Why Lingard’s winner wasn’t in Van Gaal’s master plan
For those tacking towards sympathy for Louis van Gaal — handed the FA Cup one minute and, it seems, his P45 the next — do not forget this: by the strict doctrines the manager has imposed at Manchester United, Jesse Lingard’s winning goal is not meant to happen.
Well, not like that, anyway. one of Van Gaal’s orders, among the many ways he has stifled one of the most attractive football clubs in the world, in fact, is that strikers take a touch in the penalty area before shooting. He believes this allows for better accuracy, which it does. It also allows defenders more time to block and leads to players thinking when they should be responding purely on instinct. That is what Lingard did against Crystal Palace on Saturday. See ball, hit ball, they call it in cricket.
Players who failed to obey would have their errors highlighted in evaluation sessions overseen by video analyst Max reckers the day after games, and if that sounds a little bit like a show trial, you can perhaps see why the mood at Manchester United hasn’t always been great.
Now Van Gaal isn’t a fool. Those who shot first time and scored would not be criticised. The manager recognised that was an argument that could never be won. Yet any misses were pointed out and the culprits reminded of the manager’s wish. And utilising this wisdom, Manchester United — a club built on cavalier spirit — scored fewer goals than any team in the top 11 clubs, bar Stoke City, and one more than 17thplaced Sunderland.
At his Wembley press conference on Saturday, as Van Gaal thrust the FA Cup in the direction of his critics — if he could have hit them with it, he would — the world was invited to reimagine the definition of genius. Fifteen points behind Leicester: genius. outside the Champions League with the world’s richest club: genius. Beating Sheffield United, Derby and Shrewsbury Town en route to the FA Cup final, a winning six-match run that Van Gaal insists on referring to as a title: genius. Van Gaal reviewed the final through his eyes only.
His selections, his substitutions, his problems with yet more injuries. He gave credit to his players for winning so many FA Cup matches late — Wayne rooney and Anthony Martial scored in the 93rd minute against Sheffield United and Everton, while Martial equalised in the 83rd minute to earn a replay with West Ham — but never thought to wonder why that didn’t happen more often in league matches. Cup runs are streaky. United got streaky.
In the league, a 38-match forensic examination of a club’s qualities, they were the fifth-best team, despite Van Gaal spending enormous money and inheriting the core of a championshipwinning side. And the title — the real title — was won this season by Leicester, who have not finished above United when competing in the same division since 1974. Tottenham have finished above them six times in that period, including this season.
The video sessions are illuminating, because they go some way to explaining why Van Gaal’s Manchester United so often seemed to lose their way. At Wembley on Saturday they started well in the first half, then petered out, did the same in the second half, and only got going again once rooney sparked them into life after Jason Puncheon scored. United play like a team that are self- conscious, so intent on correctness, perhaps because they are.
The video sessions didn’t just highlight hastiness in the penalty area. Positional failings, poor passing decisions, all were methodically exposed in front of the rest of the team. It became so demoralising that two senior players, rooney and Michael Carrick, went to Van Gaal and asked him to stop. To his credit, he agreed. Then the same criticisms began arriving, individually, by email.
Players would ignore them, but the management would check the message had been opened. So now the players open them — although that isn’t the same as reading them. The ones with time for Van Gaal no doubt take his views on board; others will be less receptive. David de Gea is believed to be one who is increasingly dissatisfied.
What made Manchester United great under Sir Alex Ferguson was the freespiritedness. They didn’t make it up as they went along, no good team do, but they played with the natural instinct of great footballers. ‘You’re a Liverpool player now, you work it out,’ as Kenny Dalglish told ray Houghton when the new signing asked what he was expected to do at corners.
That inspiration is what has been lost this season, and it was why Marcus rashford seemed such a revelation. He did not arrive on a diet of emails and evaluations and played like a United player of old. When rooney went on the run that dragged United back into the Cup final on Saturday, it was the first time he had entered the Crystal Palace penalty area.
rooney is a midfielder for United now but, even when he was not, the instruction under Van Gaal was control, lay off, get into the box and wait, then if the ball comes take a touch. rooney’s run is another example of a United player going delightfully, and successfully, off message.
HEHAS a personality strong enough to do that, but for a new acquisition, such as Angel di Maria, the conditions imposed by Van Gaal were ruinous. The official explanation for a club record signing, gone in 11 months, is that he couldn’t settle in Manchester after a burglary. He denies this.
‘It’s not that I couldn’t settle, more that they didn’t let me settle,’ he said last month. ‘I don’t think it was my fault or the fault of my team-mates. Every time I was given the opportunity, I did all I could but it didn’t work out as I hoped. I started a game in one position, then the next game in another. I scored goals playing in one position, then suddenly the next game I was picked to play in a different position.
‘It’s up to the manager to decide where and how every player should play, but I think that the player should be comfortable in that position and have time to adapt to it. I left and that team are still playing the same way — out of the European competitions, far from being champions of the Premier League.’
Di Maria, meanwhile, won Ligue 1 with Paris Saint-Germain. A genuine title.
Ferguson is, falsely, often described as a bully to his players, but had he ever spent £60million on one, it can be presumed he would have worked a little harder on nurturing that talent. Think of his astute handling of Cristiano ronaldo. The transition from
show pony to the most effective footballer in the world; the smoothing of relations after the 2006 World Cup; the extra season once Real Madrid came calling. Di Maria, an exceptional talent, had less than one full season before being discarded. How would he have fared in a ferocious Ferguson team, with conventional wide players and strikers who shot on sight? Too many signings that Van Gaal has placed his faith in have failed to deliver. Bastian Schweinsteiger, his on-field marshal, has barely been seen since getting injured in March — he returns to Germany for treatment — but is increasingly hopeful of being fit for the European Championship. Memphis Depay, excluded from the FA Cup final squad — he travelled to Wembley, but separately from the team — has a lifestyle cheque his performances cannot cash. Dropped to the reserves after making a costly mistake at Stoke, he turned up for the match in a Rolls-Royce. Reminded of the lowkey nature of his surroundings and the need, perhaps, to set a better example to the young players, he arrived for training the next day — in the same Rolls-Royce.
So it is not all about Van Gaal. There are other flaws within United that the new manager will need to address. Indeed, some fear that Van Gaal’s replacement, Jose Mourinho, is cut from the same cloth — Van Gaal was his mentor, after all — and will just replace one straitjacket with another of a different design.
There is something of my-way-orthe-highway about Mourinho, too — not least in his treatment of one of United’s costlier signings, Juan Mata. Yet Mourinho is an astute coach with titles in four countries. More importantly, he has seen what works at Manchester United, and what does not.
He is not about to exclude a young talent such as Rashford, and his best Chelsea teams always had more imagination than his critics insist. Mourinho has managed five full seasons in English football and in three of them, Chelsea outscored United, with one tie.
The record of his meetings with United, as Chelsea manager, reads: P13 W7 D5 L1 F16 A6. That sounds more effective than conservative.
He also has the advantage of starting from a low base. United may have the complication of Europa League football next season, but having finished below fourth and the Champions League places in two of three seasons, Mourinho will consider his initial target highly achievable.
Van Gaal wished to subsume Manchester United into his philosophy; Mourinho must first be smarter than that.