Tactical change made the difference for Manchester United

Article by Tony Gillies

Saturday evening saw United grab a well-deserved and much needed victory at home to Swansea.

After a pretty ineffective first half performance from United, I can only recall two half chances in front of goal, the free kick from man of the match Adnan Januzaj which came back off of the bar and a scuffed shot from Danny Welbeck just before the break which tamely rolled past the far post. We were offering very little, we looked like a team who had lost three on the bounce. We looked scared to attack which is expected when confidence is low. We set up from the start to counter attack at home to a team who have only won 5 league games all season, this is not the United we are used to. We only had 36% of the ball in the opening 45 minutes; a stat I've seen very rarely as low as that when we have played at home. Saying all of that Swansea never really threatened David de Gea and all looked set to finish a very dull 0-0 draw.

One change made by the manager at half time which may prove to have saved our season and more importantly took a bit of heat off of David Moyes was switching Januzaj out on to the left wing and giving Shinji Kagawa the free role behind Welbeck, it payed off just a minute after the restart; A cross from Januzaj which found Kagawa who's header forced a save from Tremmel which he pushed out straight to Antonio Valencia who finished calmly to give us the lead. From that moment on we were in complete control of the game, the passing was fluid, we looked like a team who wanted to win and believed we could go on and score more. Januzaj was outstanding, Kagawa was enjoying the space and creating chances and was unlucky not to score late on, maybe could have shot a bit sooner instead of rounding Tremmel only to find he's effort cleared off the line. Danny Welbeck effectively killed the game off with the second goal.

I, for one have been confused by a lot of David Moyes' substitutions this season and to be honest that's the only real worry I've had with him, the only time I can remember him making a substitution this season in which won us a game was away to Norwich when he brought Welbeck on at half time who went on to score the only goal of the game. But Saturday's slight alteration made a massive difference and I just hope this gives Moyes more confidence to make more attacking changes during the course of a match to ensure we fight to win matches or even to pull us back into games we are losing and not sitting on a 1-0 defeat. We have lost the majority of our games by a single goal this season and I believe Moyes has accepted defeat in a few of them because we haven't bombarded the opposition’s goal as much as we have in the past when we are behind going into the final stages of games. So I'm hoping as he changed the game on Saturday, he won't be scared to do it for the remainder of the season.

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