Mr Manera talks tactics, Liverpool and Bournemouth

Mike Manera has swapped his comedian’s hat to become CandH’s tactical analyst this season and in his first piece here he looks back on the Liverpool match and comes to some interesting conclusions.

In pre-season Pellegrini seemed to prefer a 433 shape, only switching to 442 in the last game of the warm up period.

But I feel Pellegrini has always preferred two attackers, and the main reason for the 4-3-3 was the lack of an available second striker, especially as during pre-season players rarely played the full 90 minutes.

The signings of Lucas Perez and Xande Silva seem to back that up, as well as improving the overall squad Scrabble score.

Our starting 4-3-3 against Liverpool was unusually cautious for a Pellegrini team. Was that due to the quality of the opposition, or did he again have no alternative? With Perez only joining a couple of days before, and maybe Hernandez not fully match fit after his World Cup exploits maybe he had no alternative?

Either way, the 433 we played clearly didn’t work. We were unable to keep the ball in any meaningful way which meant that Liverpool had plenty of time to pick us apart. And boy, did they!

The most telling thing of all though was the lack of “connect” between the players. Passes went astray and there was no real cohesion.

With so many new players to integrate that is hardly surprising. It will take time to integrate. More worrying was the lack of pace through the centre of midfield, and the total lack of threat we offered.

I’m expecting a change of shape on Saturday against Bournemouth, with Pellegrini switching to a 442 or something close.

It is far too early in the season to start talking about “must wins”, it’s only the first home game of the season. But it would be great to see the team pose a greater threat in attack.