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Football News: Manchester United's - Dutch Courage

All statistics included in this article have been obtained from Squawka.com.

Van Gaal has said on more than one occasion that unless a player becomes available that will improve upon what the squad can currently offer, he will make do with what he has.
I have found the defensive criticism aimed at the team confusing, especially since the beginning of the year. For a team that finished 4th on the 'Least number of goals conceded' last season (1 more than 3rd place I might add), I wanted to find out how we had statistically performed so far this season in comparison to other teams.
Through Squawka I was able to build a comparison matrix of a selection of players which I then retrieved various stats from. The players included in my matrix were:

Kompany
Blind
Smalling
Cahill
Koscielny
Stones

The stats I then requested from each player and thus was then able to compare from were:

Overall Defensive Score (Summary)
Pass completion
Total forward passes
Successful forward passes
Tackles won
Tackles lost
Duals won
Blocks

Unsurprisingly to me and I am sure others, our current CBs did extremely well.

Aside from Total duals, tackles won and blocks one of Blind or Smalling has performed best in each of the other areas with the other finishing second, except for duals where Blind does hold an under 50% stat as it stands. He does however beat everyone else with pass completion and number of forward passes. Koscielny had won the most duals and Stones the most tackles (only 1 more than both our CB). Cahill stands out with the most blocks so far and following yesterday's match I'm not surprised.

It gets more interesting, Kompany is a passionate lad but statistically he looks bad in comparison. He hasn't won a tackle yet this season and although only two games in you would certainly expect him to win at least 1 surely? He finished bottom of my matrix with the lowest scores across the areas.

J.Cruff once said that during his rather fortunate development, Rinus Michels explained to him that if he wasn't going to be the best header of the ball in the team, he would need to compensate it through intelligence. The Dutch are constantly 'ripping up the template' and by playing Blind at CB we can see it happening again. Look at Mascherano at Barcelona. I see potentially a very similar situation unfolding. Blind is a very smart player, very well coached and he will learn how play at CB. In all honestly apparently he already has to some degree.

This is not a pop at de Boer because it isn't just his fault but the reason Dutch football teams are failing to succeed in Europe is because of the current philosophy which has altered some what over the past few years. It is regarding the strikers, they have no strikers going in behind defences and stretching play. Players are constantly wanting the ball into feet and this is why Van Gaal wants another striker that can give him that option. I really believe it is the last piece of the puzzle for us now, I'm not saying Rooney is finished but he needs a deeper role now behind someone that can really mix it up. Dutch football is going to improve over the next few years for this very reason and Van Gaal has a very similar predicament at Manchester United. One of the aspects of that suffers when you want to improve possession and passing and moving is chance creation. This can be overcome by having a CF who can mix it up.

Hope you enjoyed the read and keep the faith all, we have a good chance this year.

Written by KingGiggsy August 17 2015 19:24:21