The Premier League Rewatch: Manchester Derby Data & Tactical Analysis

How Manchester United pulled off a late stunner at the Etihad

Exhale. What a final 10 minutes of the Manchester Derby. A match that looked completely dead for 85 minutes, turned on it’s head with Manchester United scoring two late goals to grab all three points.

Let’s first start with how each team lined up:

image via FotMob

A couple of the notable absences from Manchester United’s team sheet was Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho. Both weren’t even in the squad and Amorim wasn’t shy about the reasons why.

image via Fabrizio Romano on X

Really what he is saying is he’s tired of having a lot of passengers out of possession. Amorim is a big believer in his man to man high press, but Rashford and Garnacho are not great at leading or pressing from the front and he’d had enough.

For Manchester City, since Stones, Ake, and Akanji weren’t fit enough to start, they were left with a makeshift back three. Nunes had to play alongside İlkay Gündoğan, so not a lot of ball winning in the middle for City.

Manchester United Out of Possession

Manchester United dropped into a 5-3-2 early on when City entered the final third to avoid City getting a 5 man overload on the last line of defense. As you can see below, Manchester United did a fantastic job of closing off Manchester City from playing through the middle of the pitch.

One of the big criticisms of Manchester United for a long time has been their press, but against Manchester City, I thought it was quite good. They went man to man, forcing the ball into wide areas, and then forcing City into long balls up the pitch, and the center backs did a great job of stepping up and winning those duels.

Let’s give a lot of credit to Harry Maguire who was especially good at marking Haaland 1 v 1. For the match, Haaland was held to just one shot and one touch inside the penalty area. If it weren’t for Amed Diallo, Maguire would have been the man of the match.

Manchester City really couldn’t find a way through the middle of the pitch and outside of Doku beating the fullback in 1 v 1s, Manchester City didn’t create much overall for the match.

Manchester United Defending Set Pieces

As you can see below, because United did an outstanding job closing off the middle of the pitch, City basically did nothing from open play.

image via FotMob

However, one of the big weaknesses of Manchester United this season has been defending set pieces. Per the Analyst, Manchester United has allowed the third most expected goals on set pieces. So, it’s no surprise that City’s best chance based on xG and their lone goal came off the result of a corner.

Manchester City in Possession

As always, Pep was trying to find a way through the middle of the pitch, but they didn’t find any success. As you can see from the pass map below, they completed a lot of passes, but for the match, they only had an xThreat of 1.06. On top of that, Manchester City had 56 entries in Manchester United’s final third with only 10 of them turning into box entries.

image via markstatsbot on X

One of the things that was pretty noticeable in the match was Pep trying to get Doku in more of a central position. There were times when he dropped into the right half space during build up and even in this instance below receiving the ball from Foden and almost was able to get Haaland through on goal.

Many people have been talking about using someone like Grealish in a more central position given his ability on the ball, but moving Doku centrally could add a new wrinkle for opponents to deal with.

Sidebar: Is Manchester City too reliant on Haaland?

One question mark for me early on this season was is City too reliant on Haaland to be their main goal scoring threat? Of course he’s the best striker on the planet so why wouldn’t you feed him the ball. However, in situations like this when he’s quite literally being taken out of the match, do you have someone else who can provide that goal scoring threat?

Last season that was Julian Alvarez and Phil Foden. Alaverz was sold to Atletico Madrid and City didn’t purchase a secondary striker. Foden had an incredible season in 2023-24, but we all know he drastically overperformed his xG scoring 19 goals off of 10.3 expected. This season you are starting to see some of the effects of what negative regression looks like. Suddenly those low quality shots from outside the box aren’t going in and as a result he’s without a goal in the Premier League.

We are almost half way through the season and nobody outside Haaland has created more than three expected goals. That begs the question, if teams focus on taking Haaland out of the match (very hard thing to do) does Manchester City have enough fire power elsewhere to threaten their opponents?

image via fbref.com

Manchester City out of Possession

Can we be honest for a minute? I thought Manchester City were actually quite good for stretches out of possession in this match. They were very cautious with their pressing almost playing more of a high block that going full on man to man press at times.

As Jon Mackenzie noticed, as the match went on, Pep changed his marking responsibilities so that Nunes wouldn’t have to come up and press high, which would leave Diallo and Hojlund in 1 v 1 situations.

City sat in that 4-3-3 midblock quite often in the match it actually was quite effective for the first 70 minutes.

In the end people are going to see Manchester City giving up over two expected goals again, but this structure really stifled Manchester United for most of the match. The wheels came off at the end, but more on that later.

Manchester United in Possession

Manchester United was struggling to create chances for most of the match. They did have success progressing the ball in wide areas by baiting Manchester City’s fullbacks into pressing high.

Ugarte and Mainoo were staggering their positions centrally with Mainoo being level with Mazraoui so that there was an easy ball back centrally to allow United to progress the ball up the pitch.

As Dharnish points out, decision making has been a weakness of United in their attack, but you are starting to see signs of what the Amorim system can be.

While wide progression is great, let’s talk about one thing Manchester United did not do well.

They are playing from behind in the second half and struggling to play short passes through City’s block. They very rarely tried to play balls over the top of City’s high line until the very end of the match. A lot of teams have had success with these balls over the top, so it puzzles me why it took until the 63rd minute for United to starting trying it.

To their credit, Manchester City did a great job closing off anything centrally and for the first 70 minutes of the match. Manchester United took five shots with a total xG of 0.22.

image via fbref.com

Manchester City Choking Away the Match

So what changed to allow Manchester United to pull off the incredible comeback to win the derby? Matheus Nunes.

The problem with City coming into the match was their injury situation. Without Stones, Akanji, and Ake Pep was forced to play a back three and Nunes was tasked with providing width in buildup. His errant back pass and then foul gave away the penalty.

What was even worse was his defending on the second goal. He tries to pass Diallo off, but it’s too late and Diallo gets through. To top it all off, he doesn’t hustle back and could have had a chance to save the ball off the line.

Conclusion

Manchester United secures all three points in the end and Manchester City still has a lot of problems out of possession. With that being said, Manchester United didn’t exploit for a majority of the match.

United baited City into pressing multiple times and couldn’t quite play through them. They also weren’t able to take advantage of City’s high line until the final 15 minutes of the match.

There are signs that Amorim’s system is eventually going to work. Leaving Rashford and Garnacho out of the squad was a big decision that I think we can comfortably say paid off given how good Manchester United was out of possession in this match.

Manchester City now has a tough road trip to Villa Park for a lunchtime kick off with Aston Villa, but United may have it worse having to play Tottenham on Thursday in the EFL Cup and then high flying Bournemouth on Sunday.

Let me know in the comments or on my Twitter @BJCunningham22 if you enjoyed this or things you would like me to change. Thank you for reading and to all of you who have supported my substack so far.