Guardiola and Van Gaal during their time at Barcelona
Louis Van Gaal's Manchester United continues their schizophrenic performance losing to Swansea City 2-1 (If you can call that a performance) he seems to be unsure of what to do with this squad. The nickname tinker man comes to mind which Claudio Ranieri held when he was at Chelsea, but with the Italian they at least played some entertaining football, with Van Gaal, boredom comes to mind.
Yes I already hear it, give him time, didn't we hear this when Moyes took over? With Van Gaal he did say that it would take at least three months for the team to gel, well if you count from September 2014 it is now 6 months counting February. Van Gaal still fiddles with either a back three or back four, which we must admit given the goofy players like Phil Jones, Johnny Evans and the ever present inconsistent Chris Smalling...well you have to feel for Van Gaal.
Looking back it is amazing how Johnny Evans has won tons of trophies with United considering that Evans is not exactly a "United player" it only goes to show what a great manager Sir Alex was.
Forget about winning, there isn't any signature style and the intensity of United in every match which many have seen year after year or the shots on goal during the matches is absent. Every United fans' dream would be to see Giggs take over the helm, but even he agrees that he is not ready and in the special exclusive with John Dykes, he said even the last three matches of the season in 2013-2014 was immensely stressful for him when he was the care-taker manager.
Giggs kind of hinted that he would not like to be the manager of United if given the chance, but why would he? He has the permanent crown of prince of United (The king title belongs obviously to Sir Alex) and is a hero to all United fans, doubly for some as he scored with his sister-in-law too. No matter which manager comes to United, he will have to rely on Giggs and at the same time know his place.
When the manager's ejection seat is activated Giggs has the option not to bail out, but just look on and sit tight until the next manager arrives, Giggs if he wants to will always be there, but not if he takes over the managerial post for when the chips are down the club will not think twice to save it if it means sacking the manager whoever that is.
What would be ideal? Van Gaal sees his three year contract out or United terminating his contract after two years and Guardiola takes over with Giggs by his side. Can you imagine a tika taka presence at United or even England for that matter? Will tika taka British style even work?
Guardiola is not happy with Van Gaal's trigger happy statements of Bayern players wanting to play for United and as reported in the Daily Mail in the month of September 2014 :
Guardiola annoyed Van Gaal by saying stars like Arjen Robben, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Thomas Muller were too expensive for United and that the players did not want to go anyway.
‘If the player wants to stay, they stay,’ said Guardiola. The slight clearly hit the mark because on Saturday night Van Gaal, a former Bayern manager, hit back by saying: ‘It is not so interesting what he said. I think every player I have contacted wants to play for Manchester United.
It would be interesting considering that Van Gaal and Guardiola did work together before when Van Gaal was manager at Barcelona and Guardiola a player, it might ruffle some feathers in the way the appointment is done IF it is done, but it would still be a cracker in more ways than one.
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