The shrewd £17m Manchester United transfer that could finally see step in right direction

It took a little while for the rebuild to really hit its stride, but Manchester United’s transfer team are starting to go through the gears – and a double deal which will see defenders Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui sign from Bayern Munich for a combined £60m is now close to completion.

According to Sky Sports, De Ligt and Mazraoui flew into the UK on Monday to complete a medical and get through the formalities. The question now is whether the pair can make the difference as United look to turn things around after their worst ever Premier League performance.

Manchester United had several tactical issues last season, with Erik ten Hag struggling to connect a deep defensive line with a much higher, more aggressive front three – and a lack of mobility and attacking quality at full-back was a part of the problem. Ten Hag needed players who could get up the pitch swiftly to support the direct play necessitated by the large gap between attack and defence, but players like Diogo Dalot and Aaron Wan-Bissaka didn’t fit the bill, and neither did they have the quality of delivery to generate chances when they were closer to the action.

It's Mazraoui, therefore, who has the potential to be more important to his new club. De Ligt is a solid defender whose quality is not in dispute and he may well improve the team significantly, but his presence is unlikely to shift the broader tactical dynamic. Mazraoui, meanwhile, is charged with finding a way to provide the offensive support that Ten Hag’s team needs without compromising their defensive rigidity, a quality which they certainly seemed to have during the 1-1 draw with champions Manchester City in the Community Shield on Saturday.

The 26-year-old Morocco international didn’t manage to establish himself as a regular started in Munich, playing 55 matches across two seasons after signing from Ajax, but he did still demonstrate some of the creative qualities which United lacked out wide last year.

His passing is crisp and precise and he has an eye for balls which get play moving downfield, while also being a strong runner who can beat opposing players with the ball at his feet in a way that neither Dalot nor Wan-Bissaka (who is likely to leave soon, with West Ham United reportedly in negotiations) really have in their locker.

The table below shows how some of Mazraoui’s raw numbers from the last year line up with the players he will be compared with, including Luke Shaw, who may well be first choice on the opposite wing. There’s simply no question that he’s a greater creative force then the options Ten Hag had at his disposal last season, but it can be seen that he doesn’t give much away defensively either, although one thing these statistics do omit is that Dalot and Shaw are more comfortable at dropping into narrower areas to operate as centre-halves when required in deep-set defensive situations. Mazraoui tends to stay wide at all times, when Ten Hag sometimes asks for a more compact defence.

There are caveats here - some of Shaw’s numbers will be hampered by the fact that he played a number of games at centre-half over the course of last season, for instance, and the number of tackles made doesn’t necessarily reflect their quality or frequency, with Wan-Bissaka the best tackler of the four in any given moment. But fundamentally, Mazraoui is up there defensively and plainly more dangerous up towards the final third.

It would make life a lot easier if Mazraoui, who makes up around £17m of the combined transfer fee according to The Daily Mail, had truly express pace, but to say that would be an exaggeration. He has sufficient athleticism to get up and down the flank more efficiently than Dalot or Wan-Bissaka, but if United continue to play with a lot of space between the two lines then it could be asking a lot to get him to shuttle between the two to join both attack and defence when needed.

One potential issue is that if United do continue to play with a deep defence – which seemed to be the case during the Community Shield, although that may just have been a tactical decision for that game alone – is that it often asks full-backs to create chances from deeper positions, and that may bring Mazraoui’s slightly sub-par crossing into play.

Mazraoui had a 16% cross completion rate in the Bundesliga last season – not awful, by any means, but below the average for the Premier League and he doesn’t have the accuracy to be a truly threatening force from such areas. In terms of the volume and quality of chances he generates, he is an improvement on Dalot and Wan-Bissaka but not necessarily a huge one. The gamble here is that he is a better all-round player, but he isn’t likely to be United’s answer to Trent Alexander-Arnold.

Which doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have the potential to make an impact. While still playing a deep line against their cross-city rivals on Saturday, United looked considerably more compact than they were last season and leant less hard on quick breaks and direct passes. If that’s a fair indication of how they will play going forward, then Mazraoui may find himself very much at home – as may De Ligt, a fine player but one whose relative lack of press resistance means he should be well-suited to a team who set up deeper and play with less space in front of the defence.

Last season, Ten Hag failed to get his team playing in a coherent fashion and results reflected his mistakes, but in signing Mazraoui they may have a player who can help the team play a little better – and if he doesn’t work out, then at least the price looks fair on paper.