Even when Louis van Gaal was right, he was wrong. The Manchester United manager spent Friday expounding on his theory that the Premier League is harder than its counterparts abroad because every club possesses the money to compete.
His team then duly lost to a Bournemouth side whose starting XI cost the princely sum of £1.7 million (Dh9.4m) in transfer fees? Part of the charm of this Bournemouth team is that they represent something of a throwback to the days when unheralded players were acquired for bargain fees in lower leagues.
In contrast, Van Gaal’s team reflect the 21st-century game. He has spent £285m in 18 months. The sums are staggering. The football is mundane. The results are deteriorating.
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Van Gaal’s other argument on Friday was to complain about expectations. The answer is simple: if you object to expectations, don’t manage Manchester United.
They come with the territory.
One who has managed Barcelona and Bayern Munich ought to realise that. Perhaps, at some level, he is as bewildered as most others by the expensive mediocrity of his reign.
Certainly, it is some time since he grandly outlined his three-year plan: finish in the top four, win the Premier League and then the Uefa Champions League. He has accomplished the first. The others are not impossible yet, but are looking ever more unlikely. Van Gaal may yet go into retirement with a crowning glory, but the greater probability is that he will depart as a fading force whose judgment has proved faulty too often.
Van Gaal is accustomed to being right, in his own mind at least. His major victories with United – the spring triple-header against Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and Manchester City, or October’s triumph at Everton – have all been notable for the sure touch he has displayed.
Yet they seem ever rarer. The 3-0 defeat at Arsenal was a day when Van Gaal’s every choice, whether in his game plan or his team selection, backfired. It was a precursor of things to come.
Management at elite level is about decision making. To some extent, it is at any level, but clubs of United’s wealth afford greater opportunities to decide. Mistakes come at a greater cost, whether financial or footballing.
Sooner or later, errors catch up with the perpetrator. Van Gaal’s have in recent weeks. He took a cavalier approach – not mirrored in his cautious on-field tactics – to compiling his squad. Losing seven players to various injuries at the same time was not his fault. Leaving United undermanned in pivotal positions, however, was. The consensus in the summer was that he ought to buy a central defender. Even though Jonny Evans was sold, he did not. It mattered not during their run of clean sheets. When Chris Smalling was sidelined, it did.
Allowing three strikers to leave and only importing one placed too great a burden on Anthony Martial’s shoulders. The Frenchman remains a threat but has not scored a league goal since September.
He ignored evidence of Wayne Rooney’s decline to install the captain as his preferred centre-forward. Four months into the season, he has fewer league goals than Norwich City defender Russell Martin. Hindsight was not required to suggest that letting Javier Hernandez go was a blunder. The Mexican is the sort of predator United lack. Hernandez has scored 15 goals since October 20. United have mustered a mere 10 in that time.
Factor in selections that look rather more random than evidence of any grand plan and Van Gaal’s credibility decreases with every left-field move.
Nick Powell, unused for 15 months was sent on for Juan Mata and ahead of Ashley Young and the prodigy Andreas Pereira to try to rescue their Champions League fortunes in Wolfsburg. The 21-year-old Englishman was strangely summoned against Bournemouth to replace Marouane Fellaini who, ungainly as he is, was United's major threat.
At such moments, Van Gaal’s industrial quantities of self-belief cannot shield him from accusations he is wrong: wrong in those individual decisions and, more significantly, wrong for United in general.
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