Breaking Down Tactical Options Available to Jose Mourinho at Manchester United

Jose Mourinho has experimented a good deal this season as he tries to get the best out of his side.Rui Vieira/Associated Press

One of the features of Jose Mourinho's first season in charge of Manchester United has been his use of a variety of formations. In general, he has alternated between contemporary football's most used systems, 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3, but there have been cameos for a back-three formation and even an old-fashioned 4-4-2.

It is important to note that formations may look rigid on paper but are anything but in practice. United are particularly fluid in this sense because their systems are generally formed from flexible attacking players. Not one of Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Wayne Rooney, Juan Mata or Zlatan Ibrahimovic is likely to rigidly stick to his assigned attacking zone, for example.

Nonetheless, they are helpful for understanding United's general approach to play, and varied systems have made a notable difference to the Red Devils' style of play under Mourinho.

The season so far can be broken down into three phases—the initial 4-2-3-1, the switch to 4-3-3 and the recent experimentation, with a couple of exceptions to those rules.

Let's take a look at what Mourinho has done so far and speculate on how each formation could play into the rest of the season and beyond.

Pogba and Fellaini held the midfield berths in Mourinho's first 4-2-3-1.OLI SCARFF/Getty Images

Hopefully there is little chance of any long-term reversion to Mourinho's first few competitive United lineups. For some reason, he selected Marouane Fellaini as the natural partner for Paul Pogba as part of a midfield two.

Fellaini's presence was partly predicated on a need to protect Daley Blind, who was playing at centre-back. And in fairness, for a while it seemed to be working.

Rooney began the season as the first-choice No. 10, and he and Pogba struggled a little with a tendency to occupy the same spaces in the final third.

It went off the rails during back-to-back Premier League defeats to Manchester City and Watford in September, which put an end to Phase 1. Both Fellaini and Rooney were dropped after the Watford game in favour of Ander Herrera and Mata respectively, and neither of the former pair has been a consistent part of Mourinho's typical first-choice XI since.

Herrera's integration marked the beginning of Phase 2 of Mourinho's first formation and the beginning of the transition to his second. Michael Carrick began to make occasional cameos, and United endured a couple of months of mixed results playing a 4-2-3-1 with an unsettled first XI.

It was Mkhitaryan's re-emergence and Carrick's impressive form was the basis for the most dramatic shift up to that point, one that made a huge difference.

Michael Carrick, the one in the 4-1-2-3.OLI SCARFF/Getty Images

United beat Tottenham Hotspur on December 11, 2016, the second match in a nine-game winning streak that began with a 4-2-3-1 away in Ukraine against Zorya Luhansk.

The next six of those games saw United play a 4-3-3, with the midfield three mostly made up of Pogba, Carrick and Herrera—the exception being the Middlesbrough game on New Year's Eve, when Carrick was ill and Fellaini replaced him, with Herrera taking on holding duties.

While this formation is described for shorthand purposes as 4-3-3, it is closer to a 4-1-2-2-1.

The back four play as a unit, though when Antonio Valencia plays, he gets forward a lot. Then sits Carrick, with Pogba and Herrera ahead of him. The next line is the wide forwards who occupy the space on the touchline between those attacking midfielders and Zlatan Ibrahimovic up front.

The system works differently depending on the personnel. When Mata plays on the right, he tends to come inside, which is OK given how much ground Valencia can cover. When Mkhitaryan plays there, he also drifts inward but adds a huge amount of defensive cover for Valencia, so effective is his pressing.

The left-hand side has proved much more of a problem.

Whoever is assigned the attacking berth there—generally Marcus Rashford or Anthony Martial—also wants to come inside, but in the absence of Luke Shaw, there is nowhere near the full-back support required.

None of this mattered much during this run, mainly because Ibrahimovic was in scintillating form, scoring six goals and providing three assists in these nine games. But as the brilliant Swede has cooled off—and as Carrick's gas tank has depleted—Mourinho has had to reconsider his approach.

Jose Mourinho has rolled the dice a couple of times by using super-attacking formations.Associated Press

A brief pause from the discussion of the most used tactics to talk about some of the outliers.

When he has needed to, Mourinho has been more than prepared to throw on as many attackers as he can.

He did this unsuccessfully against Manchester City in his first, much-hyped Premier League clash with their boss, Pep Guardiola, back in September.

He did it again, to much greater effect, against Middlesbrough—managed by his old friend Aitor Karanka—at Old Trafford on New Year's Eve. By the end of that game, with the Red Devils a goal behind, Martial, Pogba, Herrera, Mata, Mkhitaryan, Rashford and Ibrahimovic were all on the pitch. A back three of Valencia, Eric Bailly and Marcos Rojo sat behind them.

And it worked. They scored the two goals they needed to turn the game around in one of the most exciting periods of any game this season.

It was a shame Mourinho felt compelled to make the direct switch of Chris Smalling when Phil Jones got injured with the score 0-0 in the 54th minute against Hull City at Old Trafford on February 1 because United could have done with that gung-ho approach.

He could have gone to a back three then. It might have been a disaster, but with wins at such a premium given all the points United have dropped, he should remember to occasionally play this useful card as the season progresses.

It was not until Mourinho moved away from 4-4-2 that United came to life against Leicester.Catherine Ivill - AMA/Getty Images

A much less successful experiment came in the form of the 4-4-2 United used for the first 20 minutes of their most recent game, Sunday's 3-0 win over Leicester City at King Power Stadium.

Mourinho started with Mkhitaryan on the left, Mata on the right and Rashford and Ibrahimovic together up front, but the game did not get going until he moved Rashford to the left wing and brought Mkhitaryan to the No. 10 spot, leaving Ibrahimovic on his own up front.

There followed a period of total United dominance, as the Armenian engineered a three-goal lead. The lack of balance shown in the first few minutes, with Mkhitaryan peripheral and drifting inside with little support from left-back, was gone. In its place was a well-balanced and fully operational attack.

If Mourinho considers 4-4-2 again, expect different personnel. This formation would work best if Shaw is ever brought properly back into the fold given out-and-out wingers are in short supply at United and someone has to provide the width.

Mkhitaryan's performance against Leicester—a sign of things to come?Catherine Ivill - AMA/Getty Images

The second of the formations used against Leicester could point the way forward for the next phase of United's season. While Carrick's presence and the 4-3-3 spurred the change in the Red Devils' fortunes, it could be time to leave it behind, particularly in games United can reasonably expect to dominate.

And the reason this new version of the 4-2-3-1 can work where the first couple of incarnations struggled is Mkhitaryan.

Playing him at No. 10 avoids some of the issues that playing Mata or Rooney there cause Pogba, as the Armenian is more likely to drive forward and pull defenders away from the advanced spaces the Frenchman wants to occupy than to drop deep and clog them up.

Herrera has shown he is more than a match for the defensive side of a more structured, less attacking role—indeed, he has thrived in it.

And with Bailly back in the side, the need for Carrick to protect that back four is reduced because of the Ivorian's tremendous speed and his ability to handle one-on-one situations.

This is crucial because one disadvantage of any Carrick absence is that it might reduce Mkhitaryan, Pogba and Herrera's freedom to press were Bailly unable to provide similar cover.

That problem is also partially solved by playing Mkhitaryan at No. 10, where he does not have to worry about covering an attacking full-back.

The issue of the left wing remains unsolved, but given Shaw and Martial are available, this is a problem at least partially of Mourinho's own making.

The rest of the team, though, in a 4-2-3-1 built around Mkhitaryan's genius, looks as balanced and as attack-minded as it needs to be over the coming weeks. Of all the options available to Mourinho, this one seems the most sensible for now.