Player Focus: Schweinsteiger Not Offering United Enough Thrust From Deep
Nobody touched the ball more in Manchester United’s goalless draw with Chelsea than Bastian Schweinsteiger. He was at the centre of everything and, given how he has come to embody the “process” of which Louis van Gaal is so proud that, at the moment, may be part of the problem.
On the one hand Schweinsteiger’s statistics look good. He touched the ball 109 times. He completed 93.8% of his passes, more than anybody else other than Daley Blind (97.4%) and Juan Mata (94.4%). It’s indicative too of how that game went that only two Chelsea players - John Terry and Nemanja Matic - had a pass completion rate of over 80%. But all those touches yielded no shots on target and only two key passes. Three times he was caught in possession and one he lost the ball with a poor first touch; set against that he made six tackles.
It’s all combative stuff that helps with control, but he can seem ponderous, his instinct to retain possession conditioning him against risk. Perhaps that is a function of the rest of the United side and their lack of understanding of Van Gaal’s system - as they continue to await the magical moment when everything will click. Or perhaps it’s to do with Schweinsteiger’s physical condition.
It appears that at 31, he is no longer capable of the box-to-box running that used to define his play, that lack of spark perhaps explaining why Pep Guardiola was so willing to let him go. “The reason why we have bought Schweinsteiger is that he is a player who can lead or guide a team,” Van Gaal said at the beginning of December. “That is important - not only his football qualities - but that he can lead and guide a team on the pitch. I believe that every match that he plays he can play better because until now we have not seen the best Schweinsteiger that I have seen at Bayern Munich, but he can guide the team.”
What’s intriguing is to compare Schweinsteiger this season against him at his peak. A pass success rate of 86.4% in the league in the season as a whole is roughly comparable with his career since 2009 - when, thanks to Van Gaal, he started playing regularly in the centre of midfield rather than on the flank. His pass completion rate has never dropped below 84.9% and never risen higher than 86.4%.
But his contribution at the front end of the pitch has declined this season. In every season from 2009-10 he has directly contributed to - either by scoring or completing the assist - between five and 11 goals. This season he has just one goal - a header from a corner against Leicester - and no assists.
This season he’s played 0.5 key passes per game. In the Bundesliga last season it was 1.6. Only once since 2009 has that figure dropped below 1.0 per game. Again, the impression is of a player less mobile than he was and so less able to get forward and make the creative impact he used to, adding to the sense of a static United.
It’s not that he’s simply playing in a more defensive role this season. Although he has made slightly more tackles this season than last - 2.0 to 1.7 per game - interceptions have remained the same and, looking back over the past six seasons, there are four occasions when he’s averaged more than 2.0 tackles per game.
His defensive contribution, in other words, is pretty standard this season, but his attacking contribution has diminished. It may be that Schweinsteiger is a symptom rather than a cause of United’s problems, but there have been numerous occasions when he looks sluggish. United need to find thrust from at least one of their holding players and Schweinsteiger, at the moment, is not offering it.
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