Marouane Fellaini as a No. 10. Five minutes into the match, a contest that began with Marouane Fellaini holding in the area behind Anthony Martial, as a quasi-No. 10, Fellaini turned and drove into a gap between West Ham defenders. Here, with Lingard and Mata flanking him, he chose not to slide in either of them, but to shoot, timidly, himself. The Belgian is not a No. 10, so his failure in this instant is understandable, if not quite as easy to comprehend from a wider, tactical point of view; namely, what was he doing there in the first place, against a team as willing to secede possession as West Ham are, not to mention as wracked by injury as the Hammers? Well, a few minutes later, when Fellaini aimed a dangerous header wide, the answer was presented. Fellaini played as a No. 10 only in name, really, and in fact he was deployed more as a roaming aerial threat, looking to fly in from his slightly recessed position and attack, or cushion down, the ball in the air. As effective as Fellaini is in the air – and he did provide a fair few tidy knock downs here – having a player with this limited role in perhaps the most crucial area of the pitch is, well, never anything more than a rudimentary approach. Juan Mata, who may have been gazing longingly at the space Fellaini was occupying, was peripheral in this match, appropriately so, seeing as he was placed out on margins of the pitch. One feels that, with West Ham defending so well, a player of Mata’s rare invention was desperately needed in the heart of the attack. Michael Carrick spent much of the second half fizzing balls in to Fellaini, but the Belgian didn’t have the guile or footspeed to do much with them.
Man United’s first shot on target comes in the 60th minute of the game. At home. From Marouane Fellaini. pic.twitter.com/Gaz51TnuT8 — Squawka Football (@Squawka) December 5, 2015
