo skills and assists welcome to Arsenal videos
08:38that are doing the rounds and wow.
08:41The main thing you'll see in all of these is that he drives the ball up the field in
08:44a way that no Manchester United player currently does with any consistency.
08:49He's the perfect mix of like a bulldozer, by which I mean he's over six foot tall and
08:54absolutely stacked, but also with sort of like a ballerina quality because you'll notice
08:59he's not just kicking the ball forward, running after it and smashing through the back of
09:03people like Wayne Rooney at a closing buffet, but the ball is actually sticking to his foot.
09:08His close control is excellent.
09:10And this makes him really, really difficult to tackle.
09:14The guy gets fouled a lot because between his strength and his ability, it's now impossible
09:20to get the ball off.
09:21This is his number for fouls drawn in Serie A this season.
09:26You just can't stop him fairly.
09:28He's quick as well, certainly more than quick enough for this level, and he's intelligent
09:31enough that when these avenues close off to him, he doesn't just run into players and
09:35lose the ball, but he holds it up really well and allows his team to get up the pitch and
09:39support him.
09:40All of a sudden you take these kind of scenarios that Manchester United have been in this season
09:43where there's a real lack of support from the two wide areas and he would be here.
09:49The dynamic of this situation shifts massively.
09:51And another interesting benefit, this is his seasonal heat map, which is just like a splodge
09:57of everything he's done across this season.
09:59You'll see it's on both sides because so good is his like attacking ability, Lecce have
10:05started using him as a right-sided inverted foot attacker.
10:09So he's probably comfortable playing either side as a wingback, but yes, let's look at
10:13all his big nerdy numbers because they do tell quite the tale.
10:17You will see that for a defender, and this is across all of Europe, not just Serie A,
10:21he comes with an inbuilt goal threat and that is because running is his stock and trade.
10:28So in the final third, he'll either drive direct a goal with the ball, or if the plays
10:33on the other side, he'll target the back post area and getting chances in behind.
10:38That is just something you have not seen at any point from either Dalot or Maserati or
10:41whoever's been playing in those wide positions.
10:43And it is thematically what this system is all about, because I'll show you his passing
10:49numbers as well, and they're shockingly bad.
10:52And oh, wait, Adam, why are you showing me this?
10:54It's absolutely horrible.
10:55I thought we're having a nice time here.
10:58He doesn't pass the ball frequently or consistently or well or with any sort of incision or ability
11:04whatsoever.
11:06Why is this a good thing?
11:07Well, if you go all the way back to the first videos we did looking at the Amirim shape
11:11and how that was going to work with Manchester United, we were at pains to point out that
11:16Amirim ball, which nobody calls it, is not about the shape.
11:20It's not about it being three, four, two, one, and that somehow making chances.
11:25It is about what they do with the ball.
11:27The key to all of this is that wherever you get the ball on the pitch, whether it's in
11:30the buildup, in the midfield, in the final third, you then attack the space personally.
11:36You don't give it to somebody else.
11:37You don't try and knock it around and sort of wait for a chance to open.
11:41You just get at the gaps.
11:42And when it works, when you get into the danger zone, that is when you try and create a chance.
11:48Like Michael.
11:49Hello, Michael, our wonderful editor, Michael.
11:51He made this brilliant little clip montage of all of the Victor Jocare's goals that were
11:56basically just one touch because a player had driven into a dangerous area and laid
12:02on for him.
12:03So we're not seeing Man United score a lot of goals like that yet, but it is ultimately
12:08the objective of this system.
12:09And as well as it being the objective of the system and what Ruben Amirim is ultimately
12:13trying to do, it is what Patrick Dorgoo is particularly good at.
12:18So do not worry about the fact he's got these passing stats, which are probably about the
12:22same as if you chucked me into Syria for a couple of games.
12:26Instead, focus on these numbers because these are the important ones.
12:30A huge number of touches in the attacking penalty area for a defender.
12:34Not tapping it around and waiting for something to happen for physically getting in there
12:39yourself.
12:40Progressive carries into the final third and again into the penalty area.
12:44That is who he is.
12:46That is what he does.
12:47And that is what Man United need.
12:49And you would be forgiven for thinking that being so sort of aggressive and determined
12:53to drive with the ball comes at a cost defensively, but he's actually pretty solid there.
12:59It's definitely an asset, not a weakness.
13:01The numbers don't really back that up, unfortunately, because Lecce are not having a good season
13:05at the minute.
13:06But the eye tests will tell you that he's really good as a one-on-one defender.
13:10His recovery runs are excellent.
13:12That clip that Ruben Amirim had of him demanding players ran back all the time.
13:16He's very, very good at that.
13:17He's got the pace to do it.
13:18He's got the energy to do it.
13:19He's got the engine to do it.
13:21He's got the desire to do it.
13:23You couldn't really, at this price, go and get a more suited player for what the manager
13:29wants to do.
13:30Don't get me wrong.
13:31I'm going to stress this now.
13:32He's like 20 or something.
13:34He's still very raw.
13:35There's still a lot of work to do in his development if he's going to be a proper, proper, proper
13:39Man United player.
13:41But in terms of the raw ingredients, in terms of what he's working with, good fit.
13:46Great fit.
13:47So just to surmise for you with a visual aid, let's go back to that clip of Manchester United
13:51not getting adequate support from the full backs of them and lagging behind the attack.
13:55Just remember how that scenario sort of played out.
13:58This is what he tends to do instead.
14:01This is a deep, it is a ponderous build up.
14:03Nothing is really happening.
14:04But that Amirim sort of mindset of can we drive directly into the gaps?
14:09He does.
14:10He doesn't go down the touchline.
14:11He's equally comfortable coming into the centre of the field.
14:12He beats one player.
14:13He beats two.
14:14And all of a sudden, he's then created an attacking opportunity.
14:19And if you look at the numbers here, that's a good attacking opportunity.
14:23It's open and it's exciting.
14:24And that's something nobody in this Man United team currently does.
14:28Like, I don't want to hammer this point home too much, right?
14:30But Ruben Amirim is a man on his hands and knees begging for a player in one of these
14:36positions to do this exact thing.
14:38And it looks like they've got one.
14:41Might even have one by the time this video goes out.
14:43I've got no idea what the timeframe is.
14:44Now, I'm not going to get into the whole thing about how much major surgery this squad probably
14:49needs if it wants to be the proper realised version of Ruben Amirim's Manchester United.
14:54I believe he called them the worst Manchester United team in history and how we're now three
14:59weeks into the transfer window and nobody has left and nobody has come in.
15:04That seems like a slight cause for concern.
15:06But if this happens, good.
15:09It's in the green thumb up arrow column, I think.
15:12But as ever, you know how this works by now.
15:14I'm actually way more interested in what you think.
15:16Because if you're a Man United fan, you probably watch more Man United than I do.
15:20So is this the problem position?
15:22Is this where you would have addressed first or would you have done something else?
15:25A new centre back, perhaps?
15:27A midfielder?
15:28A forward who gets goals instead of none?
15:31That might have been nice.
15:32Let me know in the comments below.
15:33Any thoughts, feelings, lyric verse, poetry, anything you want to get off your chest.
15:37I do tend to try and read it all.
15:40You get me across all the social medias at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-O-Y.
15:43The full 42 socials are in the corner of the video.
15:44And I don't know where I'm going to be or how often I'm going to be on camera for the next week or two.
15:50Again, I'm just not going to get the whole thing because it's really sad.
15:53But stuff to do, places to be, things that are not work that need my attention.
15:58But I will be back.
15:59I'll be back before you know it.
16:00And we'll have loads to talk about.
16:02And be nice to Adam Monk.
16:05Until then though, whatever that is, thank you so much for watching.
16:08And thank you again for the nice messages.
16:10They touched me here.
16:11Touched me right here, which is a nice place to be touched.
16:15I don't know why I say these things.
16:16I don't think about them before I talk and then they just, then they come out.
16:19Thank you. That was kind.
16:21I'm going to go.
16:22Goodbye.