The Art of the Counter-Attack - Part II

The challenges of playing against a team that counter-attacks as well as Manchester United does is that it exposes holes in a sides defense.

The game becomes a form of 'chicken', with the opposing team having to choose the lesser of two evils - do you absorb the opposing team's counter-attack with numbers behind the ball, or do you step up higher to press them - exposing yourself to potential counters?


David Pleat of the Guardian writes about how Arsenal was exposed by Manchester United's counter-attack:

It was Nasri's job to attack United's right-back Rafael in the early minutes. Wenger would have thought the young Brazilian could be tested following his suspect showings against Manchester City in the Carling Cup. Instead, however, United countered this tactic by taking advantage when possession changed hands. Nani attacked Gaël Clichy with sprightly running in the other direction and, having scored the first, it was his brilliant counter-attack that led to United's second goal, through Rooney. Before this, Ferguson had also reorganised his midfield with Michael Carrick and Paul Scholes swapping positions. This caused Arsenal further problems as Carrick did a better job than Scholes in protecting the space around Arshavin, who had already wasted a couple of scoring options and was not enjoying the attentions of Wes Brown and Jonny Evans. The Russian needed more support if Arsenal were going to recover from being 2-0 down but Wenger clearly did not want to further expose his midfield to more United counter-attacks by bringing on a second striker. So, going into the second-half, he kept his side in the same shape and hoped for the best.

Did it succeed?

No. United simply sat on their lead and whenever Arsenal pushed on in a bid to get back in the game, they broke enterprisingly with the pace of Rooney and Nani and the energy of Park. It was the Korean who got United's third after Arsenal had been caught out by a classic up-back-through one-touch sequence involving Carrick, Rooney, Carrick again and then finally Park.

Arsenal has also proven to be a successful team at playing with the counter-attack, but continues to show that they have also been quite susceptible to getting bitten by those tactics when transitioning to defense.

Oliver Kay of the Times Online writes about how Arsene Wenger and Arsenal were exposed by United's tactics.

Arsenal are devastating on the counter-attack, but, as was also proven in last season’s Champions League encounter, they are remarkably susceptible to such tactics when deployed as well as United can. For Ferguson, that meant leaving out Dimitar Berbatov — as he has done on each of his team’s past five meetings with Arsenal — and using a 4-3-3 formation in which Rooney led the line magnificently and Nani, so disappointing so often in his 2½ seasons with United, was outstanding on the right wing.