It seems like the glory days of Manchester United are behind them, although they have lost only once in their last 18 games, their fans, commentators and critics are saying it seems Van Gaal is parading players who are simply shadows of themselves. It seems they lack the fluent, expansive football played with pace and panache or like Matt Busby said “At Manchester United we strive for perfection and if we fail we might just have to settle for excellence”.
In their game against Burnley, although they won 3 -1; they were greatly outclassed by a struggling team and 2 of the goals scored were from Centre half Chris Smalling, a midfielder who was not expected to even start in the first place, it seemed like stars Wayne Rooney, Robin Van Persie and Radamel Falcao were either asleep or had a bad night as they were virtually anonymous throughout the Match.
In a press conference afterwards, even Coach Van Gaal
admitted that the match was “not good”. He was quoted as saying “I’m happy we can win when we are playing not well. But I didn’t see any progression and that’s not good. Burnley was the better team, they played the ball along the
floor and we didn’t”. In addition to dealing with these issues, Van Gaal has
been under fire for his four page dossier combating the claim that United play “long-ball”
game as well being attacked on Twitter by both Colombian celebrities, sport
commentators and fans for not featuring Falcao who he got on loan from Monaco
in August 2014 in Matches, he has been called “Mr. Evil”. According to sports photographer
Andres Romero Torres “Anyone with blood in their veins knows benching Falcao is
ridiculous. An eternal legend, eternal hate for Van Gaal”.
Although United seemed to be on the road to finishing
third in the premier league and are still in the FA Cup, one still wonders can
Louis Van Gaal fulfill his dream of winning the premiership in the 3 years or
are we looking at a David Moyes’ fiasco just waiting to happen, in my opinion, Van Gaal will need a huge transfer kitty to restore United’s reputation as English
football’s great entertainers.
