How can Ronny Deila help fix Atlanta United's attack?

Why flipping the wingers could get the best out of Alexey Miranchuk... and the rest of the Five Stripes.

That feeling is back at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Not that feeling.

Y’know the one… that air of annoyance that seems to waft over the crowd around the 61st minute that has the potential to sour into outright disgust… something fans have experienced far too often in the last 12 months.

That feeling comes because you know something is off. You can instinctively pick up on some inefficiency happening between the eleven players who exert themselves and strain and daringly win the ball back, only to GIVE IT AWAY AGAIN!

After a slow start, attempting to fix Atlanta United is all the rage these days. Earlier this week, Scarves and Spikes’ Henry Higuita wrote a thorough and well-thought proposition for head coach Ronny Deila to move Alexey Miranchuk deeper in the structure of the shape as a midfielder. While I don’t fully agree with the conclusion, I think Higuita (and many fans) are correct to suggest there’s a tweak that needs to happen in Deila’s tactical setup.

But I should first note that I don’t think there *needs* to be a change in order for results to flow. In my opinion, Atlanta has played better than the results they’ve achieved, and given more games that imbalance would even itself out.

But I can’t help but think there is a tweak that could help all of Atlanta United’s attacking unit, and that is to flip the wingers where Miguel Almirón would play narrowly on the left and Saba Lobjanidze on the right.

How it helps Almirón

Miguel Almirón was the most effective No. 10 Atlanta United has had in its history, and so the conventional wisdom suggests that he should go back to playing that “position” and figure out the rest from there.

But Almirón arrived to Atlanta United having not really manned a traditional No. 10 role at his previous stop in Lanus. There in Argentina, Almirón featured as a box-to-box midfielder as the left side of a flat three-man midfield.

Let’s look at his positioning and creativity within his role in his last match for Lanus — where his team won 4-0 in the 2016 Primera Final.

If there’s one thing that was abundantly clear from analyzing this match, it was Almirón’s love for positioning himself in the left half space. In this clip, Almirón never touches the ball, but you can see the area in which he wants to receive it. His run here opens up lanes for his teammates.