It's well known that Manchester United have struggled to find balance in their attack in recent years.
The owners and those in charge of the footballing decisions at United will get fairly criticised for quite a lot, especially for their incompetence and terrible recruitment strategy.
But last season they stayed true to their word and delivered the one player whom everyone thought could be the solution to the Red Devils' right-wing woes. Jadon Sancho was finally snatched from Dortmund, where he played for three seasons and contributed directly to 114 goals.
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The winger had a lot of freedom to express himself while he was playing in the Bundesliga. He not only was playing as a right-wing, though, as he was often found across the frontline, seen on the left and centrally like an attacking midfielder.
He even registered most of his goal contributions from the left-hand side.
As a right-footed player who likes to cut inside from the left, it makes sense, but Manchester United brought him in thinking he will solve their long lasted right side issue. So why did he fail to do so in his first season at the club?
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There was a lot of reasons for this, including his adaptation period to the Premier League. But, the most obvious was the lack of understanding of his profile from the two managers who led the team last season.
Sancho is a player who can take on, dribble, and beat his opponent with ease, have an eye for weakness in opposition's backlines to exploit. He's technically secure, and has creative prowess on a whole different level.
When you have this kind of profile in your team you should give them the freedom to express themselves and create a holistic platform for them to thrive and shine with the end goal being that they are players who help the team win games.
Both Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Ralf Rangnick failed to help the winger settle well at Old Trafford, which then would've likely had a knock-on effect on his confidence, and at United, we're too familiar with what it is like to have a player with doomed confidence.
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So what can Erik ten Hag do to get the best out of Sancho?
Well, as mentioned numerous times already, the English winger is a player who loves to drive and carry the ball into the pockets of space, be it on the left or right, to then find his teammates with clever incisive passes.
The first area to address is to avoid instructing the player to 'hug the touchline', as so many wingers do. This takes away the benefits that Sancho offers.
The image below perfectly shows how the playmaker wants to operate.
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Sancho wants to receive the ball in between the lines, whether that's on the left or the right, and then turn and terrorize the opposition defenders by carrying the ball to the box and creating chances for his teammates from there.
In Erik ten Hag's philosophy, though, a player needs to hold the width to stretch the opposing team and create spaces. But this does not mean that Sancho will be stuck out wide where he is unable to impact the game.
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Ten Hag will likely look to operate with 'adapting width'. This is where the attacking team adapts the width of their frontline to the width of the opponent.
The wide players would have the task of stretching the opposition defence, but this will be done differently to the maximizing width idea, in this system, the wide players will put themselves in positions where they are in enough space to have time to receive the ball and then run at defenders while never being removed from the game.
While it is still very early days, the signs are promising that the manager already understands the profile of the 22-year-old winger. In the above picture, you can see the English forward moving with freedom.
Ten Hag was also using another approach in regards to the width in his first pre-season game in charge.
Dynamic Width: The idea is essentially that no player will statically occupy the wide spaces outside the opposition defence but rather occupy these spaces dynamically attack them when the opportunity arises.
One of Sancho's main strengths is his ability to find players anywhere on the pitch with his creative passes but for that, he needs runners to feed.
Last season he was struggling due to a lack of this, but Ten Hag is encouraging his players to make those runs. Diogo Dalot was seen making a lot of underlapping runs.
Bruno Fernandes made a seam run to attack the spaces behind the opposition behind the left back and to the by-line in the image above.
There actually isn't much difference in Sancho's output if he plays left or right. The more important aspect is him having a good connection with his full-back and players around him.
He is slowly getting this now. And while it does not seem to be so important to the average viewer, these movements and runs are absolutely vital to success at the top level. Ten Hag once said that "off-ball runs are a key to success".
The fluidity of the team was also something picked up on in Ten Hag's opening fixtures.
The rest-defence might be tasked to keep their place and never move too much as they will vacate space for the opposition in transition but the players are located higher up, especially the front four. They were very fluid just like you can see in the picture above.
Ten Hag stresses the need for balance in his attacks and was pleased with the results against Liverpool when the attack was more fluid.
“I think we have a good left side but I think you see against Liverpool that we also have attacks on the right side and it was good to see it because you want to have balance." He said after the game.
"If you are only on one side it is quite predictable so we want that to develop over two sides but also in the middle and from everywhere.”
This will indeed be music to the ears of Red Devils' fans, who have too often seen a left-sided heavy United team. However, of course, the team still needs improvement.
Topics: Manchester United, Erik Ten Hag, Diogo Dalot, Jadon Sancho, Football, Premier League
Natnael Manaye