How Manchester United Will Play Under Ralf Rangnick

Right then, it's been an absolute whirlwind 24 hours as the news breaks that Ralph Ragnick is about to become the interim manager of Manchester United with a two-year consultancy tagged on to the back end of it as Manchester United try and find a permanent solution to our managerial vacancy. Ralph Ragnick's a very, very interesting character. It's a character that's got experience in building clubs. He's considered a pioneer of Gagan Pressing. I think it'd be unfair to label him the inventor of Gagan Pressing, but you're probably going to see a lot of that over the next few weeks. He's got a lot of influences himself. He's got a lot of experience without actually having that top, top level experience. And I don't think it matters as an interim appointment. I think the appointment of Ralph Ragnick was the one I wanted for starters. I think it's an appointment that makes so much sense. The pressure's off on him in terms of he doesn't necessarily need to deliver any trophies coming in the way that he's coming in. Every single thing that he wins would be a bonus. And he's got the opportunity to sort of have a hand in reshaping Manchester United for the new era. Now, there's a lot to learn about who Ralph Ragnick is as a man, what he delivers in terms of his coaching philosophy, and how he's going to set Manchester United up. And I'm going to try and cover all of those things today. So you have to go and look at what he bases everything around. And Ralph Ragnick has got something that he calls the three Cs, which are the central tenets of his sort of coaching philosophy, or how to run a club. Those three Cs are firstly, concept. You have to have a specific DNA. Now, there's probably some people getting flashbacks there to the way people have spoken about Manchester United in the last seven or eight years. But he talks about having a specific DNA right the way throughout the club. He doesn't actually nail what that is. He just says you have to have one. You have to have a style of football that is of a consistent orientation with high recognition value. Now, I have my own opinions on that. And a lot of other people have their own opinions on that. But this is what Ralph Ragnick likes. He likes high recognition value, a real corporate style identity that goes right the way throughout the club that players, coaches and even fans can point to and can recognise. And I think there's a line from him that says something along the lines of even when we're playing badly, we should be able to recognise our style of play, which is interesting. That's what he's about. The second C is competence and incompetence. He talks about having the best possible people for the jobs, identifying and recruiting people that can come on a journey with you. They might not necessarily be the absolute best when you hire them, but people that you can develop and promote from within. And you're constantly benchmarking them against the leaders in the world in whatever field that they're in. And that can be players, that can be coaching staff, that can be scouting, that can be doctors, that can be anything. And so competence or concept, what are we going to do? How are we going to play? Competence, are we getting the right people in to facilitate that? And then the final one, capital and cash, is the final C. And he says cash is a limiting success factor. It has to be taken care of and if you look after the competence and the concept, then your capital goes up. It's quite a simple premise for the three Cs, but that sort of lays out where his thinking comes. Quite a logical kind of manager. He obviously thinks deeply about the game, has crazy ideas that he'll get up at midnight and need to talk to someone about, but that's his sort of central tenets. Ragnick also has another major part of his philosophy, which is the five areas that he thinks are important when it comes to winning a football match. Well, as I said, it's about controlling the game. And in fact, we have five different situations in football in the meantime, that in the end decide football games. What happens if we have the ball ourselves? How do we play against defensive teams, against teams that maybe attack high or try to press us? So you need to have, as a coach, a very clear idea of how do we want to play if we have the ball ourselves? Number two is, what do we want to do if the other team has got the ball? What kind of information, match plan, game plan do I give my players when the other team has got the ball? Our idea is clear. It's very, very similar to my, I would almost say, coaching friend, Jürgen Klopp. Our football, our Red Bull football is heavy metal, rock and roll, and it's not slow waltz, you know, if I mean. We hate square passes, back passes. Just having the ball ourselves as La Pulla doesn't make sense. And then we have the two situations of transition, what happens in the very moment when we lose the ball and what happens in the very moment when we win the ball. This is number three and number four. And then, of course, you have the set pieces, also highly important. We're going to obviously talk a little bit about pressing and we're going to talk about some of the stuff that he's got. So if we go into the concept then, style of football with a consistent orientation, high recognition value. Well, what is that? Well, it isn't a formation. So when asked about a formation, Ralph says formations are not relevant. Formation is only the steering wheel or the tool. But I do want to play possessional or do I want to play transitional or possessional football? More important is how we play. The formation is not relevant. And I really like this line, the 11 best players in their own best position. I really like that line. I think that shows that he's adaptable. And there's a bit of an anecdote here. So we're talking about his time at Salzburg and Hoffenheim. Hoffenheim, he had a 4-4-2. They were successful with a 4-4-2. One of the strikers that he had was Demba Ba. Ibasovic was the other one. And they had a third forward, Chinedu, who came in. Chinedu was of the same sort of level as Demba Ba and Ibasovic. So he adapted the formation from being a 4-4-2, which they'd stuck to for a serious amount of time. They just transitioned it to a 4-3-3. So he's not necessarily tied into a formation. And the same with what he did at Salzburg. He said, we decided on a formation in Germany and that in Germany and Austria, no other team had played. 4-3-2, a back four, two number sixes, although one was more like an eight, two number tens and two strikers. But he goes, well, who's the number tens in this? Actually, it was Manny and Campbell that he used to play in the 10 sort of role. So I actually think looking at Manchester United, that might be something that United could really do. He said, Manny and Campbell didn't play on the wing. They played in what he called a semi position or the red zone. So I think if we looked at some of the formations that were possible, I actually think the 4-3-2 or the 4-3-3 is probably going to be what he lines up in. Throughout his career, he has obviously played multiple different formations as he touched on He's tampered with a back three, which he's done previously. And he gets a lot of his own inspiration from Arrigo Sacchi, who dominated Europe back in the late 80s with that fantastic AC Milan side. Space-orientated defending. I say a lot, control the space, control the game. He has ball-orientated defending, which is talking about ball possession and positioning in such a way that you're in perfect position to defend as and when you win the ball back. A little bit more like pressing. And it led him to pioneer Gagan pressing that is popular today, or be a pioneer of that. He obviously witnessed it playing in a friendly against Dynamo Kiev in 1984. Felt it and then started going sneaking off and watching Dynamo Kiev training sessions with a notepad trying to figure out what they were doing. The pressing and winning the ball back within eight seconds of losing it is something that he's looked at when goals are scored, how goals are scored. And it's actually a fantastic book called Das Reboot from Raphael Honigstein, where he goes into real detail about both of those sorts of concepts. Those concepts really helped shape German football over the last 20 years, let alone what Ragnik himself has been doing. But pressing and winning the ball back within eight seconds of losing it and trying to score within 10 seconds of a counter attack, both come from literally looking at the data of when goals are scored and when the best opportunity to counter an attacker team is. It's literally based on those sorts of things. So he trains on those sorts of things. Defensively, in a 4-3-3, he likes to make sure that the two outside midfielders, probably two eights or an eight and a ten, they go on to the deep-lying playmakers of an opposition and they press, giving you numerical advantage. And it's not just one, usually he goes with multiple, especially coming from a blind side. And it's risky and they have been caught out in the past. There's some examples of the Salzburg team and the Leipzig teams pressing in a 4-2-4, really going ham with a real high front line, but they're losing ground and giving up opportunities on the wings into the little house bases. I think that the 4-3-2 weakness is that, and I think the 4-3-3's strength is actually covering up for that a little bit. Wide men get to creep onto the full backs and those wide midfielders can probably pick one side and leave the other side out of there, especially if someone drifts off into that space. Always the back line pushes up high. He likes using square passes across the face of goal or between two midfielders, the ones that you'll see Freddie McTominay doing all the time, as a trigger for when the wing goes narrow in and when they start to press on the opposite side of the opposition. If they start circulating the across the back line, that's when they're going to try and pincer in and cut them off doing that, because it's quite a slow pass. No one usually fires it in from centre half to centre half. All of Ragnick's teams have been deadly on the counter and they attack very, very well in transition, and obviously that's not just countering from our own half. Obviously, with Geoghegan pressing, there's a lot of countering that goes on already in the opposition final third. Principles that very much fit the personnel of a lot of Manchester United's team at the moment. Ragnick's also said that he wants his teams to be able to attack in no longer than 10 seconds after they've won the ball back. That means getting a shot off, especially if you win it high up the pitch. He identified that that's where the probability of scoring starts to taper off, and therefore the first pass, and actually when you listen to Ragnick talking about what his style of play is, everything is about verticality. He at one point banned back passes to the goalkeeper, at one point he's banned sideways and backwards passes when they're doing training drills. I think he's an absolutely fascinating kind of character, and the fact that he loves speed, and the heavy metal football of Jurgen Klopp came through Klopp being beaten by Hoffenheim, and Klopp essentially trying to replicate what he did, and then a few years later he obviously won the league with Borussia Dortmund. But the pace and mobility in your starting 11, and all your team, it matters. You can't have passengers. Pace and speed, defensively and offensively. He's a coach that loves transitional play. Transitioning from having the ball to losing the ball, what do you do? How do you recover it? And transitioning from winning the ball, what do you now do to go and affect it? You're going to need legs, and one player that I think is going to absolutely thrive under Ralph Ragnick is Fred. I think his role's going to change. I think we saw a precursor of that on Tuesday, where he played as a number eight, and I thought he was actually very good. Ragnick's going to have players at his disposal to become a force going forward, and in the counter if he gets players to buy in. Defensively, because people forget defending well, and attacking actually really do go hand in hand. Fullback's going to need to be on the front foot, and we've all seen his quotes about Luke Shaw, so it's going to be interesting. You might get the best out of Luke Shaw now by challenging him like this, but fullback's going to have to be on the front foot and create and have attacking ability, which makes me worry a little bit for Wan-Bissaka, because the philosophy is all based around numerical overloads. Can he find a 2v1? Can he find a 3v5 or 5v3? Can he find anywhere that he can where he can overload the opposition in a certain area, and the way that you do that when it's 10 outfielders versus 10 outfielders is just to work on paper stylistically. You think you would prefer Cavani over Ronaldo as a starting forward, but it's not necessarily about Ronaldo pressing. This is one of the most asked questions that I've had last night and this morning is, how does Ronaldo fit into this system with a pressing system? Now it can fall to pieces as you saw if you watched PSG versus City, if you have three forwards that are just walking around, not doing ----. Now Ronaldo's a disciplined player, and he's a disciplined individual. You don't get the sort of physique alone that he's got if you're not disciplined, and he's a disciplined footballer in the sense that he will do what the team is asking for him, but you have to manage what he's going to do. He's not going to tear arse around the pitch like Tevez. It's not in his personality for one, and I just don't think that's in his makeup full stop, but there is a way for him to still be effective in a team that presses. Now it's going to depend on how you line up, but when you line up a team that presses, one of the things that happens when you press, it's not necessarily always about running 20, 25 meters, chasing somebody down, and putting them under pressure that way. You can have somebody under pressure by, let's say Ronaldo play, let's say they play a 4-triple-2, right, so here's the scene. This could be an 11 at United play, midfield upwards, let's say it's Freddie McTominay, it probably is going to be lads, just relax. Let's say they're two red zone players, it's Bruno and Sancho, two creative players that are progressive, they move the ball up the pitch. Both of them have got crossing ability, which he does love by the way, so get used to seeing some more crosses from United, which will massively favour Cristiano Ronaldo. These two guys narrow in, but then they also flare out when it comes to a press, and also when it comes to goal scoring opportunities, but you know, by and large it's like they sort of operate sort of in the half space, rather than fully in the wing, and then up front you might see Cavani and Ronaldo, you might see Rashford and Ronaldo, but it's probably going to be Ronaldo for political reasons. Now let's just say Ronaldo lines up on the left side of this attack here, right, well you put Ronaldo on the right side of position centre half, or the left side as we look at it, you don't need to press him if he's already in position. If Ronaldo stands on top of that left side or right side centre half, depending on which way you're looking at it, as we're looking at it, the left side centre half, because Ronaldo loves operating in that channel. If Ronaldo operates where whenever United lose the ball, he just moves closer to that centre half. You as an opposition, as you regain possession, you pass it around the back, you look up, you see Cristiano Ronaldo marking your right centre half, you go, well I'm not passing it him, I'm going to pass it this way, job done. It's literally as simple as that. Now we're talking about like Ronaldo needs a zimmer frame to cut around the pitch, it's just not the case is it? If you give Ronaldo a job and say, when we lose the ball, go and stand over to him. You don't necessarily need him pressing like an absolute whizzed up Tevez, you can just have him just go mark somebody and that would be it. I think the 4-3-2 is something that we could definitely utilise, and I think we can get the best out of people with it. If he goes with the 4-3-3, I think it could look a lot like what we saw the other night. I think it'd probably be Bruno in over Donny van de Beek, I definitely think it'll be Fred, and if Michael Carrick's confident in turning McTominay into this number six that he seems intent on doing, it could be him or Matic that operate in that area. It might also be Donny van de Beek depending on how we want to utilise the number six. With Manchester United at the moment, the way we drop off and the way we have gaps just created across the centre of the pitch because our line has to drop off to cover up for the pace or lack of in Harry Maguire, you see our midfield exposed constantly. Whereas if we played a much tighter pressing game, we were a lot more compact and we were always just on and around the halfway line, the gaps in the middle aren't as obvious and maybe not utilising Fred in that area but utilising Donny in that area might actually become an option for United, someone that's able to play the ball forward. That might be where Donny van de Beek gets to come into this. The only important thing in the way United are going to set up is, it's got to be Jadon Sancho on the right hand side for a hundred different reasons. He's also used to pressing football so that's going to be a massive help to him. Anyone that's played in Germany is going to be a big help to Rangnick in this front, especially Dortmund. I think it'll be Rashford on the left and that's why I think Bruno has to adapt his position a little bit and become a number eight. A lot of the pressing that you see from Leipzig and other teams, you've seen them doing it in a 4-4-2 or a 4-2-4. That suits the sort of positions that we've seen Bruno take up but I think to get the correct sort of progression in our play, I think we have to switch to a strict 4-3-3 and that might be why he sat out the other night in the Champions League against Villarreal because Donny was going to actually put in that shift and if you look at the pass map from that night, it was a nice neat triangle of passes so I think that's an option. I also wouldn't completely rule out a 3-5-2, especially if he thinks defensively we're a little bit on the weak side because it will allow him to push the full backs up just that little bit further. It allows him to get a forward two in which might mitigate that Ronaldo isn't going to press like a madman but you can get someone in alongside him and you can also play a more possessive and progressive midfield because you've got three defenders already chilling behind you and it's sort of when you play a 3-5-2, what you've done is you've almost eliminated the requirement of having a number six because the number six is kind of already there and it's one of the defenders. Now when you've got a ball player like Varane and you actually have a ball player in Maguire, like it or not you do, you could then utilise the ball playing skills of both of those guys to be passing it into directly into more progressive midfielders rather than having to go through this mythical number six that we just simply don't have. You could play someone that's a bit more legs like a McTominay or a Fred and you can play someone then a little bit more possessive and progressive like a Donne or perhaps a Bruno alongside them and it wouldn't look as crazy and then I think you can obviously do whatever you need to in terms of attacking. A Bruno in the 10, a Sancho in the 10 which he could definitely play in. I mean there's a video coming out on the fan channel I did with Maran Panaiti where we're looking at how Sancho moves the ball up and here's a player that can play in the 10. Rashford can also play in the 10, doesn't play it often but played there a lot as a kid. So there's a lot of options and I think these are the three that you're going to see. I don't think it'll be a flat 4-4-2 and even if it was a flat 4-4-2 he kind of makes angled lines rather than the flat lines which were the major criticism of 4-4-2 as a formation. 4-3-2 is the one that I think we're most likely to see. After that he might just go with Old Faithful and try and go with a 4-3-3 but following that I actually think a 3-5-2 is not only plausible but actually quite likely for us to be able to go and do. But that's how I think United are going to line up, that's how I think United are going to play and look I'm very very excited to have Ralf Rangnick in as Manchester United manager. I think he's going to be a tremendous asset both for the next six months but if he's given the power the next two years with him as a consultant which let's be honest he's basically going to be auxiliary director of football we couldn't have asked for a better person. Happy days. Right then that is the end of today's video, cheers for tuning in make sure to subscribe if you're new around here I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below about this appointment whether you think it's a good one for United or not but I would like to also say a massive thank you to the coaches voice which is an excellent platform I've linked their video that they did with Ralf Rangnick which we was kindly allowed to show a little bit of a clip of earlier if you'd like to go and watch the full thing and I definitely suggest you do then you can check the link out for that earlier but also I think it's well worth becoming a full member of the coaches voice they've got an hour-long seminar coaches voice live that they did with Ralf Rangnick last year where he goes into some serious depth about what he likes to do as a coach and how he likes to build a club and I think it's definitely worth your time so you can check out the YouTube video below but you can also sign up for the coaches voice below as well. Oh and before I go just a little bit of an afterthought, Sunday I did let everybody in the Patreon group know that Ralf Rangnick was Manchester United's preferred choice for this role so if you want to get inside on the info like that any info that I can get I do manage to put it in there there hasn't been a lot admittedly but maybe there'll be a bit more if there's some movements going on in January or possibly about the permanent manager so if you'd like to support the channel get a little bit of extra inside info as and when I get it it's not it's not guaranteed but when I do get it I do put it in there but also we have got some extra content coming out we have got a brand new show which is only going to exist on Patreon which I'm not even going to tell you about publicly I'm only going to tell the Patreons about we are bringing the rundown back which is going to be back on the 4th of December there's going to be the pizza club returning probably the last week before Christmas with myself and Ben and also a Q&A that we'll be doing just for you guys as well so if you'd like to support the channel and you'd like to get extra content and maybe a little bit of an inside scoop every now and then as well then check the link in the description it's a pound a week or think of it as buying as a pint for all the free content that you get on YouTube. 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