MANCHESTER // Louis van Gaal will be put under further scrutiny on Monday evening when his Manchester United side face Chelsea in the Premier League at Old Trafford.
Following the club’s fourth successive defeat at Stoke, their worst league run since 1961, the Dutchman was asked whether he would still be in charge of United for the Chelsea game.
“You’ll have to wait and see, but I think so,” he told journalists.
Asked if he thought he could see improvement ahead of the Chelsea game, he replied: “It is very difficult because we have to recover. We start already after our bus travel (from Stoke) and we have to prepare also the game.
“It’s very tough to do that.”
When a tired looking Van Gaal was asked if he had run out of ideas to lift his players’ confidence, he said: “No” before conceding: “When you lose four matches in a row it is much more difficult.
“The pressure of the environment shall increase. There are no artificial ways to solve that. We need a victory, that’s very important. But now we only can recover, we cannot change.”
Van Gaal was asked if he expected his players to be mentally stronger in the situation.
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“No,” Van Gaal said. “I’ve seen also in my other jobs that when you lose in a top team it is always more difficult to cope with your environment.
“You cannot say in Manchester it is much more different. You see players cope with pressure in a different way.”
When Van Gaal was asked why his football philosophy, which had been so successful at his previous clubs, was not working at United, he said: “A month ago we were first in the Premier League. We lost important games and now we have to come back in more difficult situations than last year.
“Last year everybody believes there was progress, now everybody is judging different and you have to cope with it.”
Van Gaal’s English is imperfect and open to misinterpretation, but while the club have given no indication that they will dismiss him, he cannot continue to lose games if for no other reason than failure to finish in the top four will represent a huge failure for their expensively assembled squad.
Players met their manager this week and ironed out issues that irked them about their preparation, but while they showed a fight in the second half at Stoke City that pleased the 2,500 travelling fans, the team still looked devoid of confidence in the first half.
In the words of Van Gaal: “We don’t dare to play football.”
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Had one predicted that United would be sixth and without a win in seven games in all competitions at the end of the year and Chelsea would stand 15th, they would have been advised to seek medical help, but the league table does not lie.
Chelsea have dismissed their manager, Jose Mourinho, and there is constant speculation that United will get rid of Van Gaal. Mourinho would be a popular choice with fans.
The club are reluctant to dance to his agenda, and it is believed that a flurry of stories linking Mourinho to the Real Madrid and England jobs are designed to put pressure on United to appoint the Portuguese manager. United are also loath to succumb to what they consider to be media demands, but with every defeat comes more pressure for change.
After the defeat at Stoke, Van Gaal said that he is capable of quitting by himself, but he refused to say whether he is considering his own future.
After such a poor run of results and with United’s goal average of 1.22 per game the lowest since 1989, Van Gaal would have been hounded out of most clubs by fans.
At Old Trafford, he will have 72,500 squarely behind him at the start of the Chelsea game.
If those fans see fight and determination and if United play well and get a result, it could be a turning point. If, as has been the case more often than not under Van Gaal, the team play poorly and struggle to score, the desire to change the manager will grow ever stronger.
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