Reaction to Chelsea: Sometimes Louis Just Can't Win

I read much of the social media reaction to United's draw with Chelsea yesterday with some mirth and a small dollop of dismay.

Admittedly many shared my own view, welcoming the spirit in which United approached the game, tempered by inevitable regret that we just weren't able to see it out.

Others seemed to see it differently and it was hard not to detect in their reaction a clear sense of double standards.   Lingard, having had many of the United Twitter contingent calling for his head at half time, would not of course been on the pitch to score his wonder goal had they had their way.  At full-time many of the same observers were lambasting Van Gaal for having the temerity to do what they'd been asking him to do and take him off.

Interestingly, their rationale appeared to be that, in bringing on Memphis for Lingard, we'd taken off a player more suited to defending a one goal lead, replacing him with one more likely to go out and attack.  The manager had done, in other words, what they'd been asking him to do all season.  

And that's to leave aside the inevitable conclusion from anyone paying attention to the game that Lingard, before he came off, was clearly tiring.   'So bring on Herrera instead' they might have screamed.  But that would have meant taking Mata out of his central role, something else they've been screaming at Van Gaal to do all season.

I do think that, with regards to certain sections of the United support, the Reds boss is in a position of damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.  I've certainly been critical of him myself this season, but I'll applaud any United manager when he attempts to win and win in the right way.  That's unquestionably what he did yesterday and, when he does that, he deserves far more from us than nit-picking on the sidelines from those who don't have to answer to anybody for their erratic and inconsistent views.

Words Betray United's Real Problem: Lack of Focus

When asked if they can still win the championship this season, the default answer from Van Gaal and his players is consistently a defiant 'yes'.  The latest in a long line of such forecasts comes from Michael Carrick, here.

It's a very telling response.  No doubt its intention is to convey an impression of self-belief to the outside world: no matter how unconvincing we've looked this season, it wants to say, within the camp we're still convinced we can do it. 

Only it really betrays something else: a sense that no one really believes it, least of all the manager and the players themselves.

Any club that truly aspires to be champions at this stage of the season inevitably gives a far more cautious response to such a question: witness the guarded, taking-one-game-at-a-time answers given by Ranieri or Pochettino.  It's not so much that they're concerned at how foolish they'll look if their proclamation turns out to be ill-founded (otherwise known as 'Doing a Brendan Rodgers'); it's more that, cliched as it may be, keeping a focus on that next game is really all that matters in football.

Any manager worth his salt knows this.  If you make the target something too far off in the distance, something too difficult to grasp, you risk taking your eyes off the more immediate aim: three points in the next game.   

Van Gaal, whatever faults may have been detected in his make-up of late, is too experienced a manager not to know this too.  That's why a response like 'yes, we can still win the league' not only really means its opposite, it's also indicative of far too much concern about what other people think.  Most of all it betrays a lack of focus that's been United's real problem all season.

Van Gaal v The Press - Another Goalless Draw

Such is my low regard for the mainstream media in this country, I normally find it hard not to sympathise with anyone under attack from them, especially when it's an employee of United.

The number of times Louis Van Gaal has been 'sacked' according to the press in the last few weeks is certainly worthy of ridicule, yet sympathy will be in short supply among a lot of United fans and, for once, I find myself among them.

He's an experienced manager who, last season, dealt with journalists with a refreshing, if sometimes surprising, honesty and frankness.  When United had played badly his post-match comments reflected this and indeed he often seemed as angry as anyone about his team's under-performance, something which generally brought him favour among Reds fans.

Now, however, Van Gaal appears to have retreated into the same kind of defensiveness exhibited by his teams.   His analyses of games have become too often reminiscent of those offered by Moyes in his final months at the helm.  We were asked to accept that United preventing a League One side like Sheffield United from having any shots on target was somehow worthy of praise, while Saturday's abject display against Southampton was, Van Gaal assured us, a contest between two well-organised sides that the Reds might have been 'lucky' enough to win.

It's hard to imagine that the Van Gaal of last year would have made such observations and equally hard not to greet such remarks with contempt.  Sorry Louis, my regard for the British press remains as low as ever, but you really ought to be old and experienced enough both to know better and do better.

United 0 Southampton 1 - Reflections

I always thought the main disappointment of playing Subbuteo as a kid was its lack of realism.   You could, after all, only flick one player at a time while every other player on the field remained immobile.  That wasn't what real football was like.

At Old Trafford yesterday, I decided I might have to re-evaluate that.  In terms of realism, Subbuteo resembles Louis Van Gaal's United all too accurately.  Not for the first time, the player on the ball struggled to find a team mate due to the apparent inability of anyone else on his team to move and find space.  

United's performance was encapsulated in a five minute period before half-time.  Twice a player picked up the ball in a promising midfield position.  On both occasions the ball was played around among almost static colleagues until it finished up back in defence.  Southampton were already wasting time by this point, but they didn't need to: we we wasting it for them.

Instinctively, I'm not the kind of football supporter who likes to criticise his manager.  I really hoped that, given time, Van Gaal's United would add some fluency to the tactical model he's bestowed on us.  After all, the Under-21s adopt the same formation and are playing some fabulous stuff.   Could the senior team not manage something like the same level of performance?  Instead, it's got worse.   

When it wasn't your turn at Subbuteo and you had to watch your mates play, it was a pretty dull experience.  I usually ended up outside playing with the dog.  Subbuteo didn't really work as a spectator sport.  Enough said.

United at Liverpool: A Lot to Shout About

 

Let's face it, it was predictable, following United's victory at Anfield on Sunday, that Liverpool fans and players alike would scratch around for something to moan about to deflect attention from their own side's shortcomings.  It's what they do.

 

What I didn't expect, however, was that they'd do United and Louis Van Gaal such a favour in the process.  The revelations that Liverpool players could hear United players shouting at each other in the dressing room at half-time were presumably intended to portray a sense of disharmony among the Reds.  In fact they did nothing of the sort. 

 

Among the many gripes sections of the United support have had against Van Gaal this season was the sense that too little of this kind of thing was going on.  Behind the concerns levelled at some of the methodical yawn-fests we've sat through this season has been a suspicion of a lack of passion both on the bench and on the pitch. 

 

Personally I've no problem with the manager sitting down during the match: there are different ways to manage a team and I'd prefer that to some of the clearly contrived histrionics on display from Jurgen Klopp on Sunday.

 

I know many of my colleagues disagree, though, and I certainly share their concerns about a sense of edginess on the pitch this season, not just in terms of the performances, but the impression that the players looked too inhibited to express themselves fully.  That they didn't, in their hearts of hearts, really want to be there.  Even, perhaps, that they didn't really care enough.

 

No one is going to assume that the one fairly unconvincing swallow on display at Anfield is going to make a glorious summer.  But at least we now know that the players care.  They're willing to row among themselves to put right the things we've been urging them to put right.  And they clearly believe that victory at Anfield is important, important enough to shout about.  Important not just to the fans, but to  them too.

 

So thank you Liverpool FC.  Thank you for being so woefully inept as to allow our own mediocre performance to result in three points.  But thank you even more for letting us know our players care.  Over to you Louis to put this gift from an unexpected source to good use.