Can Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Romelu Lukaku Play Together for Manchester United?
All season long, a conundrum has been looming for Manchester United and manager Jose Mourinho in the form of Zlatan Ibrahimovic's return to fitness.
How do he and Romelu Lukaku fit into the same team? Can they play together, interact and be a success as a partnership? If they can't, can Mourinho juggle their playing time and keep two superstars happy?
It's no easy task. That crease on Jose's forehead? This is a major factor in how prominent it's becoming.
The situation is dicey. This season has been extremely successful for the Red Devils sans Zlatan, and although Lukaku is on a barren run, the team are performing well and winning games.
The Belgian offers a rather different skill set to the Swede, and the team—by and large—have adapted to it. They look a more potent offensive outfit this season than last, when Zlatan was the main man. Those damaging home draws have been converted into victories—sometimes by four-goal margins—and although Lukaku's goals have dried up, his ratio is still better than one in two.
But as Zlatan stood on the touchline against Newcastle United on Nov. 18, waiting to replace Anthony Martial, and Old Trafford roared its approval, the makeup of United's attack was thrown into question. How, exactly, will this work? Zlatan is ultra-popular with fans and players and likely still an excellent footballer. He'll need minutes.
The important games are piling up. Following the win at Watford on Tuesday, a trip to Arsenal awaits on Saturday. Then CSKA Moscow visit the Tuesday before the Manchester derby on December 10. Mourinho's had four opportunities to trial ways of incorporating Ibrahimovic into the team from the bench, and on all four occasions, he's chosen to try something different.
What's been tried, what looks promising, and what doesn't?
4-2-3-1: Lukaku Wide of Zlatan
Zlatan's return to the pitch came with 77 minutes on the clock against Newcastle. Replacing Martial, he immediately pointed at Lukaku, sending him to the right wing.
That's not good.
The flanks are not where you want Lukaku to be; it's not where he does any of his best work. His strengths lie in predatory penalty-box movement, rasping strikes and aerial dominance. The box is his playground, and removing him from it reduces his effectiveness drastically.
He doesn't have the agility or the close control to succeed in those tight touchline areas. His occasional bumbling touch is no secret, and when the space shrinks around him, those touches rear their ugly heads more often.
Getting Zlatan into the team as the frontman is fine, but it cannot result in a move wide for Lukaku; that would be a waste of one of the Premier League's best goalscorers, one who cost £75 million this past summer.
Diamondesque
When Ibrahimovic came on against FC Basel, it looked initially as if Lukaku was being pushed wide again. The Belgian sought instruction from the substitute and moved towards the right flank, only for Ander Herrera to beckon him back into a slightly narrower position.
The result was something resembling a 4-4-2 diamond shape, with Zlatan dropping into the No. 10 space and Lukaku and Marcus Rashford operating as a loose striking duo up ahead. There wasn't any fluency to it, and United conceded the winner not long later, but the personnel was intriguing.
This shape would allow Zlatan to roam, playing a free role between the lines, while Lukaku and one of Anthony Martial or Rashford could play ahead of him. Nemanja Matic is perfectly capable of playing at the base of the midfield, and Paul Pogba could be joined in the centre by one of Marouane Fellaini or Herrera.
The issue is that in a narrow diamond, the strikers are still pushed wide a little too often for Lukaku's comfort. They have to dart outward to create space inside to help move the ball forward and also hit the byline to cross, allowing the No. 10 to filter into the box with the other striker, creating a temporary alternate shape.
This would suit Rashford or Martial fine—it's what they are good at—but the buildup would need to become biased towards the flank Lukaku is not on, and it would become predictable.
4-2-3-1: Zlatan Behind Lukaku
Ibrahimovic picked up his biggest chunk of playing time this season against Brighton & Hove Albion on Matchday 13. Sent on at 0-0 after 62 minutes with United clearly lacking ideas, the deadlock was broken shortly after—though it was nothing to do with him.
The Swede took up a position just off Lukaku, operating in that No. 10 space but allowing Lukaku to continue as the No. 9. Martial and Rashford moved either side of him. This alignment is probably what most fans and pundits would have expected from the off when both strikers took to the pitch in tandem.
It could work: Zlatan becomes a genuine No. 10, and United utilise his slick control and creative passing (when he's a little sharper) to bring the three predatory speedsters ahead and to the side of him into play. He turns more creator than goalscorer but can still rattle off long-distance strikes and get into the box for crosses.
But the reality is we saw this happen last season. And it caused problems. Zlatan's dropping so deep into midfield (and pulling markers with him) shrinks the middle third, and that creates the risk of removing the space Pogba has been so effective at pushing into.
Pogba needs that space; one of the keys behind his dramatic improvement in 2017-18 has been that Lukaku runs off the shoulder of the defence or pins them back, creating a 30-yard chasm for the Frenchman to waltz into. Zlatan's presence at No. 10 would do the opposite. He would crush the pocket his colleague likes to play in.
On some occasions, it wouldn't affect United, as they will just overpower their opponents from a raw quality perspective or produce the sort of clinical display we saw at Watford, which bypasses any structural issues.
But on others, it would harm United. Ibrahimovic's moves deep allow him to get on the ball plenty, but they could this season limit the effectiveness of the club's best player.
Solution: Rotation
There is no ideal way to get Lukaku and Zlatan into the same XI; there's a trade-off in every scenario.
Mourinho has already tried four different ways, the last being a 3-4-1-2 at the end of the Watford game, with Ibrahimovic, Lukaku and Rashford comprising the front three. Each has offered positives and negatives. No matter the alignment, there's a knock-on effect: Lukaku's being taken away from the box, Zlatan's reducing Pogba's roaming space or the team are just too narrow.
If United are chasing a game or playing a lesser side, they can use both in tandem and simply cross it until one of them scores. This is essentially what they tried against Brighton, even without Zlatan on the pitch, as Ashley Young and Rashford measured in deliveries constantly for 60 minutes.
Zlatan can also be of use against press-heavy sides, as he is relatively press-resistant, whereas Lukaku is not. With the Manchester derby on the horizon, that may already be in Mourinho's thoughts, as he needs to find a way to stop the ball being stolen by Pep Guardiola's Duracell Bunnies.
Arsenal, too, have dialled up an impressive press in recent games against top-six opponents and are likely to go at United on Saturday. We saw Alexis Sanchez, Alexandre Lacazette and Mesut Ozil pressure Tottenham Hotspur into wayward passes from the back in the north London derby, and having an out-ball like Ibrahimovic can be a route to rendering high pressure redundant.
But the simplest solution may just be to rotate. If you are swallowing cons no matter how they play together, they may just have to share the playing time. Lukaku shouldn't play 55-60 games anyway, and while originally Martial and Rashford would have been the deputies, Zlatan can be that player, leaving the other two to focus on their wider roles.
Whether Mourinho can keep Zlatan and Lukaku happy with this arrangement is another question. That creased forehead won't be going away anytime soon.
All statistics via WhoScored.com
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