Sorry, but I saw this gem on 9gag. I just had to.
From a Man Utd forum, 2 weeks ago:
We've allowed, on average, just 56 passes per game inside our own final third this season. The next lowest in the league are City, on 72. The league average is 94. Our opponents have the ball inside our final third just 20.6% of the time, the lowest rate in the league, compared to a 27.3% league average; our opponents have the ball inside their own third of the pitch 27.7% of the time, the highest rate in the league, with Bournemouth in second place at 20.9%, compared to a league average of 18.2%. We're exceptionally good, relative to all other sides in England, at boxing teams into their own third of the pitch and stopping them playing through the midfield. No other team in the country, in fact, plays at all like we do under Van Gaal.
Van Gaal is doing an excellent job. What is going on in the english media is a smear campaign. It's a decidedly british attitude to make fun of terms like "philosophy", something LVG is pretty big on. It's not Van Gaal's fault Wayne Rooney can't hit the broad side of a barn these days.
The truth is, they wanted him gone before he even stepped on a training pitch.
If everyone, the journos, the casual fans, the ex-players, is making fun of your work, even though you deliver excellent results with a very young team, it creates an environment in which success is basically impossible to achieve. This is a prime example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There's an old saying: Every football team is full of unhappy players, minus eleven. If you blame the coach (who, in modern football, is already the weakest link, anyway) for everything, all you do is give those players excuses and ammuniton to shoot against the coach internally.
It's clear as bright daylight that Van Gaal will be gone soon, but it won't be because of the job he's done, it will be because he has been sabotaged from the get-go. Just take all this nonsense about 250 million spent. That figure ignores facts like a) Man U had an old squad and needed an overhaul after years of prude spending b) the money they made from selling players (e.g 45 million for Di Maria), or c) the fact that half of the sum was spent on players VG merely sanctioned, not actively signed himself (Shaw, Di Maria). Man U negotiated with Shaw long before Van Gaal was Man U coach, Di Maria was the only star player available at the time, and always more of a statement of intent for the club, fans and sponsors than a typical Van Gaal signing...the list goes on.
Not to mention, 250 million is only a fraction of what their competitors have spent over the last few years.
But yeah, let's not get context in the way of a good story and a laugh.
