The many difficult challenges faced by new Man United manager Louis van Gaal

Poor old David Moyes, sacked by Manchester United simply for being out of his depth; having lost the dressing room to the extent he would never get it back; knowing only one, limiting and limited way of playing football; alienating or being intimidated by the most talented and experienced players at the club; and for awarding Wayne Rooney, Luis Nani and Michael Carrick contract extensions. 

It’s almost as if appointing a manager with no history of top-level success was a risible gamble. Well done, then, Edward Woodward, for ignoring the witless section of fans and pundits who wished to see Ryan Giggs given the job for the sake of the nebulous and discredited concept of romance in football - a manager with no history of top-level success, and giving Louis van Gaal the job.

That’s not to say he will definitely be a success at Manchester United. He has now taken on a task which might be too big for just one manager to turn around. Van Gaal could be the first of a few who make steady improvement on the way to United’s return to success, or he might simply be someone who is again overwhelmed by circumstances, or possibly sabotage himself. He is not, obviously, known for his conciliatory behaviour, and that has its advantages and drawbacks.

When appointed at Ajax in 1991, Van Gaal is supposed to have told a director, “Congratulations on signing the best coach in the world.” Being generous, perhaps that was true then, as he went on to with the UEFA Cup and Champions League in his time there, but with Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola in charge, it certainly is not true now. He’s also meant to have displayed his pubic dusters to his Bayern Munich team, perhaps to show commitment, perhaps to show he is not scared. He definitely does not seem to want for confidence or be scared of clashing with big egos. That is too his advantage in a Manchester United squad that is in desperate need of overhaul.

There have been rumours that Wayne Rooney is concerned at Van Gaal’s appointment; that it means that his position as first-choice under Moyes will no longer be held. That would be hugely beneficial to United. There are players who resent Rooney’s indulgence, huge contract and standing in the club, given his pathetic attempts to leave and negotiate wage rises at the same time as becoming emphatically, as Eli Cash puts it, not a genius. 

If Van Gaal realises what we, and presumably Rooney, all know - that Rooney is a hack of a footballer, unable to pass, devoid of acceleration and tactically ill-disciplined - then Manchester United will improve instantly. His relationship with Robin van Persie as Netherlands coach (they were seen in the stands together a while ago) would suggest that he will be trusted as the main striker, at least at the beginning of the season. And with Edward Woodward apparently pursuing Edinson Cavani as some kind of power statement, Rooney could be gone soon.

Van Gaal has form for benching his dissenting players, no matter their talent. When Rivaldo, at Barcelona, expressed his preference for playing in a particular role, Van Gaal said “right that’s your decision,’ and promptly benched him. David Moyes - viz Van Persie’s potential substitution being mentioned by Moyes as an impossibility for fear of press criticism - was unable or unwilling to drop his most underperforming players. Van Gaal will not be.

That means a lot for United, because although they have a sizeable fund set aside for rebuilding the rancid squad they currently possess, stability and practicality demands that many of the players who have disappointed so much will stay for at least one more season. Van Gaal will need to shake some players from their slumber. Players who have at times been very good, even excellent.

Carrick, for example, put in possibly his worst performance for Manchester United against Sunderland, in perhaps his worst ever season for the side. Never dominant or inspiring, he had in the previous two seasons just recovered from a two-season slump. Now, he is back to his feckless worst, failing to track midfield runners, unable to pass accurately to the point it seems a tic, and as slow as only a mid-thirties English footballer can be. He has it in him to be a useful player, and perhaps Van Gaal introducing him to hard work and intimidation will help.

There are others who have for most of their career been indulged with the carrot who now need to be introduced to a whittled, pointed end of the stick, into their buttocks repeatedly until it draws blood and gets them to either perform or leave. Rio Ferdinand’s carry-on on Twitter and in the press has seen him reach a new low in his quest to be a fairly bright man capable of doing transparently stupid and self-serving things. He might have been wound up by Moyes’ naive suggestion he look to Phil Jagielka as somebody to copy, but his reaction was textbook Ferdinand. This was entitled nonsense at a time he was playing far worse than Jagielka has been for the last few years. If he’s unwilling to behave, then Van Gaal is capable of introducing him to the obscurity of MLS (n.b. this is not a dig at MLS, just written from a Eurocentric point of view).

To go through the other players who need to be exposed to sustained verbal and possible physical abuse to give United fans pleasure, and punish them for their actions commensurately, in detail, would turn this into more of a book and less of a column, so let’s be brief. Ashley Young: overpaid wage thief. Luis Nani: brain in stasis. Anderson: talent squanderer. Tom Cleverley: [redacted rumour about team line ups]. But there are also players who have fallen apart despite being less objectionable people. Antonio Valencia is a right-winger incapable of even looking out of his left eye, let alone using his left foot. Javier Hernandez has transformed from one shot, one goal, to one shot, just wide of goal. Danny Welbeck has yet to work out what type of player he is going to be, and is approaching an age when it might end up being “Newcastle United player.” Rafael’s defensive shortcomings came back to the fore this season, too, as he suffered playing for a team that was, in technical terms, utter rubbish,.

Van Gaal might turn this round using these players, but equally he will be able to remove much of the deadwood. It’s not just with his harsh approach, but with the surprising fact he’s actually a capable human being. Michael Reizeger, who played for him at Ajax and Barcelona, said, “He’s open to everybody - you can go to him with your problems and that’s why he always works with the big teams.”

There’s a comparison to be made with the two previous United managers. David Moyes publicly admonished Danny Welbeck for his shooting. He said of Shinji Kagawa, who demonstrated at Dortmund exactly what he was capable of, ‘people keep telling me how good he is.’ In pre-season he pissed off Wayne Rooney without thinking, saying his main thought on Rooney was that he would need him as back up should Van Persie sustain an injury. There are other examples, but the theme is of undermining, not publicly defending, his players. Contrast that with Alex Ferguson, who said that Phil Jones could end up as Manchester United’s best ever player. Total nonsense, clearly, but given Ferguson would defend his players for almost anything in front of the cameras, the players might start to be relieved than Van Gaal will treat them like his players as Ferguson did, rather than with the suspicion that leaked from Moyes’ face.

For all the changes that need to be made to United’s squad - one winger, possibly a striker, two central midfielders, a left-back and at least one centre-back are needed in this transfer window, with others to come the following year - there remains a potentially useful base of young players who might have formed The Next Great Fergie Team. David de Gea, Rafael, Chris Smalling, Jones, Adnan Januzaj and Danny Welbeck all have the potential to be excellent players - some more likely than others, granted. But as Bryan Roy pointed out, and as his success at Ajax and AZ Alkmaar bring into context: “I look at Manchester United and they have a lot of young players. They will respond to him as well as the older ones who will have respect for him.” With a couple of older players worth hanging onto, for now, like Patrice Evra (though not as first-choice, simply because he is, to paraphrase Brendan Rodgers on Steven Gerrard, ‘a wonderful human being’), Kagawa, Jonny Evans, Juan Mata and Van Persie, an optimist can see a way out for Van Gaal. He can help the young players develop, and use his standing in and understanding of football to rehabilitate the senior players of worth. Added to potential new signings, that is a side capable of significant improvement.

If rumours are to be believed, then Van Gaal might have already given indications to Edward Woodward, known in an alternate universe and in his own head as ‘The Closer’, about which players he would like to see purchased. Ezequiel Garay has been linked with United for, surprisingly, longer than he has actually been alive, and with his contract running down would be a sensible and well-priced addition. Mats Hummels has been mentioned. Luke Shaw’s transfer does not appear to have been interrupted by Van Gaal’s appointment, but of course nothing is yet certain, and Sead Kolasinac might also join. In midfield, Toni Kroos, Thomas Muller, Kevin Strootman and Cesc Fabregas have been suggested as targets for senior roles, with William Carvalho perhaps already agreed. Another Dutchman, Memphis Depay, is a left winger who, let’s be honest, could be no worse than Ashley Young. After a summer and winter transfer window where Woodward and Moyes combined to target Leighton Baines, Seamus Coleman and sign Marouane Fellaini, Van Gaal and United seem to have upped their game in preparation for next season.

One of the most intriguing questions is how Van Gaal will set up his side. He has in the past said that, “You have to play as a team and not as an individual. I’m looking to see who fits in my system - 4-3-3.” and for the majority of his career he has stuck to variations of this. He also said, “I played 4-3-3 with Ajax, 2-3-2-3 with Barcelona and a 4-4-2 with AZ. I’m flexible.’ Despite veering off into the amazingly pseudish description of 2-3-2-3, the point is that he does have a preferred system, but is not averse to pragmatism, as witnessed in his suggestions for a 5-3-2 for the Netherlands ahead of the World Cup. With a squad as imbalanced as United’s is, Woodward’s particular approach to transfer targets and negotiations, and needing more than just one transfer window to solve it, that is a useful quality.

It could all, of course, yet go wrong under Van Gaal. His Dutch side have not impressed to any great degree, despite qualifying easily enough for the World Cup. That, though, is partly due to the paucity of talent in the squad, but beyond that Van Gaal has had a lengthy career without overwhelming success. He has just two European trophies, and both of those came at Ajax two decades ago. He has won league titles with Bayern Munich and Barcelona, but that has to be mitigated by the fact that, well, they’re Bayern Munich and Barcelona: sometimes it’s harder not to win the league with them. And for all the talk about how United need someone to start booting players in the nuts and throwing Wayne Rooney out of a window, that’s more of a vicarious thrill for the fans rather than a sensible game plan. As Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said, “Van Gaal’s failure is clearly in his attitude. If that mentality is customary you have to have success. If it fails, you lose your friends.’

That is a clear potential problem. The scale of the task is evident, so should United not improve sufficiently quickly, he might find that he cannot win round an already miserable squad. But that ignores the wider context, which could see things turn nastier than at other clubs do at times of failure. Alex Ferguson has been quite plainly marginalised from the selection process. Van Gaal is a Woodward/Glazer appointment.

Last year David Moyes was given the job with no interview process by Alex Ferguson, as if it was a job for him to pass on. It should not have been - it was too big for that - but nonetheless the Glazers allowed Ferguson droit de seigneur, and they now realised where that got them. Who knows what Ferguson had told Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho about his retirement plans, but there are enough leaks coming about Mourinho to suggest he truly wanted the United job, and took the Chelsea job as a silver medal. Even now, Mourinho might still want to take over, but for various reasons knows that it is simply an impossibility. Carlo Ancelotti and Jurgen Klopp have both been mooted and both have issued non-denial denials of varying strength and flavours, but Van Gaal was linked with the job two months ago, and has never been anything but the favourite since Moyes was sacked. This suggests that rather than go through a sensible appointment plan, United have chosen their man and gone straight for him, just as Ferguson did.

The key difference, though, is that Ferguson has been giving out opinions that Giggs should be given the job, rather than the board getting what they want. Of course he does. For a man obsessed with control, Giggs in charge would keep Ferguson closer to the action than a belligerent, egotistical stranger with a track record of success elsewhere would. United appear to regard Giggs as a necessary coaching appointment under Van Gaal, and Giggs is not happy to settle for a token role as he had under Moyes (Giggs stopped attending meetings with Moyes as ‘they are pointless, he doesn’t listen.’) The relative length of the contract for Van Gaal suggests that United are planning to hand over control to Giggs and the Class of 92, takeover conspiracies notwithstanding, sooner rather than later. With Giggs clearly happy to take over as full-time manager now, and with Paul Scholes’ assassination of Moyes in a rare, live television appearance, and Ferguson waiting and out of the loop, it doesn’t take a genius to see how a slow start or personal problems might gain momentum not just naturally, but aided by a few stories in the media, attributed or otherwise. Not, of course, that those mentioned above would ever do such a thing. And even if they wouldn’t, keep in mind that Van Persie is not averse to a strop, Rooney certainly has methods of explaining his pleasure in as disruptive a manner as possible, and every single player these days appears more in love with defending their ‘brand’ than they do with earning the money they are paid. United, in dealing with Moyes in such a ham-fisted and at times unpleasant manner, have demonstrated that for all the mythology they exploit for commercial gain, they are just a club, perhaps just a business.

Van Gaal is the man for the job, partly because of his experience, and partly because he’s one of the few major managers in European football who is available and willing to take it. But because he is not the perfect man for the job, and the scale of the task ahead of him, there is evidently a sizeable risk. But for now, Giggs, Butt, Neville and Scholes, Alex Ferguson, the United fans in Old Trafford and around the world, and those in the board are probably right to be thinking the same thing: it can’t be worse than it was under David Moyes.