LVG needs FLAIR... or there’s no FEAR
Depay and Martial have to match Ronaldo and Giggs if United are to be pacesetters again
Those great United players were so good because of the team tempo
NO-ONE truly fears playing Manchester United at the moment. Not PSV Eindhoven, not Swansea City and nor should Southampton today, after beating them at Old Trafford last season.
When you think about United you associate them with individual flair and the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Ryan Giggs, Eric Cantona and George Best
There’s no-one like that at the club right now.
You used to face them thinking: ‘If we stop Ronaldo there’s two or three others, like Paul Scholes or Roy Keane, who could hurt us.’ Not so now. United always played at pace with high intensity and with plenty of movement off the ball. You don’t see any of that at the moment.
This team might feel they’re playing really good football, with more possession than other sides. But they’re not creating anywhere near the same chances as the old Manchester United.
It is more than two years since United won the league. Even then it was with one of Sir Alex Ferguson’s weakest teams and Manchester City really threw the title away. It has been some time since United scared their opponents in the Premier League and even longer in Europe.
So, while Louis van Gaal deserves time and patience, there is a limit to how long everyone can wait for this team to start firing.
They beat a Liverpool team low on confidence, but in the two real tests they’ve faced so far against aboveaverage sides — at Swansea and PSV — they have failed. And those teams are not the top-quality sides to which United should be comparing themselves.
So much has to improve for them to reach that level again.
The need for star players is evident and presumably Anthony Martial and Memphis Depay have been signed with that in mind.
Depay has struggled to settle in the Premier League despite looking good in Europe. Martial wants to run in behind the back four and is exciting on the ball.
It will be some time before we can judge whether they are the kind of players to make the difference in major games; the kind of players who demand so much attention from the opposition that they open up space for others.
There is a deeper problem with United. The build-up is slow, methodical and ponderous. I’m pretty sure Van Gaal isn’t saying: ‘We have to play sideways, round the back and let the other team take the initiative.’ It is the responsibility of players to be more positive. But Van Gaal will have to bring that out of them as well.
When I mentioned those great, individual players, one of the reasons they were so good for United was because the whole team tempo meant they had space to play in; more space than their best players have now.
SO Wayne Rooney hasn’t scored in the Premier League because there hasn’t been great service; it has been very slow and in the end he has stopped moving. Roberto Soldado had same problem at Tottenham.
He was making great runs at the beginning of his time at White Hart Lane but because he was alone up front and they were too slow in the build-up, no-one found him. And in the end he simply stopped running. You can get the ball forward quicker to Marouane Fellaini. But are Manchester United fans going to be comfortable with them playing in a more direct fashion?
What is evident is that they do need to move the ball forward quickly. When you talk about a team being direct, everyone imagines the ball being lumped in the air.
But that is not necessarily the case. Playing through the pitch quickly is what I’m talking about. I would always want my team to look forward, even the goalkeeper. When a goalkeeper takes the ball, the first place he looks is to the full-backs. No! That’s the last place you look.
You should be looking into midfield or the front men, so we’re getting through the pitch. If all that’s
blocked off, then we go wide. And it should be the same in every position. Incidentally, that’s why John Stones is fantastic. He looks to play the first ball forward.
Once you’ve made that pass to the midfielder, you want to ask: ‘Can he turn and feed the striker and then we get the rest of the team up?’
The manager has bought players who ought to be able to do that in Morgan Schneiderlin, who did it at Southampton, and Bastian Schweinsteiger. But both are still finding their feet. Michael Carrick can do it but he is not starting consistently.
Daley Blind does do it, which is why he’s in the back four. But really, it’s going to take time for this team to earn the reputation which United had four or five years ago. After all, this is a rebuild on a rebuild.
But football doesn’t give you much time. Reputations come and go so quickly. That is shown by the way visiting teams see Old Trafford as just another ground where they can get points whereas they used to go there with a sense of trepidation.
The clock is ticking. If United can’t challenge for the title and at least make the Champions League quarter-final, it will have been another year stagnating and another year since they were a genuine threat.
And the longer that goes on, the harder it will be to return to their previous lofty standards.