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Football News: All Hail Van Gaal?

All Hail Van Gaal?
Image from: http://sports.ndtv.com/

Off of the back of what has been a fairly turbulent festive period, Van Gaal has received a lot of judgment, and criticism from fans, former professionals and in some cases other managers.

This article attempts to find out the truth behind the Van Gaal era and whether or not he deserves this latest bout of Criticism.

We've all seen the comparison with David Moyes' tenure at Manchester United and while they point out statistics surrounding wins, losses and goals for and against they don't specifically tell the entire story with injuries, tactical changes, etc.

For example, David Moyes implemented a system that was very similar to that of Sir Alex Ferguson with two banks of 4 and 2 forwards.

It's because of this that I'm not really going to talk about Moyes in this article.

The first thing that needs to be discussed is the amounts of Injuries Manchester United have accumulated over the course of the season compared with Manchester City and Chelsea.

Some blame will have to lay at the feet of Van Gaal, a fair share of these injuries will be related to training activities, however it's worth noting that during his last club spell (Bayern Munich) he never suffered much of an injury crisis and was able to keep players like Arjen Robben fit, a player renown for his poor injury record. Calling his training methods outdated and that of a dinosaur are claims that have been poorly researched.

Out of the 48 injuries Manchester United have suffered this season, 13 of those were from 'injury prone' players; Robin Van Persie, Rafael, Ashley Young, Phil Jones, Chris Smalling & Jonny Evans while a further 6 were suffered by Luke Shaw (A consistent Ankle problem). If you take the injury prone players out of the equation you'll see that Manchester United would have suffered only 35 'irregular' injuries, only 4 more than Manchester City & Chelsea's 31 injuries. All of a sudden things don't look so bad.

Many wanted Jose Mourinho to be the man to take United forward in the future after the retirement of the great Sir Alex Ferguson so it's only fitting that we make a comparison with his completed Chelsea side as well as they're main title contenders Manchester City on the field, starting at the back and moving forward.

In my opinion, it's a little unfair to blame Van Gaal for the poor concentration of his players and some of the mistakes we've conceded this season, however he does have to take responsibility for not rectifying these mistakes. Week in week out we give our opposition a free chance at goal because of silly individual errors, something that Van Gaal should be wiping out of our game.

Looking at goals conceded, Manchester United have conceded over the first 21 games, United have conceded 21, Chelsea 19 and Manchester City 20.

Perhaps if we didn't have De Gea things would look different but the fact of the matter we do and he's doing exactly what he's supposed to do, while our defenders make mistakes.

If we're going to criticize Van Gaal for the lack of improvement in our back lines mentality then he has to be praised for the development that De Gea has shown this season, to me that is only fair.

In terms of goals conceded, we're not as bad as the media is saying we are.

It's the errors that are perhaps our biggest problem at the back.

As you can see below, we do concede far more errors compared to the 2 two top teams in the Premier League, however you'll be forgiven for thinking we'd conceded far more opportunities to opponents than we actually have.

Manchester United; Evans (4 errors), Rojo (3 errors), Blind (2 errors), Mcnair, Blackett, Rafael, Valencia (1 errors) - Total 13 errors.
Chelsea; Cahill (4 errors), Terry (2 errors), Ivanovic, Mikel, Matic (1 errors) - Total 9 errors.
City; Fernando (2 errors), Kompany, Clichy, Mangala (1 errors) - Total 5 errors

This clearly shows that although things do look bad, we're not in a far worse of position that Chelsea, and out of those 13 errors we've only conceded on the 1 occasion, highlighting my point that the media do like to exaggerate the circumstances (even though these are great statistics and we should be aiming for less than 5 errors in a season).

With the Ball, Manchester United tends to do quite well, keeping on average, 56% possession as opposed to Chelsea's 54% possession (Manchester City also have 56%). All 3 teams enjoy similar pass accuracy across the field with United & City averaging 86% accuracy and Chelsea averaging 85%.

Much like the other statistics, Chelsea, City and United are on a similar wavelength with forward passes; Chelsea (62.5% -6,850 forward passes), City (63.5% - 7,667 forward passes) and United (60.5% - 6,687 forward passes).

It's the type of forward passes that are separating the 3 clubs currently. Lately a lot of people have labeled United as a long ball club, not quite Stoke City but certainly not Barcelona or Bayern Munich. Statistically speaking, those people are right.

Chelsea (1,047 attempted long balls), Manchester City (839 attempted long balls), Manchester United (1,371 attempted long balls).

Lack of confidence, lack of time on the ball, lack of ability or simply instructions handed down from the manager, Van Gaal has to sort this quickly if he's to be a fan favorite at Manchester United. His reputation of being 'total football' is one of his most appealing characteristics as a manager and unfortunately it's something we're not currently playing.

Whether that's down to lack of ability in the squad (the same reason he went with the same system managing Holland) or whether he's simply trying to adapt his game I'm not sure. Something does need to change and quick though.

 

Moving further forward, United have Scored 34 goals this season, Chelsea 46 and Manchester City 45. Something I would find hard to believe when looking at the attacking talent of Rooney, Van Persie, Falcao and Di Maria, however the stats don't lie.

Simply put, we haven't got a bunch of poor forward on big wages, instead we've got a system that simply doesn't work with the type of 'immobile' number 9's that we have at the club. Our forwards aren't big enough or strong enough to win the majority of their Arial balls and play the long ball game.

Essentially what I'm saying is LACK OF SERVICE.

Something that is well explained further through our chance creations, which currently sits at 204, which looks reasonable when you look at it by itself, however comparing It to City and Chelsea and we have problems. Chelsea create an impressive 283 while City steal the show creating a mind boggling 300 opportunities. (Bayern have only created 260 while Real Madrid only 249).

Quite interestingly, this all stems from the back 3, De Gea is playing a long ball more often than not (see my previous article) loses us possession, our lack of faith to cover losing possession means that simple passes around the back 3 are used to keep possession and ultimately leads to less chances created, we also have our midfield sitting deeper for fear of being caught out and therefore movement in the midfield is severely lacking even with Di Maria, Rooney and Herrera. With a more experienced and steadied back 4, whether it is through a change of formation or playing staff, will drastically increase our ability going forward in my opinion and will ultimately fix attack and defense.

Let me know what you all think!

Written by Jordan Lombard January 14 2015 18:38:21