In a difficult season for Manchester United, the Scot is becoming a certainty.
Just before half-time of the Manchester derby, Rashford receives open just beyond the halfway line. With a first-time left-footed shot he sends the ball straight towards the City area; to attack the line of Citizens there are three players, two in the central area: Rasmus Højlund and Scott McTominay. Rashford’s ball goes to the latter, who controls with his chest, keeps Kyle Walker behind him, drops the ball in front of his left foot and, in counter-ball, strikes with his right foot just inside the area. The Scot’s shot comes out strong, destined to graze the inside of the crossbar, but an extraordinary save with Ederson’s calling hand chokes Old Trafford’s cry in the throat.
The Scot’s execution is decidedly extemporaneous, although the cleanliness with which the shot is constructed suggests that his fundamentals are less terrible than we are used to telling ourselves. Given how the derby progressed, McTominay’s finish could have been a small turning point, given that at that moment the match was still at 0-1. Ederson’s save, which is undoubtedly extraordinary, perhaps would have been superfluous: perhaps that shot would have gone out or would have smashed the crossbar; however, it is difficult not to stop for a moment and enjoy all this action, in which everything is beautiful: how McTominay attacks the line; how he uses his body to protect himself from the return of his opponent; how he controls the ball; how he kicks. Perhaps it is also nice that all this is associated with a player whose technical means have always been considered poor to say the least.
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That deep cut attacking the line is not a coincidence: It’s not the first time ten Hag has asked McTominay to occupy the area in possession and it is not the first time that this choice has brought results: the Scot, a week before the derby, had scored against Sheffield United with a similar but less technically clean execution, with the ball entering after bouncing on the ground and taking a trajectory shaky that seemed to be the result of some deviation. A week earlier still, with an even more difficult execution than these two he had scored the first of the two goals with which he had turned the match against Brentfordall after coming on with 5 minutes left.
Considering that, throughout his career, McTominay has been framed as a player allergic to goals – and after all, his 15 goals in 151 Premier League games justify it – How is it possible that, in the last 9 months, he has managed to score 9 between Manchester United and the national team? The idea that this could be a simple coincidence has its foundation but there is no doubt that his role was constructed with great care by both ten Hag and his coach Steve Clarke. McTominay took the starting place at United by taking advantage of the absences of his teammates – Mount, van de Beek, Eriksen, Sancho and Antony, as well as the sale of Fred – but he did so in a profoundly different way compared to previous years.
In Solskjær’s last season, the Scotsman was often placed in a two-man midfield with Fred, in which his tasks in terms of ball circulation were excessive – especially in management, where he suffers from a lack of technical sensitivity in tight spaces – and inserted into a dysfunctional team in possession, clinging to the individual resolutions of players like Bruno Fernandes and not to an organic playing system.
Today the situation is significantly different: despite the technical-tactical difficulties it is experiencing, United 2023/24 has a clearer identity. It is no coincidence that McTominay’s role has been reduced, both in terms of presence on the pitch and tasks. Throughout last season, the Scot was Casemiro’s first substitution, taking over the duties of covering the last line and closing the passing lines thanks to his extraordinary aerobic abilities and his readings without the ball. Obviously, the comparison between the quality with which these two play the role does not even exist, and perhaps this is also why, in the end, the role of the Scotsman was further rethought.
This season, McTominay made his debut as a starter in mid-September, in the 3-1 defeat against Brighton. The novelty compared to the practice of previous seasons is represented precisely by his position on the pitch: thanks to the absences of Mount and Amrabat, the Scotsman actually played together with Casemiro and not in his placehaving a freer role vertically, often coming out under pressure on the full-back, Tariq Lamptey, rather than blindly going into the ball area.
Around the 15th minute, McTominay recovers a ball on Brighton’s construction and immediately connects closely with Bruno Fernandes, looking for Hojlund vertically. The verticalization, one might say obviously, fails but the play that precedes it is not random and, on the contrary, it is the result of pressure applied in an intelligent waysomething that for McTominay was essentially unthinkable during Mourinho or Solskjaer’s management.
In short, the match against Brighton already shows us a new McTominay, who follows the flow of the game in possession and tries to always be at the height where the ball is, whether in his own half of the pitch or the opponent’s. The technical means have never really improved compared to two years ago but it is clear that this context can only help him, simplifying his plays with the ball and enhancing his dynamism. Now the Scotsman is asked to touch the ball less and move more without it; His contribution, despite having statistically worsened compared to two years ago – he makes a third of the ball touches and has fewer successful passes, fewer interceptions and fewer duels won – has improved in functionality and in the way in which he enhances what he can do.
The first quality that was highlighted is that of the insertions without the ball: McTominay not only moves so muchbut it often does too bene; in all the occasions created with Manchester United not only was he often found in the area on crosses or passes cutback of companions, but he also found himself able to read well the trajectories dirtied by his teammates and opponents. For example, again in the match against Brighton, he is the one who attacks the small area following a cross from Dalot; the ball then reached Rashford at the edge but the Scot’s movement was not accidental.
What was only glimpsed in Manchester United for a few weeks has been a consolidated reality for months in Scotland. In the first goal he scored in the match against Cyprus – his 6th in 5 qualifying matches for Euro2024 – McTominay looks for the far post on a cross from the left almost by convention, but also has the sensitivity to climb behind the two defenders and modulate his pace not so much on the strength of Robertson’s cross, but on the spark he expects from his teammate Dykes.
If we also wanted to include this movement in the field of chance, we can then look at his first goal against Spain: McTominay understands right away – he is both quick to react and good at predicting it – that Robertson’s high recovery is dangerous and he cuts into the box to receive the cutback and throw it into the goal with his left foot. The movement may not have been studied to perfection but the fact that, 40 minutes later, he is still the one to score, sending a cross towards goal that was cleared by David García with a left-footed volley, perhaps he tells us that that reading is truly his.
In the Euro2024 qualifiers, McTominay, as we said, scored 6 times in 6 games – curiously, 4 of these with his weak foot – with an average of a goal every 79 minutes played and 2.3 shots attempted. If we read these numbers associated with Haaland they would seem perfectly natural to us – and, moreover, in the qualifying groups both Haaland and Mbappé scored the same goals as him, despite shooting much more – but so they seem inconceivable to us, especially considering further that, before these matches, McTominay was even deployed several times as a central defender.
The narrative associated with McTominay’s game is that of the working-class spirit britishtypical of those who would throw themselves into the fire for their companions and who would run kilometers even on hot coals. All his coaches, from Mourinho onwards, have praised his dedication, the way he trains and always makes himself available. In a historical moment in which United has continuous and recurring disciplinary problems – the latest was the case of Sancho, removed from the squad for training badly and reacting badly to an exclusion against Arsenal – the example of professionalism offered by McTominay is particularly useful for ten Hag, especially on a symbolic level.
In short, the Scot’s last few months have shown us something different: even in the games following those against Brighton, McTominay played as a midfielder in all respects, defending only forward and combining quickly with his teammates. In short, the tasks that now fall to McTominay can be remembered ideally the ones Lampard had in Chelsea or concretely those of Fellaini in Moyes’ Everton: an intense player, who can win duels up front and who, above all, he knows where he has to go when he doesn’t have the ball.
With this in mind, let’s take the brace scored against Brentford. McTominay came on in the 87th minute as agent of chaos of ten Hag, with Amrabat making room for him. We can understand the meaning behind this change in the fact that his first ball touch would have become the equalizer if Martial had not been offside. Probably not even ten Hag would have expected such an impact, however; in fact, at the third touch of the ball, McTominay recovers a dirty clearance from Collins, adjusts the ball with his body and, with his leg back on the ground, kicks a first-time shot into the bottom corner.
The execution is not at all trivial, nor in control – which it seems inconceivable for him, he seems decontextualized from an Ibrahimović compilation – nor in the way he adjusts to shoot, with a mechanics that seems incredibly natural: one stop-fire-control which would belong more to high-level centre-forwards than to a giant box-to-box Scottish who, before last spring, had about ten goals in his career. The brace came with his sixth touch: a header that was not perfect – Strakosha undoubtedly puts his talent into it – but attempted in the same place where, about ten minutes earlier, he had put the goal on target which was then disallowed. Maybe the goal is random in execution, but not in concept. Ironically, after the match McTominay reported that he had not understood any of the instructions received from his coach: «There was a lot of noise and I didn’t understand well. She probably said something like, ‘Go and score,’ and that’s what I did.”
The simplicity with which McTominay talks about his goals is almost comical, bearing in mind how little he had scored before the last few months. Behind his exploit, which perhaps will be totally extemporaneous, it is immediate to grasp the work done by Clarke and ten Hag to make him comfortable on the pitch but it is much less immediate to grasp his qualities: if the movements with which McTominay ends up finishing in the area they are studied and prepared in training, the way he builds and executes shots seems to be his quality and nothing else.
Scott McTominay probably won’t become anything extraordinary: he will fail to become a new Lampard and perhaps he will lose his starting place again when Mason Mount returns to fitness; However, we cannot help but notice at least his ambition to rebuild his credibility, to do so with a positive attitude and to have succeeded, at least for these months, in a big way. In a complex season like the one United is experiencing, this can also be considered a small success.
2023-11-01 15:00:00
#talk #Scott #McTominay
