Manchester United 2-0 Reading: 5 Tactics from Solskjaer that won the game

#2 Counter attacking Football

Manchester United v Reading - FA Cup Third Round

Solskjaer knew that Reading would be compact against United and as such, he set his team up to be fast and efficient. He relied on his speedy players to mount a counter on every opportunity and it was one of the main reasons why United won the game.

The speed of Sanchez and Lukaku on the counter was frightening, even though they lacked full fitness. Young and Dalot gave interesting options on every counter and the midfield trio, as well as Mata, had a lot of options while extending the game. While they were not as effective as they would have like to be, both of United's goals scored in the first half were carved out of fast counter-attacks.

Fred and McTominay also joined their forwards on every occasion, trying to build up the numbers on the counter. It is this preference of the Norwegian to play fast, fluid football that won United the game.

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Deepungsu is a veteran football journalist who has been covering daily transfer roundups and news for over six years at Sportskeeda. He has written close to 9000 articles for the website, and has garnered over 19.5Million reads.

Deepungsu holds a PG degree in Microbiology and an MBA degree in Total Quality Management. He has an extensive two-decade long writing experience, which includes a decade of sports blogging. His writing prowess has even led his work getting cited on the legendary Franz Beckenbauer's Wikipedia page.

Inspired by Diego Maradona, Deepungsu played as an attacking midfielder for his local club at subdivision level in his initial years and scored an important goal or two. However, his all-time favorite footballer is Lionel Messi, and evidently, he feels Argentina's glory in 2022 is his favorite FIFA World Cup moment for fulfilling his long-standing dream. He is also an ardent East Bengal fan.

Deepungsu has been a Manchester United supporter since the year 2000. Unsurprisingly, his favorite manager is Sir Alex Ferguson and the Scotsman helped him get through some of the toughest days of his life. Like the fiery Scot, Deepungsu also leaves no stone unturned when it comes to accuracy in articles and only relies on credible sources.

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Edited by Abhilash L