Thread by @babuyagu

Maram is brilliant for United analysis.

I mentioned on my podcast with @hesbighesred that recruiting for and coaching a counter-attacking team is relatively easy.

However a playmaking (or Level 3) side is much more difficult. And there is no evidence yet that unlike Fergie's

https://twitter.com/maramperninety/status/1430183631914405893

time at the club, anybody who remains knows how to build and coach a Level 3 United side. They are fantastic against a side that will come at them like Leeds or City - their records against such teams are great. But when they need to buildup attacks or break down a block those

tend to be the game they struggle. And I think there is always a hyper-focus on personnel here when in actuality it is both. We have seen from Rodgers at Swansea, Bielsa at Leeds, Setien at Betis... you CAN coach teams this way with whatever you have.

But to do it well, to dominate a league (which is what you need to compete with a Guardiola side capable of hitting 95 points a season) - that needs a team stacked with top players, suitable for Level 3 football AND a coach capable of putting it together.

And every lacking piece to the puzzle will cost you something. A central midfielder (Fred) or full back (AWB) who is poor/sloppy with the ball means more attacks break down and you have to face more dangerous counter attacks - for example.

A goalkeeper that is poor at sweeping behind a defence that HAS to press up on the midfield to compress spaces between lines is going to cost you. If he is also poor in possession under pressure, then again - more dangerous counterattacks faced.

If you have defenders that lack pace and agility to defend from in the opponents' half - coupled with goalkeeper who is poor at sweeping - it costs you.

And give the margins for error to hit 95 points are already tiny, you essentially need perfection and a lot of luck to match.

And this is what we were talking about in the pod about sentimentality.

With Dalglish - he improved us after Hodgson, got us back up the league, did well in the cups - club legend. He deserved more time to see what he could do?

But FSG (and I'm going to be honest here, someone was advising them) took the view that he isn't the right fit for what they needed to implement. Targetting players like Downing, Carroll, etc. That isn't going to build a level 3 side, ever, in a million years.

It was a bad fit.

So why wait? How does delaying ripping off the bandaid help us? Another season with some improvement in league points and some domestic cup finals - maybe even win one - doesn't move us any closer to the real target.

And that is harsh and completely devoid of sentimentality.

But it is also a fair assessment of what we had vs where we needed to be.

Rodgers showed he might be the guy to coach what we needed. But he wanted to control recruitment and was an absolute nightmare when he did.

Now we have people who know how to build a Level 3 team and people who know how to coach it.

And losing Buvac was crucial to that - whether a fortunate consequence or an issue we forced to the surface. The one criticism that Dortmund side always had was they were technically

lacking, tended to prioritise physical over technical and struggled to break sides down when the gegenpressing didn't work.

Better recruitment from a high pool of players and not having the highly technical players like Sahin & Gotze poached solved a lot of that. But Lijnders

very much from the old Rinus Michels coaching framework. He is an excellent coach of possession, penetration and play in small spaces.

It is really hard to put everything together to break 95 points. United's last 3 are 66, 66 and 74.

That is a BIG gap to bridge.

Klopp's full seasons with Buvac were 76, 75
With Lijnders 97, 99

Last season was 69 - and the questions we have to answer now are:-
1. How much that was down to lack of fans
2. How much was down to unusually high numbers of injuries in one area?
3. Can we recycle the core and

repeat this in the future the way Fergie did so many times at United?

And depending on how positive/negative, pro Liverpol/anti-Liverpool you are... each person will have different answers to those questions.

But that is where both clubs are at.

Oh... if you read this and wondered what Level 3 means.

Level 1 - basic containment football (Sam Allardyce). Very quick to set up and coach and easy to recruit for.
Level 2 - uses the stability of Level 1 and adds some basic patterns to counter-attack effectively with pace

Level 3 - playmaking system. Dominate the ball, keeping possession is crucial as you commit many numbers to attacks, move teams around, pull open their shape, create large amounts of big chances from doing so.

And there is also a kinda rock, paper, scissors thing here.

Where Level 2 teams struggle against Level 1, but fare better against Level 3.

Level 3 are built to destroy Level 1 teams but can get caught out by Level 2 sides if they can't pin them back, keep possession and regain immediately when it is lost

Continuation.

And this is why the 'bring back Coutinho' and 'City improve with Grealish' shouts interest me because their numbers are entirely dependent on being lynchpins in a system - which when it works - everything goes through them and they shine.

Like Bruno at United.

But those players just don't look the same when they aren't in that team, in that system, in that role, as a lynchpin, with everything going through them which caused them to shine.

And it creates a false image of the true level of those players. It explains why Bruno for 🇵🇹 or

Coutinho for 🇧🇷/Barca or Grealish for 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 don't look the same player.

And I am not saying those players are incapable of playing well for or producing big numbers at another team. Just that it is hard to separate out these two things to predict how they will be as a cog in a

machine rather than being the whole system in attack. Complete freedom, the focal point of everyone with the ball. It is tricky.