Under Ralf Rangnick, Manchester United have strived to improve defensively and cut out the easy shots they had been allowing opponents before his appointment.
The Champions League fixture against Atletico Madrid was seemingly a game where they decided to take a night off in that regard, with a complete breakdown of the team's structure and communication leading to Joao Felix opening the scoring in the seventh minute for the Spanish side.
We decided to use images courtesy of WyScout to break down the goal and show just how United failed to prevent what was a perfectly executed move, but something they could have avoided
The set-up
Firstly this chance comes from United defending a corner, hence the number of bodies in the box. Victor Lindelof heads the ball away, but given the lack of a United player to receive it, Renan Lodi is able to collect it easily and turn back towards the box.
Here lies the first mistake. As the image shows, Fred runs out to engage his fellow Brazilian. What he should do here is pressure the left-back and try and win back possession, but instead, he seems to stand off him and allow the defender space to work with.
Lindelof starts to move out to cover the wide player as well, but he too stops short of committing.
By giving Lodi space, the defender moves past Fred and into a large amount of space just outside the box where he has two major options.
Firstly he could play the ball down the line and have Jose Maria Gimenez cross to one of the runners who have not been picked up by United or hope that one of Atletico's players already there gets their head on it.
However, the movement of Felix makes his mind up for him.
Felix, spotting the gap on the inside of Harry Maguire, runs away from Luke Shaw and around the centre-back.
Shaw is slow to react to Felix and Maguire is directly in the way of his straight line to the Portugal forward. Based on the images he seems to not tell his captain what is happening, further putting the centre-back on the back foot.
Maguire should be more switched on in this scenario and at least try to hinder the forward's run, but this is a split-second decision that would have been helped if Shaw had clearly informed him of the situation unfolding.
The result
Felix now is fully away. He is faster and more agile than Maguire so the defender is never going to catch him and now it's all up to Lodi to make the pass needed.
And, with the space and time that the Brazillian left-back had to work with, it was highly unlikely that he would make a mistake and the result is what everyone feared. An early goal for Atletico, which allowed them to sit back and play the way they usually do in these fixtures - making the most of Diego Simeone's 'dark arts'.
Luckily Anthony Elanga was there to save the day capitalising on a defensive error by Gimenez and some limp goalkeeping by Jan Oblak, but if United are to succeed in the return leg they will need to make sure they are not giving up easy goals to a team that traditionally are very hard to beat once they are in front.
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