LVG: I FEEL LOUSY
Bad start upsets United boss who warns revival could take three years
LOUIS van GAAL feels ‘lousy’ about Manchester United’s dismal start to the season but is confident he will be given more time than David Moyes to revive the fallen giants of English football.
United’s record of 13 points from their opening 10 league games is their worst since 1986. Previous manager Moyes had six more points at the same stage last season but was sacked 10 months into a six-year contract.
Van Gaal warned that it might take until the end of his three-year deal to get it right, and admitted that the current situation is unsatisfactory for the owners and supporters after United spent more than £150million on players in the summer.
‘It’s not good enough,’ said the Dutchman. ‘I feel myself very lousy for the fans in the first place, and also the board because they have a great belief in me, my staff and my players.
‘ When you have 13 points from 10 matches you aren’t doing well but we are in a process. I said from the beginning when we won every game (on tour) in the United States that the process shall take more than one year — it will take three years, I hope, because that is always dependent on a lot of things.
‘I cannot say when the results will come. When I did it with Bayern Munich it was December 8, but it could be February 1 here.
‘It doesn’t matter because it’s a three-year process. I have signed for three years.’
Asked why he thought he would be given that long in the job when Moyes’s reign ended so abruptly, Van Gaal added: ‘That is only the belief in yourself and the players and the staff. It is based on that. You can think differently and believe differently.
‘I cannot speak for him (Moyes). I can only speak for myself. I have already given the answer.’
Van Gaal believes United supporters understand that his attempts to instil his philosophy in the squad have been disrupted by a chronic injury list that has forced him to adopt three different formations during his short time in England. ‘I have experience that people have a great belief in what we are doing and in the way we are playing,’ said Van Gaal. ‘When I am in the streets I have been surrounded by very positive sayings. ‘I am training in another way to what most of the other managers are doing. I train players in their brains. Every player has to know why he is doing things on the pitch.
‘That will give results in time and not only one game. That is what I want to develop. Not only for one match, but for a certain period and that takes time.
‘That is what I have always done in all my clubs. You can listen to what the boards of other clubs have said about me. Of course, when I want to select the same line-up I cannot. I have to solve the injury problems every week. The balance of the team is the problem. That is why I have remodelled the structure of my team for the third time.’
Van Gaal has to make yet more changes in central defence for today’s game against Crystal Palace at Old Trafford after Chris Smalling was sent off and Marcos Rojo carried off with a dislocated shoulder in last weekend’s Manchester derby defeat.
With Jonny Evans and Phil Jones still injured, Van Gaal refused to confirm whether midfielder Michael Carrick would fill in as an emergency centre back alongside either Tyler Blackett or Paddy McNair.
There was at least more positive news on Rojo yesterday with United confirming that they have decided not to send the Argentina defender for shoulder surgery that would have kept him out of action for up to three months.
Rojo could now be back within six weeks, although Van Gaal is aware that there is an increased risk that the player could suffer a recurrence of the problem.
‘Maybe with this injury it is very difficult that it won’t happen again, and that’s the problem,’ he said.
‘It’s always the same with this injury, I cannot change that. The human body has been made by God, not by me.’