It couldn’t happen, could it? Since Manchester United’s dismal December the foremost assumption has been that the Reds’ fate lies outside the top four, and with it a second year in three away from the Champions League. Yet, with just three Premier League games remaining, Louis van Gaal’s side is hot on the coat-tails of Manchester City, with an FA Cup final to come. Salvation for Van Gaal, perhaps, and possible redemption for a group of players that has largely underwhelmed.
United’s football has rarely been pretty this season. Too often ineffective as well. Yet, in recent weeks Van Gaal’s side has found a way not only to create more chances than has been the norm, but win games too. Last weekend’s draw with Leicester City came with a modicum of luck, as did the FA Cup semi-final victory over Everton, but the Dutchman’s team has lost just one in 10.
The smart money is still being placed on Van Gaal losing his job shortly after 22 May, with José Mourinho eagerly awaiting the smoke signals from Old Trafford. Yet, if the veteran is to be pushed into retirement by a former protegé, then he is at least going out with some fight. About time.
Van Gaal is now widely despised among United’s fanbase, but should United qualify for the Champions League and pick up silverware, there will be a morsel, however small, of vindication in the Dutchman’s polarising methods.
Then, of course, there is the memory of failure. Horrific failure at that. Norwich City’s victory at Old Trafford in December came amid a run of three successful defeats. It was the manner, however, of the Canaries‘ win in Manchester that shocked most. This was not a smash-and-grab raid on a dominant Reds, but one of the worst teams in the Premier League out-thinking a truly dismal United side.
Van Gaal was said to have offered his resignation after defeat to Norwich was followed, on Boxing Day, by a calamitous loss at Stoke City. The rumour was later denied, although Ed Woodward’s hesitancy in reaching for Van Gaal’s P45 means that the season has become a race for fourth and not a potential shot at first.
[blockquote who=”” cite=””]United’s football has rarely been pretty this season. Too often ineffective as well. Yet, in recent weeks Van Gaal’s side has found a way not only to create more chances than has been the norm, but win games too. The Dutchman’s team has lost just one in 10.[/blockquote]
Memory of defeat to Norwich remains fresh, especially among the 3,000 fans who travel to East Anglia this weekend for the return game. For the sake of United’s European hopes the Reds must win on Saturday lunchtime. For Van Gaal it is dignity and a job on the line. Nobody can afford a Norwich double this weekend.
Little wonder the manager is increasingly on the defensive, seeking to play up the challenges of meeting a side that has just five wins at home all season. Mind you, United has won just six league games on the road so perhaps Van Gaal is right in preaching caution.
“It is always difficult to fight against a team who fights to maintain their place in the Premier League – that is always very difficult,” Van Gaal told the media on Thursday.
“We have to cope with that. Norwich won at Old Trafford so we have to take revenge. It shall be a very tough game, but in spite of that we have to win.”
Norwich, meanwhile, faces three matches to save a season, with the Canaries now two points shy of Newcastle United in 17th place, although Alex Neil’s side has a game in hand. Still, three successive defeats has turned the tide against Norwich while games featuring United, Watford and Everton hold no promise of easy points. It is now or never for the hosts to find a performance to match the one at Old Trafford back in December.
“We need to win games to make sure we stay at this level,” said Neil. “It comes no bigger than this, it really is crunch time now. There is no room for excuses, we’ve got to go out and do the job. The players know exactly where we are. They gave it their best efforts against Arsenal, and I expect exactly the same this weekend.”
Best efforts is not always enough, of course. And not always offered by Van Gaal’s men either. That December period, where defeat to Norwich and Stoke was preceded by losses at Bournemouth and Wolfsburg, appeared to be the turning point in the Dutchman’s time at United. Four defeats is bad enough, but it was the limp manner that brought the greatest embarrassment. Woodward stood firm, much to supporters’ widespread chagrin.
Four months on and United’s position – out of Europe, twice, and off the title pace, is not what Van Gaal promised when he claimed he would “make history” at Old Trafford. History is being made far from the manner he might prefer.
There is just a touch of hope though – that qualification for Europe’s top table and silverware could provide the springboard for a new man to take United back to the pinnacle of English football. Then again, as John Cleese once mused, it’s not despair that kills you. It’s the hope.
And Norwich at home.
Team news and line-ups
Norwich subs from: Kean, Rudd, Whittaker, Andreu, Odjidja-Ofoe, Mulumbu, Dorrans, Jarvis, Naismith, Mbokani, Bennett, Bamford
United subs from: Romero, McNair, Fosu-Mensah, Varela, Borthwick-Jackson, Herrera, Young, Mata, Depay
Van Gaal enjoys an almost fully fit squad as the season draws to a close, with only three first team players injured. Phil Jones will play in the under-21s this weekend, missing out on the trip to Norwich, while Luke Shaw is still recovering from a broken leg and Bastian Schweinsteiger misses the campaign’s remainder.
Injuries have certainly altered United’s campaign, as they have in the two other seasons since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement. One wonders what they put in the sponsored water at Carrington.
Yet, injuries have also become a crutch – a ready excuse for a veteran manager who has enjoyed one of the healthiest budgets in the club’s recent history. The manager says that returning players have boosted United’s performances towards the tail end of the season. Now he must deliver results.
“Of course, that’s the benefit of the situation now,” said Van Gaal of the relatively clean bill of health. “I have that at this moment, but in the month of December, I didn’t have that.”
Van Gaal could make changes from the team that drew with Leicester last weekend. Marouane Fellaini is suspended after elbowing Robert Huth, while the Dutchman claims that fatigue has become a factor in United’s campaign. Van Gaal’s team has played 54 games this season in league, Europe and two domestic cup competitions.
“We have to assess the tiredness of the players because there’s an overload of matches, so maybe I have to rotate,” he told MUTV.
“Fellaini is suspended so I will have to change my line-up. Every week you have something that you don’t like, but I think we can manage. In the Premier League it is more difficult because of the overload of the matches, we have to play more matches than in Spain or Germany, so I have to rotate sometimes.”
The Premier League contains 20 teams, as does La Liga, Serie A, and Ligue 1, while there are 18 clubs in the Bundesliga.
Van Gaal could bring Morgan Schneiderlin or Ander Herrera back into central midfield, although the Dutchman is unlikely to touch an attacking quartet that has created chances, if not scored goals in recent games. Marcus Rashford will be supported by Antony Martial, Wayne Rooney and Jesse Lingard, with Juan Mata consigned to the bench.
Elsewhere, Antonio Valencia or Matteo Darmian will play at right-back, with Timothy Fosu-Mensah seemingly not yet forgiven for handing Everton a penalty a Wembley. The youngster is a case study in Van Gaal’s mythical yet ultimately fickle faith in youth. With much to lose, and little margin for error, few now expect Van Gaal to takes risks he has so often forsaken in two disappointing years at Old Trafford.
“We have to win our matches because otherwise we cannot be in the first four,” admitted Van Gaal. “That’s the pressure that we have. We have to fight until the end, and then we have still a title [trophy] to win.”
Officials
Referee: Craig Pawson
Assistants: M Mullarkey, D Bryan
Fourth Official: K Hill
Prediction
Norwich 1-2 United
Let’s see if MUFC have any back bone!
Wishful thinking to have hoped Fellaini got a 5 year ban ?
crappy B’Dortmund smashed Wolfsburgh 5 nil. MUFC got humiliated by Wolfsburgh. List the humiliations this season. Sack LVG
They bleeding better!
It’s so frustrating that in a season where the top of the table is as weak as it ever has been in the Premier League era, that van Gaal’s United is most likely to finish outside the top four.
If he had been sacked in December, when his record was abysmal (surely any other club would have sacked him) and replaced by Mourinho, possibly even Giggs (though his star has waned under van Gaal), then United might just have been in a position to have a crack at top spot, especially with the signing of Martial in January.
As it is we are hanging on for an FA Cup final win to salvage something successful from a desperately disappointing season. Records have been set for the least number of shots on target ever in a season, not goals – just shots! Yet a few people still talk about about van Gaal keeping his job. Unbelievable, they have got to be kidding, it’s ridiculous.
Not sure about “top spot” but a very secure third, with a chance of second would have been likely.
From what I’ve read this morning, it appears that the “line-up” again does not feature Fosu-Mensah nor Borthwick-Jackson nor Herrera nor Scheiderlin nor Pereira. Given that LvG has chosen AV25, MC16, RockyRojo, and Darmian, one can only question his sanity – or, perhaps, he thinks that he’s bullet-proof and that’s a very scary thought.
On December 28th, exactly, halfway through the season, even after the bad results against Norwich and Stoke, United were nine points off the top team, which was Arsenal on goal difference from Leicester. Not insurmountable at half way, if Wudwud had shown any balls. As it is Leicester have basically doubled their lead over United during the second half of the season and the chance has been lost.
OK, I’ll grant you those statistics BUT Leicester have been very, very efficient in the second half of the season so making up a 9-point gap would have required something well-beyond that. I think that the “chance of second” was a more realistic possibility in that alternate universe that exists without LvG basically doing whatever possible to change successful formations while destroying the confidence of youngsters like McNair, Varela, Depay, Pereira, and Januzaj and veterans like Schneiderlin and Herrera. As long as LvG has the top-job, there won’t be anything like a “response” to the challenges of the EPL and the CL. The man is living off his past glory – as in the mid-90s Ajax team – and his more recent middling success with a very boring (and lucky) Netherlands team at WC 2014; his efforts at both Bayern and Barca were more to do with “creative destruction” that positive improvements.
Agree with your comments about van Gaal. Until he is gone United will not seriously move forward. He is a man stuck in the past with his methodologies and processes, pompously referred to as his ‘philosophy’.
45 minutes of absolute crap from a dis jointedset of players sent out by the clueless lvg
Rashford “Rested” hes 18 years old should be able to run all year !!!!!
2-1? I expected a win but nothing more exciting than a 1-0 and that’s what we got.
Didn’t watch the match yesterday so i wouldn’t be able to comment on our performance or lack of it. But from what i can pick here and there, some people were unhappy we won. Clueless Lvg they say for resting an 18yr old who has played over 15 matches between january and now. Our own Scholes weighed in on the subject too forgeting that he made only 17 appearances in his own debut seaon(94/ 95) as a 20yr old. When we win, it is either our opponent is trash, didn’t show up or we are dam lucky. But when we loose, we are rubbish, the players and the coaches are chueless.
No, it’s just that people are sick of Van Gaal, the dire football and desperately want the club to move on.