It’s been another topsy turvy year for Manchester United and the green shoots of recovery that we saw in Louis van Gaal’s first season in charge seem to have frozen hard as winter bites.
With the extremely well publicised spend from the Manchester United manager most would expect much more quality on the pitch.
It obviously takes time to gel a new squad but these guys look, at times, as if they are learning football from scratch again.
There are big question marks over the suitability of Louis’s tactics and training methods for Premier League football and, increasingly, it seems as if LvG’s tenure will be remembered as one that steadied the ship rather than immediately returning the club to the top.
But we will say that, despite the criticism, we do think that Louis spent well.
He mismanaged some of his players (Di Maria and Depay immediately spring to mind) and was unlucky with injuries.
But, the only outright failure so far has been Radamel Falcao and we feel that the rest will prove to be good signings for Manchester United in years to come (jury still out on Schweinsteiger).
If LvG had kept players like Luke Shaw, Marcos Rojo, Michael Carrick and Wayne Rooney fit consistently then results would have been much better. Shaw has been a particularly big miss with that speed and penetration down the left which provides another great point of attack.
But here is our team of 2015 and, when it starts firing, it is definitely a quality one.
Two more forwards and a tweak in style should bring this squad back to the boil.
Manchester United fans: what is your team of 2015?
