Louis van Gaal arrived with a lot of fanfare and after the depressing Moyes, he was quite the breath of fresh air. He also talked a good talk, too, and United fans like me were quite optimistic.
Despite a 10 match unbeaten run in the league, it's all gone a little pear-shaped now, and United were lucky to escape with a draw last night. Even during the unbeaten run, we were lucky against West Brom (away), Stoke at home and Southampton (away) where we absolutely stole the 3 points.
van Gaal has changed and tinkered and tried to impose his 3-5-2 formation, only to change it now to a hybrid 4-1-3-2, and sometimes 4-4-2 diamond. Whatever it is, it's not working, and the end-product on the field is turgid and toothless. We scraped a draw "thumping the ball forward" at WH according to Allardyce.
Previously talented and explosive players like Di Maria, Januzaj, Falcao have all disappeared or look disinterested, whilst creative, intelligent and useful role players like Valencia, Rafael, Herrera, Mata and even Rooney, have either not been given the chance, lost their heads completely, or totally fallen off the grid.
It's telling that in the last 2-3 months, our consistently best players have been Blind, Carrick and Fellaini, and before he got injured, Ashley f**king Young was our best option on the left wing. If you'd told me all that at the end of last season, any normal United fan would have said - WTF?!
There's something fundamentally wrong with the team, and I can tell you it's one of these few things -
1. Key players lacking confidence - Robin van Persie is too good a player not to be able to adjust to a different coach, esp one who made him captain of his national team at the World Cup a few months earlier. Valencia / Young / Rafael / Jones / Evans - all these players were key players in Fergie's teams just 2-3 years back (even if they weren't great), and you don't simply become completely useless in a matter of months.
2. Lack of leadership - Rooney as captain was quite revealing when announced, and I'm guessing there are some senior players who didn't take that decision too well. I'm not saying that Rooney is disliked or disrespected, but if he's running around shouting at the rest, I'm thinking van Persie, or Di Maria, or even Falcao or Mata might just not be listening too hard.
3. Discord in dressing room - This is a consequence of 1 and 2 above, and despite all the publicly positive tweets from players alike, I believe that the dressing room is not a completely united one. The youngsters look damn scared on the field, whilst some of the seniors players appear not to give a shit at times.
It's also interesting to re-examine the list of the main players who have left - Kagawa / Welbeck / Zaha / Fletcher. These may not have been great players (except Kagawa), but it was clear but the time each of them were sold, that they had lost confidence in themselves, or in van Gaal or vice-versa. Question is - if van Gaal somehow thinks Fellaini is a good player, how come not Kagawa? And given his paucity in midfield earlier this season, why didn't Anderson get a run?
All the above points to one man in particular - Louis van Gaal.
Lack of leadership, confidence and dressing room discord - these are all issues of man management, and I strongly believe that was David Moyes's biggest problem (which was why Vidic and Evra left too soon), and why Fergie has been missed terribly. Even someone like van Gaal (who is undisputably a winner and excellent coach-trainer) is finding it tough to change mindsets, and pre-existing tendencies around.
He's doing a good job of selling himself so far this season, but the table and stats don't lie. United right now aren't doing much better than when Moyes was in charge, and we are only in the top 4 because everyone else except Chelsea is playing badly. And this is after Woodward and van Gaal spent > 150B pounds.
Time will tell whether my gut feelings above are borne out or not, but a team like this on paper should be cake-walking all over the Premier League. Yes, even with a defence featuring Smalling and Evans.
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