Finding a number six for Manchester United

“Let’s talk about six, baby!”

Manchester United’s issues in midfield without a proper defensive midfielder have been well documented and evident for a while now. It surprises me that this position is so low in terms of the priority of searching for players to fill in this role.

Jadon Sancho and Erling Haaland have dominated United’s transfer rumor mill for quite some time, but the lack of activity on the DM front is worrying.

Regardless, the Athletic’s Carl Anka recently published a really interesting read on potential options for Manchester United in this position.

Today, we’re aiming to do something similar and trying to aid Manchester United’s recruitment department in finding potential candidates for the role.

Since this piece is the first of two, this one will only really be looking at identifying players who fit the requirements of a defensive midfielder in Manchester United’s system.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has preferred to use a double pivot of Fred and Scott Mctominay for most games and while it has worked well in *few* games, it is a largely underwhelming duo when you look around at the quality in players across the league.

Both the players are well capable of being useful squad options and can work in certain tactical setups and game states. However, if you want a player to be the solid base in the middle of the park that everybody can rely on, that player cannot come with so many conditions.

In my head, I work with the assumption that ideally, Ole would like to play with a deeper-lying defensive midfielder to allow Paul Pogba and Bruno Fernandes to flourish as free 8s.

Although we’ve seen him mostly field a 4–2–3–1 for more or less his entire tenure as Manchester United manager, I do believe his reluctance to field a proper three-man midfield is more to do with the personnel at his disposal.

So with these basic assumptions, let’s dive into the numbers.

Brace yourselves.

What are we looking for?

We are looking at primarily defensive midfielders ideally those who are already playing in a similar system in their current place of employment and will be able to slot into Manchester United’s hole in midfield with minimum fuss.

Now, these players could be defensive in their very nature or could be strongly defensive because of the responsibilities they are tasked with carrying out on the pitch. However, in part I, we are essentially just dipping our feet into the pool before swimming to the depths of the ocean.

So, the numbers are all from Wyscout and since there is a limit to the number of players that can be extracted in one go, I had to be a little crafty with my filters. Another thing to keep in mind for me was also the eligibility of these players to sign for Manchester United and come to England. Which is also the reason why I will not be proposing that Manchester United sign an obscure 17 year old who will come at a bargain price with a high ceiling. Who we are looking for is someone like Bruno Fernandes who can come in and bridge the gap that is so desperately evident in the team.

So, my first filter was the player’s transfer value (According to Transfermarkt), where I’ve taken in players with a minimum value of 2 million euros. Now bear in mind that these are players from all around the world, so naturally, I had to be a little tricky in narrowing in mind. And to do that, I felt the transfer value of a player would be the best way to go about it, or rather, the simplest.

Another was the age bracket. Although we are including players from 17 and above, our age cap is 27. So all players are between the age of 17 and 27. And of course, in terms of minutes played, at least 900 minutes have to be played spread across a minimum of 10 matches.

Wyscout usually includes all the player data from the season so if they’ve played international competitions, those numbers are also factored into the calculation, it’s a little annoying, but I’m hoping that in the grander scale of things, it doesn’t disturb our search for Manchester United’s next no.6.

Defensive actions profiling

When it comes to defensive midfielders, the very first thing that you want them to be good at is defending(duh!).

So with that in mind, the very first visualization here is a simple scatter-plot depicting defensive actions in terms of possession-adjusted defensive actions against aerial duels won%.

Now, I know this is a very noisy viz but some of the usual suspects are all present here.

Ibrahim Sangare, Edson Alvarez, Wilfred Ndidi are all names that have been linked with United in the past.

The Athletic’s Carl Anka wrote about Ndidi, Renato Tapia, and a few others in his excellent piece which identified players who were then split into different categories.

Now, let’s adjust a little bit further for transfer value and bump the minimum value up to 4 million euros and see how things change.

This is a little better, not the finished viz. But better, right? We are starting to see more recognizable names, Mohamed Camara of Salzburg was another who featured on Carl’s piece, who is a positive outlier in terms of his defensive actions whilst not being terrible at winning his aerial duels.

The reason we are also considering aerial duels win% here is that sometimes these players will also be required to deal with long-balls played in behind United’s high defensive line and winning the first ball then is key, as much as it is key to retain the ball in the follow-up.

Now when it comes to Manchester United the profile of the player is important in considering the possibility of their transfer. I’m not talking about their profile on the pitch, but also off of it.

This player needs to be of a certain standard and has to be well-known. If their recent pursuits of Jadon Sancho and Erling Haland are anything to go by, it is as much about their suitability on the pitch as it is about their suitability off the pitch with regards to their commercial value.

So with that in mind, there are certain clubs that United will not turn to for negotiating, which I will now filter for before showing you the final defensive profile viz.

(Quick glance at the teams I filtered out — Club America, Athletico Paranense, Augsburg, Banfield, Barnsley, Birmingham City, Bournemouth Brentford, Brondby, Columbus Crew, Cruz Azul, Dinamo Moskva, Dynamo Kyiv, Famalicao, FCS Bucuresti, Fenerbahce, Flamengo, amongst several others, you get the idea.)

If you’ll indulge another little filter, I think I’ll stick to players who are 25 and under and also not playing in the Premier League. Ideally, whoever comes in, has to come free of Premier League tax.

This is much more concise than the very first one, I see some very realistic options here, who we might consider.

Great, now that we’ve sorted for defensive actions, let me point out a few of the names that stand out.

Renato Tapia and Azor Matusiwa of Groningen are massive outliers for the number of their defensive actions and the duels that they win. So is Alvarez from Ajax.

A bit further to the left of Alvarez is Joao Palhinha of Sporting CP, who is another interesting prospect. Keeping him close company is Sangare from PSV and Bruno Heynen of Genk, as well as Manuel Locatelli, who is just below Sangare.

The likes of Martin Zubimendi and Aurélien Tchouaméni also feature here close to Uros Racic of Valencia, who was also a reported United target at one point.

Don’t worry, Teun Koopmeiners is here as well, you’ll see a lot more of him in the rest of the vizzes.

This brings us to the next section, ball progression —

Ball progression profile

Now in terms of ball progression, in recent years, United have been over-reliant on the likes of Pogba and more recently on Bruno Fernandes for ball progression from midfield.

The likes of Luke Shaw and Harry Maguire have done their best to compensate for the lack of progression from Fred and McTominay, but ideally, we’d like the progression to come from midfielders.

Ball progression here is measured essentially in two ways, either from carries (progressive runs) or just by passing (progressive passes).

What I’ve plotted is the accuracy of progressive passes against progressive runs per 90.

The color gradient represents no. of passes received per90, this is important for context because you’d imagine that a player in United’s system in this particular role would see a lot of the ball and would receive it to distribute the ball to all areas of the pitch.

Now as much as I’d like to tell you that United would sign the likes of Frenkie De Jong, Houssem Aouar, Federico Valverde et al, there are some players here that I simply don’t deem as realistic transfers. For one thing, some of these players are far too important to their respective clubs and are happy in their current situation to envisage a move to Old Trafford.

So let’s filter them out.

This is a little bit neater and when you take this viz and our final defensive actions graph, you can contextualize a few of the players’ numbers a bit better.

For example, Renato Tapia is someone who came as someone very strong in terms of the volume and impact of his defensive actions in the piece from the Athletic, however, he is found lacking in shot production and key offensive indicators.

Ryan Gravenberch stands out, so does Gaetano Castrovilli of Fiorentina and Renato Sanches of Lille. The likes of Locatelli and Caqueret feature highly here as well as they are positive outliers for ball progression through passing. French international Eduardo Camavinga can also be seen as a positive here on this viz.

Engagement in duels per90

The next thing we are looking at is gaining a broader understanding of the kind of duels that all of these players most often engage in. The meanings of offensive duels and defensive duels can be easily accessed from the Wyscout glossary from a quick Google search, so I won’t go too much into depth on that.

Now if I look at offensive duels vs defensive duels engaged in, per 90. I think it gives us a better picture of the type of player we are looking for.

Camavinga is an excellent outlier here because not only is he an absolute gem, but he also offers so much in all aspects of midfield, which is why he’s a comfortable presence on the final shortlist of this piece.

Joao Palhinha of Sporting is most impressive when it comes to his defensive numbers, which are better than most across Europe by a great margin.

The likes of Martin Zubimendi and Teun Koopmeiners here might not seem so great, but the numbers have to be taken into context. These players are tasked with certain tasks on the pitch, and whilst they are each greatly important to their teams, they are no lesser than any of the player names.

Let me try to filter a few of the names a bit further here.

This is better.

Camara, Sangare, Caqueret, Yangel Herrera, Tchouameni and Niklas Dorsch of Genk all stand out here. They engage in quite a lot of duels and consequently also attempt greater number of offensive/defensive actions.

Breaking down the final shortlist

This is sort of what the final list looks like.

1. Joao Palhinha
2. Martin Zubimendi
3. Julian Weigl
4. Uros Racic
5. Edson Alvarez
6. Xaver Schlager
7. Maxence Caqueret
8. Nicklas Dorsch

These players I see as realistic transfers and Palhinha more than most. There is still the matter of identifying whether these players are of the right profile for Manchester United’s system, and whether they can seamelessly fit into that midfield which needs supporting.

At this point, I am left feeling a tiny bit confident that some of these players could definitely be the right for United. I could be wrong of course, but that’s all just part of the learning curve for me.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for taking the time and reading this. This is the first time I’m publishing such a piece and I’m really looking forward to hearing any and all feedback on this, on my methodologies, on my assumptions, everything.

Hope you’ve found some of my picks sensible and those should make part II for an interesting read.

Until then, take care, be well and stay safe.