Mission Accomplished: Manchester United Gets Their 0-0 In Marseille

After a month long layoff with a knee injury, Marseille fan favorite Mathieu Valbuena has entered L’OM’s UEFA Champions League game with Manchester United in the 79th minute, replacing Loic Remy. Remy had a solid game and ran his socks off between the second half kickoff and his substitution, but that surge seemed to consume all of his energy. Completely spent, Remy has now been replaced by Valbuena, who slots into a right forward role.

It will be interesting to see how fit Valbuena is and if he looks himself in the final 10 minutes of the game. Didier Deschamps had to strike the delicate balance between not wearing out his star and allowing him enough time to have some kind of an impact on the game. Valbuena has declared to the media that he is fit enough to start a match, but Deschamps was obviously skeptical and has only given him just over 10 minutes to try to influence the game tonight.

Didier Deschamps isn’t quite going for the jugular with a Mathieu Valbuena for defensive midfielder switch, but he has made an ambitious change in Marseille’s UEFA Champions League match against Manchester United. Benoit Cheyrou, an athletic and dynamic central midfielder, has entered the game for defensive midfielder Edouard Cisse. Manchester United have made an ambitious attacking change of their own, bringing on the creative and slick passing veteran Paul Scholes for the athletic Darron Gibson, who did not have a good game for the Red Devils.

As open as this game has been in the second half, these two changes should open it up even more. Scholes and Cheyrou are much better passers and much less defensive minded than the two men they replaced, something both teams needed to add to the center of their respective midfields. Expect more through balls, quicker play, and more space in attacking positions in the middle, going either way. All of these things should hopefully lead to more chances.

The first 15 minutes of the second half has been much more open than the first 15 minutes of the first half of the UEFA Champions League match between Marseille and Manchester United, featuring a lot more determination and forward thinking from Andre Ayew and Lucho Gonzalez for Marseille. The hosts have been the much better and much more ambitious side so far in the second half, and Alex Ferguson will be thinking about changes he can make.

One player on his bench that could make a serious influence is Paul Scholes. United have not been passing well to start the half, and their lack of creativity in the center of midfield looks like it could be catching up with them. Their one-trick pony offense, hitting through balls to Nani, appears to have lost its effect. The introduction of Scholes could go a long way towards getting Dimitar Berbatov and Wayne Rooney more involved in the game.

Coming into his side’s UEFA Champions League match with Marseille, Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson was probably thinking that if Didier Deschamps was going to gift him a 0-0 draw, he was content with taking that and trying to win at the Theater of Dreams in the second leg. With two defensive midfielders and Gabriel Heinze in the L’OM lineup, this may in fact be the case. Unsurprisingly, Marseille and the Red Devils have walked into halftime tied up at 0-0, but despite the score and the lack of attempts on goal, it’s a pretty fascinating fixture.

The reason it’s a fascinating fixture is because it has serious chess match potential. There are so many things that both Alex Ferguson and Didier Deschamps can do to spice up this tie and guide the play towards the game they want to play and the result they want to obtain. Are both managers truly content with a 0-0 draw tonight? Will Deschamps continue with Heinze and two defensive midfielders? Will Ferguson continue with Dimitar Berbatov alone up top and Paul Scholes on the bench? Who knows.

Unsurprisingly, Manchester United’s Nani has been the most influential player early on in their UEFA Champions League match against Marseille, and his teammates have taken notice, getting him the ball on a regular basis. Despite the presence of Wayne Rooney and Patrice Evra on the left, one of the most left leaning sides in the world has flipped the pitch a bit early, regularly trying long balls and through balls towards Nani on the right flank. They’ve attempted this about five times in the first 15 minutes, and Gabriel Heinze has only been around to contest him once.

Going in the other direction, the combination of Manchester United’s athletic and solid tackling midfield with Marseille’s defensive midfielders has left Lucho Gonzalez to do a little more than he’s capable of. Gonzalez is a great player who can have a lot of impact on a game with his creativity, but he’s getting swarmed when he can get on the ball and getting little help.

Looking at the lineup Didier Deschamps has selected for Marseille’s UEFA Champions League match against Manchester United, it’s a bit hard to follow exactly what the Frenchman is attempting to accomplish today at Stade Velodrome. He’s selected Gabriel Heinze at left back ahead of Taye Taiwo, while preferring Charles Kabore to Benoit Cheyrou, setting up with two defensive midfielders in front of his back line. With two defensive midfielders in the lineup, as well as the defensive-minded Heinze over the athletic, attack-minded Taiwo, it seems like Deschamps is playing for a 0-0 draw.

However, there are a few problems with this. With United playing a midfield three of Michael Carrick, Darren Fletcher, and Darron Gibson, the presence of two defensive midfielders seems to be entirely unnecessary, even if 0-0 is the goal. Additionally, even if Marseille is spot on tactically, the matchup between Nani and Heinze is a scary one. Even if Taiwo is a worse defender than Heinze and more likely to get caught up the pitch, it seems like his athleticism alone makes him the right choice against Nani. The chances of Heinze avoiding getting his ankles broken for 90 minutes is low.

Those are a lot of changes from the weekend, and while those are all capable and experienced players, it all looks too reactionary. Not only does it leave a lead-footed Heinze to match-up against Nani, but it also portends a shift away from a 4-3-3. With André Ayew wide left and a versatile Rémy right, this could play as a 4-2-X-Y, with Lucho in the playmaking role. Whether it’s 4-2-3-1 or 4-2-1-3, we’ll have to see. Honestly, it’s already making my head hurt, a bit.

Here’s Marseille’s full team. The lineup is an educated guess. There are a number of ways Deschamps could deploy this group:

Ahead of today’s UEFA Champions League match at the Stade Velodrome, Marseille’s ability to feature a full attack against Manchester United is still in doubt. André-Pierre Gignac has already been ruled out, while fellow attackers Brandão and Loïc Rémy face late fitness tests. Mathieu Valbuena should be back, but in a reduced (substitute) role.

Here are Marseille and Manchester United’s full injury lists as well as how each absence may effect the clubs:

Yet in UEFA Champions League, when United opens a knockout round tie on the road, they go out of their way to contradict this reputation, typically employing very conservative tactics. Put more bluntly, United tends to be boring as hell when starting a tie away from Manchester.

The exemplar of this was United’s 0-0 at the Nou Camp in 2008. That match saw Ferguson perfect the “bunker and hope” approach most have since employed against Barcelona. Infuriating to watch, it was approach that forever changed how many Barça fans think of Manchester United. But it also worked. United would go on to eliminate Barcelona and win Champions League.