United under LvG: verdict so far!

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I'd hate to see a new manager, again, next season. I'd hate to have to go through all the same nonsensical rhetoric like "he needs time to make it his own team" and such. Regardless of where we finish this season, Van Gaal should stay. I can't really think of a better available option right now, and there has been several moments of positivity this season. I think people's memories are too short here. Most want Di Maria gone and he was sensational for a month prior to injury. We've played some good stuff, and I'll admit some bad stuff, but it would be rash to sack another manager after less than a year. Hopefully he does pull his head out of his ass though, we are continuing with some really pointless stuff. Rooney in midfield, refusal of Herrera, RvP and Falcao's partnership are all problems he is refusing to deal with.

As an aside, I think people are forgetting just how atrocious last season was.
 
Bojan11 said:
He only has himself to blame for not getting too four.

We look clueless away from home and I just don't get it. I made a thread about that a month ago and the usual muppets screamed knee jerk.

But I wouldn't fancy us to beat a league 2 team away from home.
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How do you know we haven't gotten top 4? We're third currently and the season has a long way to go.
 
dxadel said:
12 wins in 24 games... same as Moyes but we are 4th.

I can't decide on LVG, i hate him right now,but a 4-0 win against Burnley can change all that, i think we are capable of finishing 4th but it will go to the last day.
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It feels like losses last year are becoming draws this year, who knows if we wait a year they might become wins.
 
He's a charlatan right now. Comes with this reputation which has frankly not been met.

Resulting to hoof ball to get results. He's shown nothing as a coach of any quality. The football is dire.

His Holland team played rubbish football and were bailed out by Robben who was head and shoulders the best attacking player at the WC. The tactic was defend and get it to Robben.
 
Wait until we win a couple of games on the bounce. Then the manager becomes god incarnate again. Typical stuff.
 
We started brightly but are fading faster than a firework on November 5th. We look disjointed, uncreative and in large part it's Van Gaal's team selections that are the issue. No way is top four a certainty, far from it. Playing this badly we could easily get overtaken.

Every game feels like a 50/50, you just don't know if we will turn up. I had no confidence going into the West Ham game that we'd win it. It's alien, going into games with mid table sides thinking this could go either way. The atmosphere isn't as sour as it was under Moyes, but I am seeing no evidence of this three year plan for the title Van Gaal used to talk about.
 
The 4-diamond-2 is a shit show. It seems to leave huge swathes of the pitch with no United presence. In the absence of decent off the ball movement, the manager has to swallow his pride and mould the team to minimise its shortcomings. A basic 4-4-1-1 would make things a lot less complicated for the players to find each other.

Insisting on playing two static strikers is madness.
 
Globule said:
In another thread I said we stick with LvG if we a) get top 4 or b) finish outside the top 4 but he gets us playing good football.

The style of play hasn't improved so his only saving grace will be finishing in the CL positions. If he doesn't do that either, he should suffer the same fate as the last man who gave us dull and unsuccessful football.

I'm generally against sacking managers too quickly, but we shouldn't be accepting poor football if it doesn't yield an end result.
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This is it for me. We all know that Van Gaal is likely to be here a maximum of 3 years anyway, it's not a long term appointment like Moyes was planned to be. I never believed we'd win the league or truly challenge for the European Cup under him but hoped that he'd build a team and a style of attacking, creative football for the next manager to carry on (as he was a part of at Bayern and Barca). At the moment he's not building anything and the results haven't even been great given the huge investment in the summer. The only good thing he's done is get more out of squad players such as Fellaini and Valencia while making the genuine quality players in our team worse than they were last season (Di Maria, Rooney, Januzaj etc.)
 
Rykker_4united said:
I'd hate to see a new manager, again, next season. I'd hate to have to go through all the same nonsensical rhetoric like "he needs time to make it his own team" and such. Regardless of where we finish this season, Van Gaal should stay. I can't really think of a better available option right now, and there has been several moments of positivity this season. I think people's memories are too short here. Most want Di Maria gone and he was sensational for a month prior to injury. We've played some good stuff, and I'll admit some bad stuff, but it would be rash to sack another manager after less than a year. Hopefully he does pull his head out of his ass though, we are continuing with some really pointless stuff. Rooney in midfield, refusal of Herrera, RvP and Falcao's partnership are all problems he is refusing to deal with.

As an aside, I think people are forgetting just how atrocious last season was.
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There's going to be a lot of rash judgment because all people or a lot of what people are looking at is the infusion of cash from Champions League, which is obviously important but keeps fogging up the other priorities. We have other things to worry about like developing young players (Januzaj, Wilson, McNair, etc.), clearing out the players we have no use for anymore, and making some kind of foundation in the squad. This often can't be done in one season or even two or three but we have our managers under the ultimatum to get us top 4 right away.

There have been things LVG has done that are making me scream but he's in a position where he's trying to improve the long term health of the club while getting short-term gains at the same time. So his approach seems to be playing at both, where we play week to week on the safe side while hoping for great moments from individual players. Usually when you're trying to do two things at once, the results are muddled.
 
Today was utter shit, goddamn 352 fails so hard.

Accept it guys. Its not the system, its not just the coach. Its the players.

LVG can't be accounted for:

- RvP, Falcao missing huge chances with just clumsy shooting.
- 34567890 passes on our half landing straight in the opponents feet
- Valencia still not capable of landing a cross

Its like our players came in contact with the aliens from moron mountain and lost their skill.
 
He constantly moans about his teams lacking balance, but continues to pick the most ridiculous unbalanced lineups with players out of position all over the place.

Midfield - One midfielder (Blind) a striker (Rooney) and a winger (Januzaj)
Attacking mid - A central midfielder (Di Maria)
Up front - Two strikers who have based their careers around leading the line of their own, having to play together (RVP and Falcao)

So of our front 6, the only player that was actually playing in his natural position, was Blind.

How is that good management? How does he think thats going to work, or be balanced? The fact that we had two central midfielders and a #10 sitting on the bench just compounds matters and makes you want to tear your hair out.
 
Livewire1974 said:
LVG has won 12 out of 24 Premier League games this season, the same as David Moyes at this stage last season.
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I'm not talking about those numbers, I'm talking about how poorly we played, some of the ridiculous decisions made, the press conferences, the lack of inspiration or desire to progress at all. Moyes was a total cancer on this club. I actually hated football for that season because United was so depressing. There are more specific moments of negativity and desperation than I care to count from that season.
 
The thing is Van Gaal has probably 'Moyesed' us more than Moyes did (hard to beat, direct at times etc.) but the fact he has shows why he's a better manager. As Carragher kept saying at least he's trying things like bringing Fellaini on to launch it, Moyes always seemed too worried and inhibited by the 'United Way' which had been drilled into his head, Van Gaal doesn't give a feck.

The major worry is we don't seem to know what we are doing on the pitch, the emphasis is clearly on possession but as with under Moyes we can't do anything with it. I'm not sure how much Van Gaal has to do with players being unable to pick the right passes at the right times. In some ways he's very much to blame for us being too safe and ponderous but the players don't seem to trust themselves at all. A lot of people wanted 3-5-2 binned but our football has arguably gotten worse with the diamond, the only conceivable change is Rooney up top and Herrera in midfield in this system now and even then I don't think it's making as big a difference as people think.
 
Rezyuz said:
Today was utter shit, goddamn 352 fails so hard.

Accept it guys. Its not the system, its not just the coach. Its the players.

LVG can't be accounted for:

- RvP, Falcao missing huge chances with just clumsy shooting.
- 34567890 passes on our half landing straight in the opponents feet
- Valencia still not capable of landing a cross

Its like our players came in contact with the aliens from moron mountain and lost their skill.
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We didn't play 3-5-2 today, at any point.
 
dxadel said:
12 wins in 24 games... same as Moyes but we are 4th.

I can't decide on LVG, i hate him right now,but a 4-0 win against Burnley can change all that, i think we are capable of finishing 4th but it will go to the last day.
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12 wins in 24 games? Really? Seems rather low, you got a link mate?
 
ArmchairCritic said:
The thing is Van Gaal has probably 'Moyesed' us more than Moyes did (hard to beat, direct at times etc.) but the fact he has shows why he's better manager. As Carragher kept saying at least he's trying things like bringing Fellaini on to launch it, Moyes always seemed too worried and inhibited by the 'United Way' which had been drilled into his head, Van Gaal doesn't give a feck.

The major worry is we don't seem to know what we are doing on the pitch, the emphasis is clearly on possession but as with under Moyes we can't do anything with it. I'm not sure how much Van Gaal has to do with players being unable to pick the right passes at the right times. In some ways he's very much to blame for us being too safe and ponderous but the players don't seem to trust themselves at all. A lot of people wanted 3-5-2 binned but our football has arguably gotten worse with the diamond, the only conceivable change is Rooney up top and Herrera in midfield in this system now and even then I don't think it's making as big a difference as people think.
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You make some excellent points. We have become very hard to beat and we don't allow many goals. Although Moyes constantly battered on about being tough to beat, he never actually achieved that. Van Gaal has. He can obviously coach things into players.
 
I don't get him. He makes so many irrational decisions I do not understand it’s baffling. Why does he rate Falcao and RvP over Rooney? Why does he play Rooney constantly out of position (I can understand we need him there in emergency situation but right now we have available midfielders)? Why doesn’t he rate Herrera because he’s not good enough defensively but plays Januzaj on the left of the diamond? Why does Jones play instead of Smalling?

He just does so many weird decisions every week I do not understand him.

There are debatable decisions and there are simply wrong decisions. I don’t think he’s taking us forward at all. I have no idea what to expect now.
 
I think LvG has been in la-la land for a good few months. He needs to come back down to earth and settle a few issues in his mind.
 
Dante said:
The 4-diamond-2 is a shit show. It seems to leave huge swathes of the pitch with no United presence. In the absence of decent off the ball movement, the manager has to swallow his pride and mould the team to minimise its shortcomings. A basic 4-4-1-1 would make things a lot less complicated for the players to find each other.

Insisting on playing two static strikers is madness.
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The 442 diamond is not the issue mate, Its his fecking team selections that are. Playing the clubs best CF as a midfielder and leaving £100 million of midfield talent on the bench is utterly utterly ridiculous. Rooney up top, Herrera in midfield with Blind and ADM and we'd have looked a totally different side today.
 
If I were to rank his signings so far this season:

Blind > Rojo > Shaw > Di Maria > Herrera > Falcao
 
Moyes would not complicate things. He'd play everyone in their natural positions in 4-2-3-1 or something similar and probably get more points with this squad.
 
He should be given another summer to sign the players he needs. The squad is still horrifically unbalanced. Van Gaal needs to get rid of the deadwood and needs to bring in players like Depay, De Jong, Strootman, Marquinhos etc and if the performances don't improve next season then he needs to go but he has probably done enough so far to be given another transfer window to strengthen the team how he see's fit
 
Rezyuz said:
It was sarcasm. As everyone always blames our play on the 352 and today we played pretty much the fan favorite XI/formation and we were still shit.
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Fan favourite XI with 1 midfielder and Rooney in CM? Whose fan favourite, Liverpool's?
 
Rykker_4united said:
You make some excellent points. We have become very hard to beat and we don't allow many goals. Although Moyes constantly battered on about being tough to beat, he never actually achieved that. Van Gaal has. He can obviously coach things into players.
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It's just we've sacrificed creativity to become hard to beat. With the players we have, both traits should be do-able.
 
Only positives since he took over is he's managed to get the players belief back and has cleared out deadwood from the squad, everything else has been gash.
 
I'm still coming to terms with how he played Rooney & Januzaj in midfield ahead of Herrera and Fellaini. Even Mata.
 
Its not so much the results but the fact that we do not seem to have improved from last season at all. There's no direction.
 
Rezyuz said:
It was sarcasm. As everyone always blames our play on the 352 and today we played pretty much the fan favorite XI/formation and we were still shit.
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I don’t think any sensible poster would say 3-5-2 is the beginning and the end of our problems. Our biggest problem right now is we’re not drawing conclusions, or we’re doing it too slow.

Jippy said:
It's just we've sacrificed creativity to become hard to beat. With the players we have, both traits should be do-able.
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Exactly. But we have to build a midfield first, what means playing one striker. I don’t think we have played that way even once this season.

Kostur said:
Fan favourite XI with 1 midfielder and Rooney in CM? Whose fan favourite, Liverpool's?
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:lol:
 
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Ringo 07 said:
He should be given another summer to sign the players he needs. The squad is still horrifically unbalanced. Van Gaal needs to get rid of the deadwood and needs to bring in players like Depay, De Jong, Strootman, Marquinhos etc and if the performances don't improve next season then he needs to go but he has probably done enough so far to be given another transfer window to strengthen the team how he see's fit
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If he fails to achieve the minimum target with the squad he has then why throw good money after bad? Like Moyes before him he has to earn the summer transfer window and currently he us falling far short. We are failing because of the decisions he is making nit because of deficiencies in the squad.
 
The performances are hideously bad, thats what concerns me over the results, not just that but we're still seeing the same trends from the last 3-4 years manifested too often, lack of urgency my biggest complaint, we come still come into games in 1st gear far too often and it's costing us.
 
His last prezza gave me a bit more insight. He seems totally absorbed with what he calls our multi-functional players and about finding a new position for a player to play in.

I'm beginning to wonder whether he's too obsessed with coaching players in his squad whereas Mourinho couldn't care less about things like the development and the re-inventing of players.
 
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