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<p><i><b>What does Man United&#8217;s interim manager Ralf Rangnick mean for FPL managers?</b></i></p>
<p><i><a href="https://twitter.com/FPL_JianBatra">Jian Batra</a> looks at how this appointment changes the landscape of FPL and what we can expect Manchester Utd.</i></p>
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<h2>Ralf Rangnick and FPL | Initial Thoughts</h2>
<p><strong>&#8220;The Godfather of Gegenpressing&#8221;. </strong></p>
<p>The Premier League and Manchester United fans specifically are in for a treat. Rangnick has taken the likes of <strong>Jurgen Klopp, Thomas Tuchel</strong> and <strong>Julien Nagelsmann</strong> (to name a few) under his wing and they have flourished as a result.</p>
<p>The Manchester United board have done an excellent job not only to sign him on a 6 month interim contract, but also to include the additional clause which states he will be at the club for a further two years in an advisory role.</p>
<p>I expect a fairly quick improvement, simply because unlike Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, <strong>Rangnick will demand it and tolerate nothing else</strong>. Nonetheless, his first match -a visit to Stamford Bridge &#8211; will be extremely difficult. I don&#8217;t expect them to walk away with anything.</p>
<p>Transitioning from primarily a counter-attacking side to gegenpressing is a huge shift and it&#8217;s difficult to do in a few days, let alone against the champions of Europe.</p>
<p>The argument which follows from the above is whether or not Manchester United even have the correct personnel to allow Rangnick&#8217;s preferred system to prosper.</p>
<p>The likes of <strong>Cristiano Ronaldo, Mason Greenwood</strong> and <strong>Anthony Martial</strong> aren&#8217;t and never have been associated with this style of football. It will be interesting to see how Ronaldo is implemented specifically (my thoughts on this are contained in the tactical analysis section in this article).</p>
<p><strong>Bruno Fernandes</strong> is someone I feel will truly prosper under Rangnick.</p>
<p>Finally, his recruitment is utterly exceptional. The list is extremely long but includes; E<strong>mil Forsberg, Naby Keita, Timo Werner, Joshua Kimmich</strong> and <strong>Christopher Nkunku</strong> (who&#8217;s becoming a serious talent) to name a few. In his consultancy role later down the line, this will help the club from both a footballing and business standpoint.</p>
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<h2>Ralf Rangnick and FPL | Tactical Analysis</h2>
<p>As mentioned, he is known as &#8220;<strong>The Godfather of Gegenpressing</strong>&#8220;, and rightfully so.</p>
<p>Football, like anything in life goes through different cycles; 10 years ago we were in the era of &#8220;tiki taka&#8221;. Possession based football, with the objective of creating space through mass fluidity.</p>
<p>Gegenpressing has become and will continue to become the favoured style of football (for a while at least). With an ever increasing importance placed by clubs on physical health and conditioning, it&#8217;s almost inevitable football will continue to go down a path that demands so much physicality and fitness.</p>
<p>There are multiple variations of this form of pressing; certain managers choose to cut passing lanes (Guardiola), some choose to surround the opposition players from numerous directions (Klopp) and others choose to physically challenge the opposition players consistently (Biesla).</p>
<p><b>Rangnick is a hybrid of the Klopp and Biesla way. </b>He wants his players to be aggressive in the challenge, but also wants to first ensure a numerical advantage is present.</p>
<p>It is important to understand this, as it&#8217;s the fundamental concept on which Rangnick&#8217;s philosophy is built on.</p>
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<h2>Ralf Rangnick and FPL | United&#8217;s Formation</h2>
<p>This is still up for debate. There&#8217;s a few formations he could play at Manchester United, including the 4-3-3 (unlikely), the 4-1-2-1-2 with a narrow diamond or <strong>4-2-2-2</strong>. Personally I think he&#8217;ll play the latter (with a 4-4-2 off the ball).</p>
<p>Rangnick has stated he hates &#8220;sideways and back passes&#8221;. He prefers football to be played efficiently.</p>
<p>He has a training drill whereby the attacking team has a maximum of 10 seconds from the point they retain the ball to fashion a goal scoring opportunity at the other end, and the defensive side have eight seconds in which to recover.</p>
<p>This simply highlights how important for him to foster a <strong>direct, efficient and high intensity approach</strong>. Manchester Utd will have to adapt to this and as such I expect the physically fitter players to be prioritised in selection</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-40968 size-medium" src="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-2021-11-26-at-10.56.30-252x300.jpg" alt="Ralf Rangnick at Manchester United" width="252" height="300" srcset="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-2021-11-26-at-10.56.30-252x300.jpg 252w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-2021-11-26-at-10.56.30-860x1024.jpg 860w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-2021-11-26-at-10.56.30-768x914.jpg 768w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-2021-11-26-at-10.56.30-610x726.jpg 610w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-2021-11-26-at-10.56.30.jpg 904w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 252px) 100vw, 252px" /></p>
<p>The diagram above highlights what space the two attacking Number 10s will occupy when going forward. The reason Rangnick likes having his No. 10&#8217;s in the same horizontal lines and in the half spaces is to create a numerical advantage through <strong>triangular structures within a hexagonal shape</strong>.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a wordy statement, but visualising it should certainly make it easier. If you were to draw a line connecting the Number 6,7 and 10 on the diagram above, you would see a triangle form, and you could form multiple within that hexagonal shape of the front six.</p>
<p>The multiple avenues for passing lanes, fluidity of movement to create further gaps behind the defensive line and pushing on the full backs if the opposition decides to defend in a manner which is too narrow, are all beneficiaries of a system like this.</p>
<p>Regarding the system off the ball, the No. 10&#8217;s revert to wide central midfield roles to cover the space on the flanks. The narrowness of this shape forces teams to consistently try to play in the wide spaces.</p>
<p>With low option areas (the wide spaces), the probability of conceding big chances is far lower. It&#8217;s something Tuchel&#8217;s Chelsea do extremely well, they are consistently creating central numeric advantages.</p>
<p>Then in regards to the press, the compactness of the shape means the pressing distances are small. Teams will have very minimal amounts of time to play through these central areas, and as long as the players individually do their jobs, from a tactical perspective it&#8217;s very different to exploit. As seen with his time at RP Leipzig.</p>
<p>The &#8220;double pivot&#8221; alongside the front four also press high.</p>
<p><strong>Application to Manchester Utd:</strong></p>
<p>We have discussed in some depth the reasoning for why I believe Utd will improve from a defensive standpoint as a unit significantly, so here&#8217;s a more in-depth individual analysis on their attacking players.</p>
<p><strong>Cristiano Ronaldo (£12.4m) &#8211; </strong>Pressing starts from the front and Ronaldo doesn&#8217;t really press (sometimes he&#8217;s over criticised but still below par by some way). So the question arises, how does Rangnick deal with this? Quite simply, there isn&#8217;t really an answer. Will he drop Cristiano Ronaldo? It&#8217;s very unlikely and harmful on many accounts.</p>
<p>My theory is that he may try something he hasn&#8217;t done before, whereby he slightly alters his pressing shape to a 4-4-1-1 with Ronaldo acting as a secondary striker in this case to reduce the amount of sprints. That&#8217;s very speculative and no one can say for sure, as such it&#8217;s better to observe the next few games to see what he produces.</p>
<p>Going forward however, with the direct and central approach, alongside the volume of passes Ronaldo receives from his teammates, it&#8217;s likely Ronaldo will experience a plethora of chances. His world class movement will be his biggest aid, as with the fluidity of movement, huge spaces are likely to appear which he can penetrate.</p>
<p><strong>Bruno Fernandes (£11.7m) &#8211; </strong>Of all the players I can see this man flourishing the most. It&#8217;s unnecessary to repeat the information I gave on the Number 10 role above and why that&#8217;s such a positive (Bruno excels in central areas like the half spaces), but looking at his creative statistics individually; they are utterly exceptional.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-40952" src="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-53-300x226.png" alt="Ralf Rangnick at Manchester United" width="346" height="261" srcset="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-53-300x226.png 300w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-53.png 567w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 346px) 100vw, 346px" /></p>
<p>(Statistics taken from fbref.com)</p>
<p>Fernandes ranks in the 90th percentile above for assists, xA, npxG + xA, shot creating actions, passes completed and progressive passes (which of all the statistics is the important under Rangnick). Simply his impact in the substitution performance against Villareal demonstrated his quality.</p>
<h2><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-40966 size-large" src="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/FFStuffImage-11-1024x835.png" alt="Ralf Rangnick at Manchester United" width="1024" height="835" srcset="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/FFStuffImage-11-1024x835.png 1024w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/FFStuffImage-11-300x245.png 300w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/FFStuffImage-11-768x626.png 768w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/FFStuffImage-11-610x497.png 610w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/FFStuffImage-11-1080x881.png 1080w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/FFStuffImage-11.png 1436w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></h2>
<p><strong>Marcus Rashford (£9.4m) and Jadon Sancho (£8.9m) &#8211; The Young English Duo: </strong>This is more speculative than anything else but keep an eye out for them. The direct approach of dropping balls in behind benefits Rashford with his pace and Sancho may develop with consist work in the half spaces.</p>
<p>Nothing to do with FPL but I expect <strong>Fred</strong> (who&#8217;s hated on far too much), to really show his talent under Rangnick and I&#8217;d love to see him succeed.</p>
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<h2>FPL Implications:</h2>
<p>The FPL implications of this appointment are unbelievably simple.</p>
<p>Wait and see.</p>
<p>You have been given the fortunate circumstance of Utd&#8217;s assets having relatively low ownership and a few games before the best fixture run we have ever seen in FPL.</p>
<p>Whether you decide to pull the trigger in Gameweek 14,15 or 16 on Utd assets (it&#8217;s looking highly illogical not to), will be subjective. I&#8217;d say wait and see till after the Chelsea fixture (definitely) and the Arsenal fixture (most likely), to determine who and when you should bring them in.</p>
<p>The fixture run discussed above:</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-40951" src="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-51-300x287.png" alt="manchester united fixtures" width="396" height="379" srcset="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-51-300x287.png 300w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-51-768x735.png 768w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-51-610x584.png 610w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Screenshot-51.png 778w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 396px) 100vw, 396px" /></p>
<p><strong>Research Credit:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>I&#8217;d like to thank <strong>@htomufc (TikTok)</strong> for his excellent video which aided me in writing this piece. His content is of the upmost quality and I&#8217;d strongly suggest dropping him a follow.</li>
<li>Secondly &#8211; <strong>@RussellPope99 (Twitter)</strong> for providing the diagram of the 4-2-2-2.</li>
</ul>
<p>Feel free to direct message me on Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/FPL_JianBatra">@FPL_JianBatra</a>, for any questions you may have (or drop them down below).</p>
<p>Thank you for your support!</p>
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