Manchester United Thread

I think the ever old case of Van Gaal not being able to work with South-Americans is proven again. At Barça during his first tenure he and Rivaldo didn't get along. Then during his second tenure he signed Riquelme who flopped too. Even at AZ he couldn't get a goal out of Ari. I don't know if it's the same case with Di Maria and Falcao but there is a pattern.
 
Damjan said:
I think the ever old case of Van Gaal not being able to work with South-Americans is proven again. At Barça during his first tenure he and Rivaldo didn't get along. Then during his second tenure he signed Riquelme who flopped too. Even at AZ he couldn't get a goal out of Ari. I don't know if it's the same case with Di Maria and Falcao but there is a pattern.
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LVG's zero bullshit attitude and the temperament of South Americans may not mesh as well? (and yes I know that's a bit of a generalization). Same could be said for him working with Italian players. (e.g.Luca Toni)

And I agree about not wanting Alves unless it's cheap.
 
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He wouldn't be cheap, he'd cost a bomb and I'd rather spend that amount on a potential top talent than a fading 30+ year old.
 
Damjan said:
I think the ever old case of Van Gaal not being able to work with South-Americans is proven again. At Barça during his first tenure he and Rivaldo didn't get along. Then during his second tenure he signed Riquelme who flopped too. Even at AZ he couldn't get a goal out of Ari. I don't know if it's the same case with Di Maria and Falcao but there is a pattern.
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That makes a lot of sense, especially Di Maria. The guy was a world beater 1 year ago, now his price tag may have been reduced 40% off.

In the case of Barcelona, it's worth noting that Riquelme was a flop, but not Rivaldo. If anything, Rivaldo bailed Louis Van Gaal with a series of world class performances despite being out of position all the time. Saved him from the embarrassment of not qualifying for a Champions League when he scored a screamer with a bycicle kick from long range against Valencia. This must have been what? 2000, 2001?

I remember some statements LVG made about Rivaldo being not any better than Boudewijn Zenden? I mean, come on. I understand the need to keep everybody (even your star players) level headed and down to earth and treat everybody equal and fair. But just don't do stuff that will make a laughing stock out of you. Rivaldo was Balon d'Or, on the form of his life and scored all sorts of magnificent goals from any distance and angle. Still LVG wanted him stuck in the left wing, when he flourished as a no.10 and played there all his life. From that moment on I always thought LVG was a clown of a manager.

He may have succeeded at AZ, because he is a very good coach with unknown players. I guess he thrives when he is the star of the show. I'm not sure it's an ego thing of his own, but he definitely struggles to manage big egos.

It strikes me how he always needs Dutch players around him too. I don't know what this is, but it looks bad and unprofessional in my books. Don't like South Americans, don't like diversity? Go back to manage in the Eredivise.

I think he will get the sack before the end of next season. The only reason he didn't get found out and did a Moyes was because Liverpool's form dropped dramatically without Suarez, constant injuries to Sturridge and new signings being total flops (Balotelli, Lovren, etc). He wouldn't get 4th otherwise.
 
I posted about 3 months ago that I was kind of done with LVG and his 'philosophy' - mostly because all I could see from putting myself through every minute was the same dross Moyes had given us, but with a bit more luck. But, we then became the form team in the country and beat all of our rivals before the team broke down again (4 starters injured ahead of Chelsea).

LVG has several positive traits:
- His ego: you need it at a club like United. Have to be a bit of a d*ck.
- His record: players would struggle to call that out. And it should entice signings
- He genuinely got us ticking for 5 matches: Better than anything under Fergie for his last 3 seasons. We looked coherent, confident and just better than Spurs/City/Pool.
- He had to clean house: By the end of the summer we'll have lost something like 17 of the 25 players in the squad just 2 years ago under Fergie. That's mental, no team could thrive under that much change.


And negative ones:
- Creativity bad: His system seems to want to make football predictable - keep the ball, don't make mistakes, eventually you'll score and win. But it doesn't work like that, as Mourinho pointed out, goals come from moments of uncertainty.
- No ability to change matches: His subs barely ever work, and we basically never come back from being behind. It's the anti-United.
- Failure with key players: Can't blame him on Falcao, tried and failed. Di Maria is the clear problem, but I do wonder if he's actually that good, or just had an exceptional 12 months. Guess we'll find out.
- Honest to a fault: He tells the media his team. Every week. He's completely honest about injuries, lineups, thoughts and so forth. It's just weird.

So there are good and bad things. He'll get another season.

As per the last 'positive' bullet point, people forget how much change this team has had. Losing Evra, Ferdinand, Vidic, Giggs, Nani, Hernandez, Rafael - all of them were pretty integral in Fergie's last year. Further, RVP and Rooney have been woeful most of the year, and are both past it, and Carrick has missed 30 games this season. So it's hard.

Edit, crunched the numbers, of the 15 players with the most minutes in 12/13, 9 have left the club. Of the remainder, only Dave, RVP, Rooney and Tony V managed more than 15 games this year. Madness.
 
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The Di Maria thing is hard to wrap your head around, because if LVG's problem is the lack of work rate from the archetype lazy South Americans, then he should have loved to work with Di Maria. If you watched Real Madrid in the last 2 or 3 seasons, the sheer amount of gut-busting work rate that man used to put in every week was incredible. He was easily the hardest working man in the front line that had the likes of Ronaldo, Benzema and Özil.

Maybe it's a struggle for some Argentines to adapt in Manchester? Tevez too, always have ran through brick walls for his team and still does, but at some point he just said "F*ck it" and did that at Man City.

I don't really like LVG as a manager but if we is to be sacked anytime soon, the league would lose some comedy gold moments.

Forgive me for posting something out of an Arsenal blog here, but do check this out:
https://soundcloud.com/arseblog/the-louis-van-gaal-bit-from-arsecast-353
 
Don't think it's Di Maria's work rate - it's his propensity to lose the ball. We conceded at least 2 I can think of when he lost the ball near the half way line unnecessarily.
 
Di Maria had more than one outstanding season with Madrid, beach.

I think it's pretty simple with Di Maria: he was unhappy in Manchester (the city, not United) after the break in. His family and (perhaps) he were terrified and unhappy to be there.

This happens with us mere mortals but apparently also with those semi-god world class football players...imo LVG has nothing to do with this.
It's bad luck for United that this should happen with their only real world class player (obviously apart from De Gea).

The rest of the bunch is obviously quite average. RVP is past it. Blind will turn out to be a very good player and the same goes for Herrera, i'm also persuaded that Luke Shaw will become one of the best English SB's ever.

Arguably (after De Gea), Fellaini was your most important player. And while Fellaini is nowhere near as bad that the United fans thought he was last season, he obviously is not a world class player either.

Having seen Van Gaal at Ajax (and really a lot there), Barcelona (less), AZ (a lot) and Bayern (quite often) i genuinely think he is a worldclass coach (and a worldclass prick) and tactically more than adept. I think the average EPL player is tactically inadept (best example of a tactically inadept player is the so called world class player Stephen Gerrard). I think the players and the club are more to blame than Van Gaal.

PS : about world class players, forgot all about Mata, of course...
 
@ Gerd: Can't disagree with any of that.

Next season will be the 'answer' to LVG's United career. He'll have more of 'his' players, a full pre-season of 'his' prepardeness and a full year under his belt of 'his' philosophy.

I'm oddly optimistic. Can't put my finger on why, given how disappointing I've found lots of this season. Squad still needs a ton of work, but maybe we can put in performances like that at Anfield and against Spurs.
 
Chewie Van Gaal was golden :LOL:

I think his fate will depend a lot on competition. On whether Liverpool gets their shit together, if Spurs will improve and on how all the 3 teams that finished on top will strengthen. He will have to improve his team and apply his philosophy real quick. I don't think United fans will be as patient with a slow start as they were this season.
 
It will depend on us keeping Carrick fit or signing a player of the same level like Schweinsteiger for example.

we look a different team with Carrick holding and controlling the tempo.
 
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Not bad at all
 
Sob. Looks like Dave is actually leaving. Our one truly 'world class' player off.

Tough situation, don't think you can point to RVN/Becks/Ronaldo/Dave as a 'trend' tbh. Each had its own situation, the two former were Fergie offloading players and latter were always going to want to move from Manchester.

Doesn't make it any easier to replace him though.

One thing I find really interesting, listening to bitter United fans, is why Real still have the allure that they do. They've won something like 2 leagues in 13 seasons, and similarly underperformed in the CL. Despite spending a huge amount more than any other team on Earth over the last 15 years, they've actually won fewer major trophies than Bayern, Chelsea, United, Barca and so forth. And yet still their mythical status persists.

Say what you want about Perez, that speaks to 'hollywood being hollywood' regardless of on the pitch results.
 
If it wasn't for the hideous sponsor that would be a decent shirt (for Utd...)

Hopefully De Gea is Perez' last bit of business in manchester. I will hunt him down if he dares take one step toward ours...
 
Godotelli said:
If it wasn't for the hideous sponsor that would be a decent shirt (for Utd...)

Hopefully De Gea is Perez' last bit of business in manchester. I will hunt him down if he dares take one step toward ours...
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If he s taking De Gea he may as well put Aguero in a basket. It's just Real shopping.
 
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After reading all this chit chat here about LVG, what do you all think/make of the Koeman bros. and their tenure at Southampton? Were they lucky? Were they good? They were mostly working with "unknowns" when compared to the other top 8.

For old times' sake:

19-KOEMAN+Erwin+%2526+Ronald.png


Ronald+et+Erwirn+KOEMAN+-+Panini+Hollande.png
 
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Any team in the Championship or lower prem teams should immediately pick up Tom Thorpe, who we released today. Best defender at U21/reserve level I've seen in years, will be forever a mystery why McNair and Blackett are in ahead of him.
 
We may need new assessment system for our youth. Many players aren't getting a chance to play in the first team. We aren't placing any trust on our youths and would rather spend to buy outside talent instead of growing our own...well, apart from Class of '92, we haven't really been known for great local talent, but if we spend so much on it, it should be bearing fruits and we should let them play and surround them by good players but not players that will limit their playing time.

Even ones that "made it" to the first team aren't really getting to play like Januzaj, Wilson, Blackett, etc....soon their best growth years will be behind them and they'll never be at that level cause they don't get the chance...and then they'd want to leave.
 
Worth giving Warren Joyce some credit though - despite not investing in many foreign players at all in our youth setup, we won the U21 league again this year.

It's tricky with youth players these days. We're doing a better job than the other clubs we're competing against (Chelsea/City) of integrating youth into the first team, but at the same time none of them seem to be true first XI types, Janujaz aside.

As to Thorpe, he's been excellent at every level. Captained England at all ages up to U20 too. Had a few poorly timed injuries, but it's a mystery to me why McNair/Blackett were preferred.
 
Please please please please NO to Sergio Ramos. What an awful, horrible cheating snide player he is. Couldn't stand having to watch him for my team.

Don't care about his good points, he's a one man symbol of the cynical, snide nature of football. I'd rather give De Gea to Madrid for free.
 
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