As he frequently likes to remind the world, Louis van Gaal is a smart man. So it is perplexing that he refuses to grasp why speculation about his future at Manchester United will not go away.
It is because this season, his job was easy: and he has made it hard. In this, of all years, it did not need a genius to manage Manchester United. Knowing what we now know, that Chelsea would mount quite the poorest defence of any champions in Premier League history, and that an outlay of more than £100million on players would not greatly improve Manchester City, to have Manchester United in the top four, and challenging for the title, really wasn’t rocket science.
Yet Van Gaal has been battling the odds all season. He was knocked out of the most straight- forward Champions League group of any English club, he lost a Capital One Cup tie to Middlesbrough at home. As for the Premier League, anyone predicting Manchester United’s current plight would have been laughed out of the room pre-season.
Freezing the Premier League table this morning, the teams Van Gaal had to better this season are revealed as Leicester City and Tottenham Hotspur. One has to wind back to 1974-75 to find the last time a Manchester United manager did not finish above both, and that year it was impossible because United found themselves in a different competition, having been relegated the previous season.
Since returning to the top division in 1975-76, however, Manchester United have never finished behind Leicester, and have trailed Tottenham in only five of 40 seasons. They were separated by one place in 1984-85 (Tottenham third, United fourth) and by more substantial distances in 1986-87, 1988-89 and 1989-90. Tottenham finished sixth to Manchester United’s seventh in 2013-14, the only time they have outperformed them in the Premier League.
So if Van Gaal, or just about any Manchester United manager since Tommy Docherty, had been told that finishing ahead of Leicester and Tottenham would constitute a successful season — with a budget of £250m to make it happen, don’t forget — the reply would have been: bring it on.
In fact, we know how Sir Alex Ferguson came to view Tottenham from Roy Keane’s autobiography. ‘It was Tottenham at home,’ Keane wrote. ‘I thought, please don’t go on about Tottenham, we all know what Tottenham is about, they are nice and tidy but we’ll f****** do them. He came in and said, “Lads, it’s Tottenham”, and that was it. Brilliant.’
Now, clearly, Tottenham under Mauricio Pochettino are much improved from Keane’s day, while Claudio Ranieri may be about to inspire the greatest season in Leicester’s history.
Yet if these two teams end up being the main title contenders, the sense of missed opportunity at Old Trafford, and elsewhere, will be overwhelming.
Even Ranieri, five points clear, believes the status quo will return next season. He thinks, a year from now, Leicester will most likely sit between sixth and 10th. Meaning, he knows who should win the league, if all goes according to plan: it’s the type of club who spend £250m and have finished above Leicester 40 seasons straight.
Instead, just to reach the Champions League, Manchester United will need the most dramatic turnaround in Premier League history. There are 13 games to go, and United are six points behind Manchester City.
Since four English teams qualified for the Champions League, there have been only five occasions when a team have broken into those places after 25 matches, and only one that is comparable to the task that faces Manchester United now.
In 2008-09, Arsenal chased down seven points on Aston Villa with 13 games remaining. Yet catching Villa is a vastly different proposition from overhauling Manchester City or Arsenal. And United will probably need to make up seven points, too, because the goal difference of those ahead is so superior.
‘Study statistics,’ Van Gaal snarkily told journalists after the draw at Chelsea, but maybe he should do the same. It won’t make the speculation any more palatable to a proud man — but it should at least make it easier to understand. – Daily Mail