Manchester United Must Avoid Their UCL Complacency to Beat FC Midtjylland

FC Midtjylland is not the most interesting draw Manchester United could have got in the Europa League, but it is close. The honour of first place would have been reserved for Gary Neville's Valencia, with Robin van Persie and Nani's new stomping ground of Fenerbahce somewhere up the list.

However, while unable to claim top spot, Midtjylland is pretty far up the list of fascinating ties because of the unique approach that brought the first Danish top-tier title in the club's history to the Ulvene last season.

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Matthew Benham, the owner of Brentford, is the majority shareholder at Midtjylland, and the club uses a data-oriented approach to seek success.

As Sean Ingle of the Guardian put it in July, "The introduction of specialist kicking coaches, in-game statistics for half-time team talks and the use of analytics for set pieces is Midtjylland’s new reality."

Michiel de Hoog of Dutch website De Correspondent wrote in March 2015: 

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It’s hard to find a more interesting club in world football right now than Denmark’s FC Midtjylland.

If you’re unconvinced, spend some time talking with Rasmus Ankersen, the club’s 32-year-old chairman. After two minutes, he’ll draw you in with his great plans for the club and his great trouble hiding his enthusiasm. After five minutes, he’ll share more interesting ideas than most football executives can muster in a lifetime. And after fifteen minutes, it’s clear that FC Midtjylland is no longer just a football club. It’s a laboratory for a radical experiment.

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United should not be in the position to face Midtjylland at all, having been drawn into a Champions League group that should have offered no fears. Away defeats to PSV Eindhoven and Wolfsburg cost the Red Devils dearly, but it was the damp squib of a performance against PSV at home that felt the most avoidable.

For that game to finish 0-0 and for United to show next-to-no quality in the second half still rankles with supporters.

While complacency is an enemy of success in any field, Midtjylland's status as relative unknowns in Europe's top competitions means United will have to work extra hard to avoid it.

This is particularly true since one of the Danish side's recently acquired strengths can directly target one of United's most obvious vulnerabilities. Perhaps the passing of a couple of months will render this point irrelevant, but as things stand, United's weakness at defending set pieces will play into Midtjylland's hands.

The Red Devils have conceded four goals from set pieces in their past two games. Last season, almost half of the Danish champions' goals came from dead-ball situations, per Ingle. De Hoog said Midtjylland's leadership "think set pieces are underexploited by football as a whole."

Additionally, it does not take a legion of data analysts to see where United are exploitable. Teams with less theoretically well-stocked squads are getting plenty of joy by defending very deep and quite narrow.

Van Gaal's side seemed to completely run out of ideas against Bournemouth, and it is hard to imagine Midtjylland's number crunchers will have missed how easy it is to nullify United.

Thus, at anything less than their best, United could easily compound the embarrassment they suffered by failing to progress in the Champions League. Midtjylland have a Premier League scalp already, making into the group stage at the expense of Southampton, whom they defeated over two legs.

Their journey through the group stage was less than convincing, though, and they finished the group with a goal difference of minus-six thanks to heavy defeats at the hands of runaway group winners Napoli.

Those games showed that in spite of their recent successes, they are most certainly a side United should be beating. However, United have failed to beat plenty of sides they should have beaten already this season.

They will have to guard strenuously against complacency to avoid meeting the same fate when February rolls around and the Europa League returns from its winter break. For United fans, the only thing worse than being in the Europa League draw would be to be knocked out swiftly by relative minnows.