Louis van Gaal Continues to Alienate Existing Squad With New Signings

02 September 2014 02:50

Living in the Netherlands as I do, it's interesting to try and gauge the local and national attitude towards Louis van Gaal. It appears there is a split. 50% love him, and 50% hate him. There is no room for apathy for the Manchester United manager. Opinion is very much polarised, and that's that! Sentences are punctuated with exclamation marks which indicate that what has been said, is all there is to be said on the matter. Brilliant/Buffoon! One, or the other.

However, back home in the UK, van Gaal is doing himself no favours with his team. Stating his tenure as Man United manager by savaging new signing Luke Shaw's fitness, he has since progressed to claiming his squad is not good enough, and that they would need a miracle to win the league this year, and then gone on to buy a host of players, presumably to illustrate quite how ineffectual he views the existing squad, culminating in the purchase of Radamel Falcao.

To be fair to the Dutchman, two points from three games does suggest that his assessment was on the money, beaten by Swansea and MK Dons, and drawing with Sunderland and the newly promoted Burnley, but one thing the team was not lacking in all these games is finishing power. Rooney, van Persie, and Mata are more than capable of scoring 20 goals each in a season, but the arrival of Falcao means it's almost inconceivable that all four will play together. Include the new arrival Di Maria in the equation and that's well over £1 million a week wages and with that kind of money, any player would think that they were guaranteed a starting position. More to the point, being told you're not going to get in the squad while on that kind of wage would be enough to put anyone's nose out of joint.

Much has been made of Wayne Rooney's captaincy, so it seems highly unlikely he will lose out. Falcao has to play, so I can only see both Mata and van Persie being relegated to the bench. Robin could well already be somewhat disgruntled that his countryman overlooked him in the choice of captain, and being displaced as the main target man could well rub salt into the wounds. And Mata? Well, he's been there before with Jose at Chelsea. Going from one of the stars to bench warmer for a second team. well, it's not difficult to imagine his indignation.

Still, with Di Maria, Luke Shaw, Ander Herrera, Marcos Rojo,, Daley Blind, and now Falcao as new additions, and various players departing, van Gaal has made a good healthy chunk of the Manchester United squad his own. As the players signed by Sir Alex number less and less, it's possible that the egos which were battered and bruised during the David Moyes tenure will be expunged, and maybe then the phoenix will rise from the flames and van Gaal will be successful with his new look Red Devils squad.

For that to happen though, United need to gel as a team, and more importantly, start winning games quickly, as such an astronomical wage bill will see Champions League qualification as a prerequisite. If van Gaal is seen as unable to deliver that, it's unlikely that United's owners the Glazers would be as slow to replace him as they were Moyes, and van Gaal himself must be aware of that.

Source: DSG