The Pogba problem: The new midfield and the threat it poses to the £89m Manchester United star

Results change perceptions. Nothing is ever devoid of its context and, after an impressive performance in Manchester United’s 4-1 win over Leicester City on Saturday, the pressure has eased somewhat on Paul Pogba. He scored one goal, had a part in Juan Mata’s strike and generally looked a bit more like the sort of player who might cost a world-record fee than he has done. But major questions remain, most fundamental of them the issue of exactly how he is best deployed.

It’s not an issue that has just emerged at United. It was there too with France in the summer and there are times when Pogba himself seems a little unclear to what he is best doing. He has spoken of being “a new type” of midfielder, a player who can work the length of the pitch, both making tackles and scoring goals. That, of course, is what central midfielders used to do in the eighties and nineties: the likes of Bryan Robson, Roy Keane and Lothar Matthaus would amend their roles according to the opposition and the state of the game, but would be expected both to protect the back four and to get forward to score eight to a dozen goals a season.

But that was then, when it was common to think of teams as being made up of three bands: defence, midfield and attack; a 4-4-2 or a 4-3-3. The tendency now is to separate the midfield into two parts so a formation has four bands: 4-2-3-1 has probably been the most common formation over the past two decades, while even a modern 4-3-3 is often in reality a 4-1-2-3.

To an extent that’s an issue of notation. Robson at United, for instance, was liberated by the presence of Ray Wilkins playing in a more defensive way alongside him. But there is more to it than that. There’s a reason that the notation has changed; it reflects how midfields have changed, how much more common it is to have attacking and defensive midfielders rather than all-rounders and how much more delineated those roles are.

And that, in turn, causes a problem for the likes of Pogba. Steven Gerrard suffered something similar. He was a player who could do everything. He could shoot, he could cross, he could dribble, he could tackle. The problem was that he didn’t have the positional sense or the discipline to play as the holding player (and to field him there would have negated two of his great strengths: his shooting and his surging runs) and he wasn’t quite subtle or technically gifted enough to operate behind a striker. His best role would probably have been on the right of a midfield three, just as Frank Lampard thrived on the left of a midfield three at Chelsea, but the make-up of Liverpool’s squad meant that was only occasionally possible.

Pogba is in a similar position. “People expect too much of him because he has above-average technique," the France coach Didier Deschamps said during the Euros. "He's not there to make the crowd rise every time he touches the ball. I've told him that sometimes he needs to play in a neutral way. He's a midfielder, not a number 10."

But Deschamps never satisfactorily answered the question of how to use him. Played in a 4-2-3-1, Pogba always seemed restricted, something perhaps best demonstrated by his performance in the semi-final against Germany when he responded to the second-half introduction of N’Golo Kante for Dimitri Payet and a shift from 4-2-3-1 to 4-3-3. He promptly surged forward, regained possession, created space with some trickery and put in the cross that led to France’s second goal.

At the beginning of this season, Thierry Henry asked Pogba where he felt most comfortable. “I would say midfielder on the left. If you play a three I can play on the right or left, but I feel more comfortable to play on my left. I can do it [playing as a holding midfielder], but I feel more comfortable a bit higher.” That had been evident at the Euros, and it was how he was used at Juventus, whether in a 3-5-2 or a 4-3-3, yet United so far have tended to use him as the more-attacking of the deep-lying pair in a 4-2-3-1.

“It’s true Pogba is not playing his best yet,” his agent Mino Raiola admitted last week. “He is taking time to adjust but people don’t always see the bigger picture.” In another interview, though, he too made the point about where Pogba is best deployed. “Pogba still has to find his place in the team,” he said. “My preferred position for him: left attacking midfielder.”

When he plays deep, his tendency is to drift. “He seems to be a little all over the place at times,” Paul Scholes said earlier this month. "I think he’s trying to do too much now on the ball. He’s trying to beat three or four players, a lot of the time he’s running with the ball.”

But that’s a function of him playing so deep. The issue at United is that Jose Mourinho began the season apparently intending to field Wayne Rooney as a number 10 – and if he does that, then the shape is almost certainly going to be a 4-2-3-1. That said, United’s two attempts at 4-3-3 this season, away against Feyenoord and away at Watford (when Rooney played as a midfielder), ended in defeat.

The 4-2-3-1 was back for the 4-1 win over Leicester, with Juan Mata rather than Rooney in the number 10 role. The result was emphatic and the performance much-improved, but it was a slightly strange game, three of the goals coming from corners as Leicester imploded in the final 15 minutes of the first half. Because Leicester sat so deep, Pogba was able to advance, leaving Ander Herrera to hold, but that’s not a solution that will always be applicable. Certainly for the game away at Liverpool on October 18, there will need to be more defensive cover.

Mourinho has said that Pogba’s role will change game by game, and that is the advantage of having a player with such a range of gifts. At the moment, though, it still feels as though he hasn’t quite worked out how his players best fit together. Pogba’s role is perhaps the biggest conundrum of all.