Shinji Kagawa: Genius or fraud?

There are divisive players and there are divisive players. Shinji Kagawa, it would seem, is certainly one of them, with the Japanese playmaker still inciting furious arguments among Manchester United fans 18 months into his Old Trafford career.


To his defenders, he is a natural technician, a creator and scorer of chances who would light up the Premier League if only he was granted a regular berth in the much-vaunted no.10 role.
His time at Dortmund proved beyond doubt his status as an elite-level performer, and he is being unappreciated, wasted, by the United coaches in the same way that Juan Veron, another silk-booted underwhelmist, was over a decade ago.

His detractors counter that no player should require their entire team to be built around them simply to be able to affect games, and that similarly non-physical technicians like Juan Mata and David Silva have flourished in the Premier League despite being shunted out wide and being forced to weave their magic from the flanks. Kagawa's failings, they argue, are a product of character as much as they are of tactics or technique.

Is has become a circular argument, of which no party has emerged as convincingly right or wrong. There can be little doubt, though, that Kagawa possess genuine talent, genuine pedigree, and David Moyes, in his current predicament, could do with the midfielder showing glimpses of his better form.
On Saturday, as the visit of Swansea ended the club’s string of defeats since the start of the year, Kagawa displayed such glimpses. His display wasn’t one of game-changing brilliance or even one of steady, screw-turning control – indeed, he was thoroughly overshadowed in both these senses by fellow support-attacker Adnan Januzaj – but it caught the eye nonetheless.



Moyes’ tactics against Swansea suited Kagawa. In the absence of his two top-billing strikers, the Scot set his side up in four bands, in a 4-2-3-1 formation, as opposed to the usual three (and a 4-4-2).
Kagawa began the game on the left-hand side (see heat map above) of Danny Welbeck’s supporting trio and his effect on the game was familiarly minimal, offering little in the way of incisive ball-playing and unable to muster an attempt at goal in a first half in which United exerted general dominance but lacked any real cutting edge.

After the interval, though, Moyes sent Kagawa out in his preferred position, the Japan international switching places with Januzaj, who was shifted from the centre to the flank, presumably to exploit the perceived (and very real) weakness of Angel Rangel at full-back.

At this point, Kagawa’s general involvement soared (see second heat map). The number of passes he made doubled (from 15 to 31) and he did his best to halt his side’s sterility, his passes not exactly splitting the opposition defence but certainly prompting intelligence in United’s attacking moves.