Wayne Rooney delivered a sharp assessment of Manchester United\u2019s defeat to Hull City, singling out Luke Shaw for what he called \u201cschoolboy defending\u201d while also pointing to deeper tactical issues behind the 2-0 loss.<\/p>\n
Rooney focused on the second goal in the 38th minute, arguing that Shaw had played Mendy onside by dropping too deep too early while United were trying to defend a wide free kick. On Match of the Day, he said: \u201cThis is schoolboy defending from Luke Shaw,\u201d United\u2019s all-time top scorer seethed on Match of the Day. \u201cMan Utd had a good line, Hull would have been waiting for this all day, Luke Shaw drops in, he\u2019s five yards behind his backline and if the ball is good enough, which it was, it\u2019s impossible to stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cHull had a gameplan, they were getting balls into the penalty box, picking up second balls and Man Utd found it very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was only part of the issue. Rooney also noted that Hull\u2019s use of wingbacks caused problems in open play, with a similar approach having already troubled United against Leeds United and AC Milan. He even pointed out the irony that Ruben Amorim spent 14 months trying, unsuccessfully, to get United to play that way themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cI watched the AC Milan game last week and they [Hull] played the same system,\u201d Rooney pointed out. \u201cThey played with wingbacks and Man Utd really struggled to deal with that. Maybe Hull have seen that game last week and changed it and I think fair play if that\u2019s the case because they looked a really good team today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hull boss Sergej Jakirovi\u0107 said the plan was designed to exploit the space left by Shaw: \u201cBecause Manchester United is coming very high with Luke Shaw.\u201d He later added: \u201cWhen we steal the ball, we are very vertical, very quick. In those transitions, we try to switch the side because our wingbacks are completely alone, and then get numbers in the box,\u201d Jakirovi\u0107 bluntly explained. \u201cWe had two very good chances, and also we didn\u2019t allow any one-to-one 100% chances from them.\u201d<\/p>\n
United now face Ipswich Town, with Gary O\u2019Neil likely to study Hull\u2019s blueprint closely as Carrick continues searching for solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rooney condemned Shaw’s defending as Hull exposed United’s wider tactical weaknesses in a 2-0 loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18695,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1710,179],"tags":[1836,1162,180],"class_list":["post-18696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hull-city","category-manchester-united","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-analytics","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}