Louis van Gaal's claim Manchester United have exceeded expectations is nonsenseThe Dutchman has undeniably made progress at Old Trafford in recent weeks - but the truth is United are merely achieving the bare minimum, says Jason Burt
By Jason Burt
4:08PM BST 16 Apr 2015
By beating Manchester City last Sunday Manchester United achieved a landmark less worthy of celebration – and more of relief. They surpassed their points total in the Premier League for the whole of the 2013-14 season.
The victory took Louis Van Gaal’s United to 65 points – from just 32 matches – one point more than David Moyes’ United achieved for the whole of the previous campaign when the club slumped from being champions to finishing seventh.
It is through that prism that Van Gaal, unsurprisingly, wants to be judged. Not through the prism of sitting third in the table having not challenged for the top at any point this season and having crashed out of both domestic cup competitions.
Not through the prism of having spent £150million last summer in addition to the £64million spent under Moyes to add to a squad stuffed full of Premier League and Champions League winners.
After all, it is not as if United were being roused from years of decline by Van Gaal. It was one bad season – albeit a very bad league season for a variety of reasons, many beyond Moyes’ control - and although it exposed the huge amount of work that needed to be done to re-structure the club it was hardly coming from an uncompetitive base.
Neither does Van Gaal want this season to be seen through the prism of not being involved in European football at all this season, meaning he has had more time than any other manager in the so-called ‘big clubs’ to work with his players on the training ground.
United travel to Chelsea on Saturday for what will be only their 39th competitive fixture of the campaign. For Chelsea it will be their 48th. That is a huge difference. Arsenal have already played 48 times, City 45 times, Liverpool 51 times and Tottenham Hotspur also 51 times.
If United beat Chelsea it will provide the most compelling piece of evidence yet that they are back and that Van Gaal has made significant progress. But even then they will still be five points behind the leaders, who will have a game in hand.
Closing that gap further - not sitting in third place – should be when Van Gaal feels moved to congratulate himself. “When you win, third place is reachable,” he said ahead of last Sunday’s impressive 4-2 win over City before an ecstatic Old Trafford crowd. “A month ago nobody was thinking that, beside me, of course. That is good because then we have done better than the goal we set in pre-season.”
Really? Have United, as Van Gaal appears to suggest, surpassed expectation? Did they fall so far that fourth was good enough, and third unexpected?
United are third in the table. Not first. They may yet finish higher this season, but surely not winning anything - or even being in contention to win anything - cannot equate to "doing better” at a club like United?
The club’s executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward stated that third place was the aim in his presentations to financial investors at the start of the season, although United always budget for third place and have done so for the past decade. It is a financial rather than a sporting measure. United do not aim to finish third.
But even if it was the club’s goal then surely it was not Van Gaal’s? Does he really think third place is a cause for celebration?
There is the relief of being back in the Champions League – although if they do finish fourth they will have to negotiate a qualifying tie. Presumably it will also be a staging post for a more sustained challenge next season, not just in the league but in the cups.
No manager can guarantee he will win titles. Not even Jose Mourinho. What the best managers can guarantee, though, is that their team will be competitive and competitive means being in contention to win trophies right until the end – being in the title race, reaching semi-finals and finals. Van Gaal has not achieved that at United. Not yet anyway.
Van Gaal is undoubtedly a great manager but he has a long way to go still at United to proving he is competitive with them, even if
his track record rightly demands that he is given time to do that.
United have won six league matches in a row although, in reality, it is only the last four of those performances – against Spurs, Liverpool, Aston Villa and City – that have been convincing and have provided substantive reasons to believe that things have been turned around.
It was only a month ago that the grumblings of discontent were getting louder simply because there was no clear sign that Van Gaal had forged an identity and had implemented his “philosophy”.
Four matches is not a great deal of evidence to go on although the return in that period of the United swagger - something the supporters so desperately crave - has been almost as important as the results.
Why has it taken Van Gaal so long? One reason is because it always does although quite why it took him so long to turn back to his favoured 4-3-3 formation, but which he appears to have lost belief in through taking a more pragmatic approach in recent jobs, is puzzling. There has been muddled thinking.
Van Gaal said it would take him three months before he should be judged – a timeframe he later regretted setting – and the facts are that his methods do not always provide instant success.
That is completely understandable. Logically it means that United are committed to at least fulfilling the three years of his contract to see the full benefit of his work. Logically it also means they have to be serious title challengers from day one of next season.
The fact that
the club are also planning up to five first-team signings this summer suggests that they, too, believe there is a long way to go before United are truly competitive again – but they expect to achieve that quickly.
Van Gaal wants a ‘No6’ central midfielder, which will be his key signing, a right-sided central defender, a right-back, a right-winger and a striker. Then he hopes United will be on the right track.
But the bottom line is that what Van Gaal has achieved so far at United is the bare minimum. He has not over-achieved. He appears to have delivered a top-four finish and with it Champions League football while finally producing a style of play that is more in keeping with the club’s traditions.
But it is just the minimum. No more. By no stretch of the imagination or interpretation of either the situation he inherited at United or the results he has so far delivered since he has been there can Van Gaal claim to have over-achieved.
That could change quickly of course, if Chelsea are beaten on Saturday. It could even change the landscape of the Premier League season.
A more accurate description of what is happening at United right now has been by Wayne Rooney. “It is starting to click with us,” the United captain said.
Starting to click is right. It is, finally, a start.
www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/manchester-united/11542413/Louis-van-Gaal-claim-Manchester-United-have-exceded-expectations-is-nonsense.html____________________________________________________________________________________
Burt seems a little angry that we're not in the title race like he predicted himself:
) but we'd be mad to sell him immediately without at least a proper look at what he can do now in the pre-season. We all know that he is a confidence player and if played in a settled team that is full of that, I'm more than sure he'd be a very valuable asset to have.
